Android and iOS minimal version

Hello everyone,

what would you recommend to use as a minimal version for Android (CROSSWALK) and iOS (possibly Ejecta)?

I'm having some issues with compatibility and I was just wondering how could I make sure that the game works on as many devices as it can, as long as they're capable of running it (a C2 game)?

Thanks!

For Android, I would target 4.0 and above. That should fix a lot of compatibility stuff and give you a broad range to work with. For iOS, I'm not as familiar with. I would fathom a guess and say iOS 6 and above. I haven't developed for iOS though. That's an educated guess.

Thanks, I'll try that out. I see that many C2 games target 2.3 (in the store)... but who knows why!

I would guess because the developers want to target as wide variety of devices as possible. The amount of devices running 2.x are diminishing rapidly now of days. I don't know that it's really the wisest thing to attempt to support that variety of target OSes for a small dev. Besides, if you restrict the lowest platform available, in a small way, you also restrict the minimum hardware your game will run on, and in a sense, give you tighter control.

According to Google, only 13.6% of devices run Gingerbread. Only 0.7% run Froyo. More interestingly, only 10.6% only run ICS (4.0). You can see the breakdown here https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html?utm_source=ausdroid.net

More interestingly, as of November of last year, Samsung held 61% of global Android market share. I've heard that Samsung now holds closer to 80% market share though I don't have facts to back that up. http://bgr.com/2013/11/08/samsung-android-devices-market-share/

Given those facts, I'd say that it would probably be safe to limit the target platform to 4.1. Even generic knock-off Android tablets ship with 4.1 at minimum anymore. Most Samsung phones run 4.1 or above anymore.

From my research, they choose 2.3 because that's what Intel XDK recommends. I think they made the wrapper so it works with versions starting 2.3 and newer. Thanks for the info.