Yesterday I posted a slideshow on Twitter and got many comments and questions. I’d like to address some of them below.

First of all it never was my intention make fun of Android. This is a real problem for web developers and one that unfortunately cannot be fixed on the short term. In my opinion the problem exists because the WebKit based Webview was not developed as quickly as the webstandards evolved, which I though was always a bit peculiar because Google is a company that embodies the web.

Part of the problem is that the Webview is updated when the OS is updated. And unfortunately not every device gets updates. Even worse, even new devices are being sold with old versions of the OS, including an old versions of the Webview. There are still devices being sold with Android 2.3 today.

The devices makers saw their browsers fall behind with standards support and needed to do something. Unfortunately they did this by themselves and did not cooperate with Google to improve the Webview for everybody.

The irony is that Google also saw this problem and tried to fix it with the new Chromium based Webview. Unfortunately this fix is just for Android 4.4 and up and not earlier versions. Updates to the Webview still require an update of the whole OS – which means that we will many different versions for years to come.

If only it could be updated through the Play Store, just like Google Play Services. Google could even bring the Webview to older versions of Android. But for now we still have to deal with all of the different browser and Webviews.

I create web apps for a living and have shipped many Android apps that use the Webview or are expected to be compatible with “the” Android browser. I regularly receive bug reports that a particular features does not work. And when I investigate the bug it happens quite often that I cannot reproduce it. Even when I ask the customer which device they use and use one from the same manufacturer I cannot reproduce it. When I use the exact same device I cannot reproduce it. Turns out the problem only exists on one particular device running one particular version of Android. The same version of Android on another device works perfectly and the same device with a different version of Android also works perfectly.

I test my apps on about 30 different Android phones before I ship them and it has happened that I simply had to accept that one particular phone has a problem that will not be fixed. Simply because the workaround broke another phone. And that workaround broke another one. And another one.

That is definitely a problem.
You cannot expect web developers to own all devices. And even worse, you’ll actually need multiple versions of the same device, because some bugs only exist in one specific version of Android.

It does point out the importance of Open Device Labs – and the importance for ODLs to have as many Android devices as possible.

Thanks everybody for the comments and retweets!