Thread: Industry Phone Statistics

Does anyone know any good sites I can look at to see Industry-wide statistics on what features different (Android) phones have?
For example, my team is having a conversations about supporting the physical button set on a typical Android phone. A typical Android phone has the Home Button, Back Button, Menu Button, and Search Button. However, not all phones are required to have those, and some don't have all of them. I would like to get my hands on some data that just explains what percentage of Android phones have each button so we can make an informed development/support decision.
I've been googling around with relatively little success, so I wanted to see if anyone here already knew of such a website.

This list has a nice comparison of Android devices: Comparison of Android devices - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Although it doesn't have any physical buttons listed... are you sure you're talking about physical buttons? Mine has those buttons, but they're a part of the touchscreen, not physical buttons.

If I recall correctly, the physical push button requirement was removed with Android 3 or 4 (not sure on the exact version). However, in place of these there are touchscreen icons, as Kevin mentioned.

Ok, but is it reasonable to assume the icons exist, or should we avoid that? If the icons are expected on 95%+ of devices, it seems reasonable (to me) to assume they exist. Our main concern is the Back Button and the Menu Button.

Originally Posted by aussiemcgr

Ok, but is it reasonable to assume the icons exist, or should we avoid that? If the icons are expected on 95%+ of devices, it seems reasonable (to me) to assume they exist. Our main concern is the Back Button and the Menu Button.

Yep, they're required: Android Compatibility | Android Open Source

On that page, go to the "Current CCD" link on the left, then check out section 7.2.3. Pretty interesting read.

This is a good read. It will be very helpful. I do have a question regarding 7.2.3, the last bullet point:

Device implementation MUST present a Menu key to applications when target Sdk Version <= 10 and SHOULD NOT present a Menu key when the target Sdk Version > 10

Does that mean that applications with its target Sdk as 10 or more should not expect a menu button to be accessible?