Android compatibility

Every successful Android device on the market, before being launched, has been certified. Manufacturers have designed, developed, and tested their device according to precise guidelines, rules, and constraints.

To make the task as easy as possible, Google has created the Android Compatibility Program that defines details and tools that help OEMs to create a device that will properly support the OS, the SDK, and the developers' expectations:

"To run Android apps on a variety of Android devices."

As a manufacturer, creating and distributing a certified device has critical importance. Our goal is to create a device with a unique, but at the same time familiar, user experience: we have to be cool, but not weird! Users want to customize their Android device and they want to be sure that their favorite apps will run smoothly, without problems of any sort. Developers want to be sure that they won't waste time fixing bugs on every different smartphone, tablet, or TV—they want a common ecosystem on which they can rely.

A well-defined and well-supported ecosystem brings more certified devices that bring more and more developers that bring more and more happy users. The following diagram shows exactly how the Android ecosystem lives thanks to the constant creation of well-designed, well-produced, certified devices:

The Android Compatibility Definition Document

The Android Compatibility Definition Document (CDD) is Google's way to specify guidelines, rules, and constraints to be considered for an Android-compatible device. Every device designer and manufacturer has to refer to the CDD to be able to easily port Android onto its own hardware platform.

For each release of the Android platform, Google provides a detailed CDD. The CDD represents the policy aspect of Android compatibility and its role is to codify and clarify all the requirements and eliminate any ambiguity. The main goal is to provide rules for manufacturers to let them create complex hardware devices, compatible with Android SDK and Android apps.

Designing and developing a new device is no easy task. Even the smallest detail matters. Think about OpenGL support. There is no possible way to be sure that the graphical experience will be great for the user. The only thing that's possible is working according to the guidelines and then "test, test, and test". That's why providing as many details and guidelines as possible is the only way to help the manufactures to achieve their goal.

However, the CDD does not attempt to be comprehensive—it couldn't be. It just serves as guidance to approach as easily as possible the final goal—a compatible device. Further help comes from the source code itself and from the Android SDK API that can be considered a compatibility-proof test bench. Think about CDD as an overview of the minimum set of constraints to be compliant with: it's the very first step of the journey.

Device types

In the beginning, Android was born to run on digital cameras. Luckily for us, a lot has happened since then: smartphones invaded our world! Then we had tablets and mp3 players. Nowadays, we have TVs, watches, media centers, glasses, and even cars, running Android and Android apps. Every device on the market will probably land in one specific category, according to its features. CDD gives a few pointers about which category your new device would be placed in:

• Every device with an embedded touchscreen, a power source that allows mobility, and that can be held in hand can be considered an Android Handset.
• An Android Television device is a device designed for media content: video, music, TV, games, with users sitting about three meters or ten feet away. This kind of device must have an embedded screen or an output video interface—HDMI, VGA, DVI, or a wireless display port.
• A device designed to be worn on a wrist, with a touchscreen display with a diagonal between 2.79 cm and 6.35 cm is considered an Android Watch.
• Having a car with an infotainment system, based on Android, gives us an Android Automotive implementation.

Software compatibility

From a software execution point of view, the basic requirement is being capable of executing the Android Dalvik bytecode. Our device must support the Android Application Programming Interface and must provide complete implementations of any documented behaviors of any documented API exposed by the Android SDK or annotated with the @SystemAp annotation.

Hardware compatibility is a tricky task, because even if our device is lacking some specific hardware, for instance GPS or accelerometers, our implementation must contain GPS-related code and should be capable of handling inappropriate requests in a reasonable way to avoid crashes or misbehaviors.

One of the main players of software compatibility is the ability of our device to support intents. Every device properly implementing Android API must support Android loose-coupling intent system. Intents allow Android apps to easily request functionality from other Android components and avoid the effort to implement everything from scratch. The Android system has a set of core applications that implement the intent pattern:

• Desk clock
• Browser
• Calendar
• Contacts
• Gallery
• Global Search
• Launcher
• Music
• Settings

As a vendor, we could integrate the default Android components or implement our own component, according to the public API. Those components will have special system permissions to act as system apps and they will be the first proposed choice for the matching intent filter.

For instance, when a developer ask to open a web page, the system will suggest "our browser component" as the first chosen app to perform the task. Of course, being a good citizen means that we must provide a proper settings menu to give the user the possibility to override our default choice and let the final user pick a different app for the task.