Android 2.3
Moderator: ScummVM Team
Android 2.3
Is there any hope of a release for OLD Android? I have some Android 2.3 devices and it would be nice to breathe life into them with ScummVM.
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Praetorian
- ScummVM Developer
- Posts: 797
- Joined: Tue May 08, 2007 8:54 am
- Location: Greece
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Re: Android 2.3
As far as I know, there are currenlty no plans for resuming support for such old devices.
You may try with one of the legacy versions of ScummVM. Although it won't have any of the new features, bug fixes and new engines support, the 2.0.0 seems to cover support from Android 2.3.0 and greater.
On the ScummVM file server you might find even older versions of ScummVM to test with.
Personally, I no longer have a physical device that is older than Android 4.4. For reference, Google reports about 0.2% of active devices running Android 5.0 as of October 2023 -- and provides no data for devices lower than that (that I could find), so I assume it's even lower for Android 2.3.
Android is an Operating System which supports many architectures and a large device range, at times behaves differently between devices of the same OS
version, especially as we move to older devices, and has had multiple and significant changes in its API and features with its several newer versions.
My estimation is that resuming and maintaining support for really old devices would increase the code complexity and require compromises on new features and APIs that we would be able to use (and we'd have to add many checks to remove features from old devices that don't support them) --- or we would have to develop a completely separate app with reduced features, possibly no 3d support, and work with old unsupported tools to do so.
This task is pretty much impossible with less than a handful of Android porters (none of whom is dedicated Android porter).
Of course we'd welcome any developer motivated and eager to do the task.
You may try with one of the legacy versions of ScummVM. Although it won't have any of the new features, bug fixes and new engines support, the 2.0.0 seems to cover support from Android 2.3.0 and greater.
On the ScummVM file server you might find even older versions of ScummVM to test with.
Personally, I no longer have a physical device that is older than Android 4.4. For reference, Google reports about 0.2% of active devices running Android 5.0 as of October 2023 -- and provides no data for devices lower than that (that I could find), so I assume it's even lower for Android 2.3.
Android is an Operating System which supports many architectures and a large device range, at times behaves differently between devices of the same OS
version, especially as we move to older devices, and has had multiple and significant changes in its API and features with its several newer versions.
My estimation is that resuming and maintaining support for really old devices would increase the code complexity and require compromises on new features and APIs that we would be able to use (and we'd have to add many checks to remove features from old devices that don't support them) --- or we would have to develop a completely separate app with reduced features, possibly no 3d support, and work with old unsupported tools to do so.
This task is pretty much impossible with less than a handful of Android porters (none of whom is dedicated Android porter).
Of course we'd welcome any developer motivated and eager to do the task.
Re: Android 2.3
Thanks for the explanation. I do appreciate that everything done for ScummVM is volunteer time and effort and am very grateful for it.
I many times base the vaule of hardware on whether or not ScummVM is available for it.
The older the hardware the more excited I get when ScummVM gets a port for it.
I many times base the vaule of hardware on whether or not ScummVM is available for it.
The older the hardware the more excited I get when ScummVM gets a port for it.