device compatibility overview android is designed to run on many different types of devices from
phones to tablets and televisions as a developer the range of devices provides a huge potential
audience for your app in order for your app to be successful on all these devices it should
tolerate some feature variability and provide a flexible user interface that adapts to different
screen configurations to facilitate your effort toward that goal android provides a dynamic app
framework in which you can provide configuration specific app resources in static files such as
different xml layouts for different screen sizes android then loads the appropriate resources
based on the current device configuration so with some forethought to your app design and some
additional app resources you can publish a single application package apk that provides an optimized
user experience on a variety of devices if necessary however you can specify your apps
feature requirements and control which types of devices can install your app from google play
store this page explains how you can control which devices have access to your apps and how to
prepare your apps to make sure they reach the right audience for more information about how you
can make your app adapt to different devices read supporting different devices what does
compatibility mean as you read more about android development youll probably encounter the term
compatibility in various situations there are two types of compatibility: device compatibility
and app compatibility because android is an open source project any hardware manufacturer can
build a device that runs the android operating system yet a device is android compatible only if
it can correctly run apps written for the android execution environment the exact details of the
android execution environment are defined by the android compatibility program and each device must
pass the compatibility test suite cts in order to be considered compatible as an app
developer you dont need to worry about whether a device is android compatible because only
devices that are android compatible include google play store so you can rest assured that users
who install your app from google play store are using an android compatible device however you
do need to consider whether your app is compatible with each potential device configuration
because android runs on a wide range of device configurations some features are not available on
all devices for example some devices may not include a compass sensor if your apps core
functionality requires the use of a compass sensor then your app is compatible only with devices
that include a compass sensor