Hi all.

Recently, I've read some articles from several Android sites that reported about unsatisfied developers for Android.

So lets compare the differences between the applications between Android OS, WinMo and Symbian.

1. Android has Android Market, and I know WinMo has its own market too, what about Symbian?
And do WinMo's market offer free apps too?

2. I understand that Android Market is expanding fast, but currently, which OS do you think provides the widest range of good apps?

3. Devs complained that the Android Apps are hard to develop because of the wide range of machines and different screen sizes adapting Android OS.
But what about WinMo and Symbian? Only iPhone OS has one and only device, so what makes Android so hard to develop for different devices?

I do not compare iPhone OS here because we all know that it has a well organised market and only one type of device supporting it, ie the iPhone.

Thank you for your feedback.

1. I saw WinMo's so called market and it sucks when there are plenty of good apps for WinMo.
From the App store perspective, I would have to rank Apple's app store as first, Android as second. Ovi Store and WinMo's Marketplace are nowhere near Apple and Android in terms of variety. And Yes marketplace will have free apps

2. Again, Apple wins on this front, but Android market will have quite a bright future considering there are more Android devices released than Symbian or WinMo

3. I believe that Android is not hard to develop, rather, it is iPhone that is easier to develop because it's API and stuff is close to OSX. Also you need to consider that Android is the youngest here and do not have the push that iPhone had. WinMo have more screen sizes than Android had, screen size is definitely not a problem considering android have very good liquid layouts for the default elements.

1. Android has Android Market, and I know WinMo has its own market too, what about Symbian?
And do WinMo's market offer free apps too?
Symbian does not have a centralized market. But, for Nokia Symbians, they now have OVI store. Symbian apps are easy to get anyway so they dont need market i guess

2. I understand that Android Market is expanding fast, but currently, which OS do you think provides the widest range of good apps?
Android has about 10k apps. Iphone has about 100k apps. Symbian has more than iphone When you say "good apps" it depends on what you mean by "good" coz Symbian does have some really cool apps too tbh But iphone and android have good accelerometer integrations compared to symbian.

3. Devs complained that the Android Apps are hard to develop because of the wide range of machines and different screen sizes adapting Android OS.
But what about WinMo and Symbian? Only iPhone OS has one and only device, so what makes Android so hard to develop for different devices?
That is not true. Those devs who complain are just noobs. Thing is, Android market is filled with quite a number of "cheap apps" which in other words mean fugly looking apps promoting indirect sexuality and nonsense like wallpaper which you can change yourself. iPhone verification process is of very high standards. So their apps are of high quality in the market.

Thanks for your reply

I've had very little experience with WinMo and a bit more with Symbian, so as far as I remember, the apps downloaded for Symbian can support different devices. I remember taking my Nokia N95 to download apps from the phone store, which, another person was doing the same with another device. However the apps seem to work without trouble.
How is it possible? Is it because of the OS version, which regardless of the screen size, or because of other reasons?

I agree that Market has quite some 'cheap' apps, in the case that I think Android can optimise apps or play games that are as good as, if not better than iPhone's.

So in the end, I'd like to know, what are the reasons that affect apps writing and 'workabilty'? Version of the OS? Diversity of devices?
Maybe simple apps, ie those which do not optimise the use of 3D, accelerometer etc, can adapt in any device, but perhaps higher end ones can't?

*and by device, I mean of different hardwares and softwares, because Android has 1.5, 1.6 and 2.0.

Thanks again for clearing my doubts and questions

i wanna ask ur opinion about hardware aspect
htc being the most successful android hardware manufacture .. but still got lack of feature within android device and winmo device they created ... for example ..
htc din ever made flash for android phone .. since they still pushing the feature toward winmo device ... and Y ?? even newest Droid Eris doesnt have it .. and could maybe htc dragon also din have it .. i've been jealous with new htc hd2 .. bigger screen with flash and ect2

is it because the software that google made .. din complete or suitable with htc device yet ?? since Motorola Droid also having a prob with its camera usage ... slow focus ect2
what do cya thing ???

If u want to talk about hardware stuff, there are too many differences. Talk about camera, bluetooth, loud speakers, touch sensitivity, multi tasking, Internet speed, There are tonnes of differences. To me,im sick of iphone coz they never change the design. No longer using symbian because because i want a change after using symbian for about 7yrs. Choose google because i use google like crazy. I did a lot of reading and testing before choosing my phone and i have to say, im very happy with hero.

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This post has been edited by Integra89: Nov 29 2009, 04:19 PM

For flash, this is due to the software. Android 1.5 and 1.6 doesn't support camera flash, only on 2.0 it will.
Motorola's focusing prob is due to a bug which can be patched.

One of the reasons causing these issues is because of the trend of creating a custom UI for the devices, ie Sense for HTC, Motoblur for Motorola, Rachael for SE etc. This needs a lot of work up from the manufacturer, and since they are hardware makers (altho yup, they have quite a good team of software engineers), bugs tend to appear.

Moreover, Android OS is still young, and bugs with new releases is not uncommon for any OS.

HTC HD2 is good because of the well establised WinMo 6.5, which has been on the market (and HTC devices as well) for quite long.

But we'll see more and more good Android devices in 2010

not true, how about racheal UI on X10 with 1.6 Donut still got flash feature

its been 1 month already .. putting HTC to do 2.0 Eclair upgrade for Hero user but still not exist yet ... yea i noe that its hard to do OS update in the same device with promising and outstanding feature(like Eclair now).. since winMo and apple os go tru update with new hardware mostly ..

xda forumer also working hard to put us same lvl with motorola droid JUST with a plain 2.0 AndroidOS .. not with UI bundle yet and still missing sum important feature .. so its like sumthing impossible to be true for individual work .. within a month u can made a car already .. but htc .. still no news with 2.0 update ... maybe they need to re-code/remade the new version of htc senseUI for Eclair update .. so its take alot of time maybe

its a frustrating din get any Eclair update within a month of release date .. the user now slowly stop horayy-ing for the eclair feature update ..
and not expecting much in the future update .. maybe rumored code name Flan ... at least in the future either google or hardware manufacture should listed their device that impossible go tru os update and positive OS update device

if that bullshit happen on Eclair now .. such thing .. " we are sooo sorry we couldnt make a perfect Eclair OS update for our Magic/Dream/I7500/ect2 device" then the user that expecting sooo much for update will not so happy ... if such thing like this could happen .. just in my opinion ..

what i meant was the built in support of flash in 2.0, while for X10 i think it's tweaked by SE themselves.
That's the problem of the trend of having custom UI, upgrading process will be slower, but the good thing is, there's pretty much everything included in Sense UI 1.6 by HTC, except the BT file transfer and a few others that I don't remember.

BT file transfer is not part of Sense UI..Its part of the Google SDK..