Target only fast Android devices in the Market

Question

I've been looking for a way to only show my game to "fast enough" phones in the Market but I can't find any good answer.

Some people suggest to target by SDK, but that has nothing to do with the speed.

I've seen some to target by screen size, but some Acer phones and the HTC Legend are fast enough for my game but have the same screen than the HTC Hero which is pretty slow.

I also saw some people filtering by OpenGL ES version but I can't find any sort of database that tells me which phones have OpenGL ES 2. Android 2.0 is supposed to support it, but I don't know if phones like the HTC Magic, after being updated to 2.0 will support it or they will be stuck in 1.1.

What would be the best way?

Thanks

Answer 1

Some people suggest to target by SDK, but that has nothing to do with the speed.

I would imagine any phone running Android 2.2 is fast enough for whatever you want to do.

I also saw some people filtering by OpenGL ES version but I can't find any sort of database that tells me which phones have OpenGL ES 2.

You don't need a database. By including <uses-feature android:glEsVersion="0x00020000" /> in your manifest the Android Market will filter out your app for users whose devices do not support OpenGL-ES 2.0 or better.

Answer 2

Before blaming the hardware you should have a good look at your code and do a few rounds of profiling and optimization. The questions you need to answer is which part of the code is causing the slowdown and why. On my old HTC Magic I've seen some pretty impressive stuff run fast and smooth, but I've also seen rather unimpressive stuff run very slow and jerky.

Requiring beefy hardware might be the quick and easy solution - if you can get it to work (see all the comments above) - but at the same time you'll miss out on a lot of the audience.