I think if you read our site at least from time to time, you know that I am quite calm about such a phenomenon as fragmentation on Android. My logic has always been that the more shells developed by smartphone manufacturers on the market, the more choice users have and the more actively the operating system develops. After all, the stock Android is very limited in its capabilities, while the shells give us access to such functions that are not and were not in the standard version of the operating system. However, this phenomenon also has disadvantages. As it turned out, they are quite significant.
Android looks like a blanket sewn from scraps – it seems like a whole, but it will tear
The popular Moment Pro Camera app will no longer be available on Android because the developers have decided to close the project under the operating system from Google. The reason, oddly enough, was fragmentation. However, the developers were stopped not by the abundance of non-upgradeable smartphones, but by a large number of different shells and restrictions imposed by their manufacturers. Therefore, now Moment Pro Camera can be downloaded only on iOS, which has no such problems, which is quite surprising, given its closed nature.
Why Developers Don't Like Android
According to the developers of Moment Pro Camera, it is very difficult for them to maintain the application in the current environment, when every gopher in the field is an agronomist. The fact is that many manufacturers set their own requirements for applications, limiting their capabilities. While this is not a very common practice, it played a decisive role in the case of the Moment Pro Camera. After all, it's one thing to develop an application for a clean Android, and it is completely different to remove its functions, simply because the manufacturer has established its own rules for the operation of third-party software.
Green color – the function is compatible with Moment Pro Camera, yellow color – only compatible with the stock application, red – not supported by the device
If you still don't understand what this is about, take a look at the image above. This is a table of compatibility of Moment Pro Camera features with different smartphones. It is clearly seen here that most of the application's functions are not available on most supported models, although the standard application has the same functions.
Why does the application not work on Android
Take the Galaxy S10 and record video at 120fps. This device allows you to shoot at this frame rate only using the pre-installed camera application, but it does not allow Moment Pro Camera to do this. And there are the majority of such smartphones on the market. This is especially funny when you consider that at all times users accused of being closed Apple, and developers criticized iOS as an operating system full of restrictions and prohibitive mechanisms.
Where Android – smartphones are inferior to iPhone
But the case is not limited to shells alone. The problem is that manufacturers are too loose with the insides of their smartphones. Perhaps this will seem ridiculous, because who, if not them, should decide what to equip branded devices with and what not. However, the hardware equipment of different smartphones can often differ so much that it is simply easier for developers to ignore these differences and never use them in their applications.
Developers are reluctant to write software for Android or do it carelessly
An excellent example of this is the Pixel Neural Core chip, which is responsible for image processing and is good for everyone with the only exception that is installed only in Pixel 4, while all other devices in the pixel line are equipped with chips of the previous generation called Pixel Visual Core. Due to the complexity of the optimization, the developers of Moment Pro Camera have banally removed HDR + Enhanced support from the Pixel 4 app, although older models have it.
Why apps perform better on iOS than on Android
I'm not a developer and it's hard for me to judge who is right in this situation. On the one hand, many developers write their software under Android and don’t bother, but others at some point break down and realize that it’s impossible to work in such conditions. From a purely human point of view, I can understand them. After all, it's not enough just to write an application, you still need to take into account the features of dozens, if not hundreds of shells and adjust your development to the features of each of them. It is clear that they have no desire to do this, so developers either endure and are engaged in optimization, or they spit on it. Therefore, the position of the creators of Moment Pro Camera is closest to me, because they decided not to make the product at all, than to make it badly.