Still not convinced that there’s a fragmentation problem with Android smartphones? Take a couple of minutes out of your day and head on over to Facebook to check out Temple Run’s Facebook post about bringing the popular iOS game to Android. In not time at all you’re going to see a lot of people either confused, or pissed that the game doesn’t work on their phone.
Here are some doozies:
- Alosha Veremey: “can some1 tell me how to instll it?”
- Jeffrey Morales: “Runs very slow on Samsung Galaxy Fit S5670.”
- Andy Beaugard: “Not compatible on Motorola RAZR that is horrible make us wait all this time and then still nothing.”
- Kendra Chase: “Not compatible with any of my devices, 3 dif phones cant play it dam guess i gotta keep taking my daughter iphone and ipad2.”
- Angelica Blah Blah Lanuza: “not compatible with samsung galaxy y 5360 :( fix it pls.. tnx.”
Those are just from my first two minutes looking through the 8,079 comments. But, to be fair, the majority of those comments are either people pissed that the game doesn’t work on their handset, or the geekier bunch explaining to the masses that their crappy old Android phones aren’t powerful enough.
Now let’s compare the game on the Apple platform, where the game only requires iOS 3.0 or later. The game has 44,696 five-star ratings out of a possible 55,064 ratings. Zero of the comments that I’ve looked through had users confused about device compatibility, although a couple did mention slow load times and crashes.
I don’t care what anyone says, fragmentation in the Android market is a very real problem, and it’s something that iPhone users haven’t had to worry about. Do you really want to be sitting around figuring out what games will or will not work on your iPhone? Or would you prefer to head to the App Store, check the compatibilitiy listing in the sidebar, and then install the game at your leisure? Obviously, I’m in the second camp. But what about you?
Hat tip to The Tamas™
