# Android:How far behind iPad?



## wtlloyd (Apr 8, 2014)

Well, someone had to bring this up - I'm on the verge of pushing into using my newish tablet as a portfolio. Some research into display/cataloging apps for Android already, but not prepared to make a choice. Now this. 

My particular tablet is the Samsung Galaxy Note, so I am also curious if the stylus use will integrate into LRm. That would actually get me excited, as I've little use for this capability so far.

It's understandable to me that there are far more variables supporting Android over iOS, across multiple versions and manufacturers. Hence the initial rollout iOS only.

My question: any ideas whether we will see only weeks or is it many months for Android versions to come out?


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## Victoria Bampton (Apr 13, 2014)

It's likely to be months wtlloyd.  They'll do iPhone next as a lot of the code will transfer from the iPad version, and then it'll be on to Android.


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## thany (Apr 13, 2014)

Strange choice, since Android is waaay more widely used than iOS... Besides, the Mac & Windows versions of their software comes out (pretty much) at the same time, too.


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## johnbeardy (Apr 14, 2014)

60% of mobile visitors to my Lightroom site use iPads, 20% iPhones. The top Android device is the Galaxy at 3%.

Not  such a strange choice then.

John


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## clee01l (Apr 14, 2014)

thany said:


> Strange choice, since Android is waaay more widely used than iOS... Besides, the Mac & Windows versions of their software comes out (pretty much) at the same time, too.


Android is a highly fragmented market.  There are many versions of Android and many forked versions.  The Kindle is a forked version of Android.  Each version of LR Mobile for Android would have to be compiled for a specific version of Android on a specific device. You can bet that any LR Mobile for Android that gets released will only be released for what Adobe determines to be the most widely used Android fork. (Pay attention here, It might not be the device and version the you own).  The same is true for iOS for iPad and iPhone. Right now there is not a version for the iPhone.  This is because of the difference in screen size more than the OS itself.  You can expect similar rollout for the Android when it occurs.


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## thany (Apr 14, 2014)

It's not *that* bad actually. For what it's worth, an app needs to be recompiled separately for different iOS devices more oftenly than it does for different Android devices. This is because Android apps run in a Java-linke VM that makes apps run on any CPU, ARM or Intel or MIPS, doesn't matter. With Apple's approach, this is not entirely the case.

You are right, however on the aspect of fragmentation. There are lots of flavours of Android, and there are a gigantic amount of Android devices, and it's not limited to phones/phablets/tablets. And there's no such thing as "just Android", even though there's "plain vanilla Android", but that again runs on many different devices.

That said, developing for a standard-ish Android device will have you cover at least the vast majority of users. Not only that, but a phone-version and a tablet-version can be published (and developed) as a single app that bahves adaptevily across screen sizes (come to think, the iOS version should do the same, really).

Aaaanyway, this whole issue goes for Windows & Mac exactly the same as for Android & iOS (not to mention WP, BB, Tizen, Sailfish, Firefox, Ubuntu, etc). The reason being that Mac runs on an extremely limited set of hardware, while Windows can (and does) run on pretty anything. Perhaps this is why Adobe has nothing for Linux in store...



johnbeardy said:


> 60% of mobile visitors to my Lightroom site use iPads, 20% iPhones. The top Android device is the Galaxy at 3%.


That's just the one site. Lemme give you some proper statistics


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## Victoria Bampton (Apr 14, 2014)

thany said:


> That's just the one site. Lemme give you some proper statistics



2 more sites then:

www.lightroomqueen.com - 80% iOS, 20% Android, not much else
this forum - 75% iOS, 21% Android, few other odd bits

Adobe will have more stats.  While Android users outweigh iOS users generally, amongst Lightroom users the proportion of iOS users is much higher.


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## Jim Wilde (Apr 14, 2014)

Tom Hogarty (Lightroom Product Manager) stated that the reason for going with the iPad first is that their own research in the photographic community told them that the iPad was the most-used mobile device.


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## Jack Henry (Apr 14, 2014)

I recently read an article by an Android programmer. In it he said that if he writes an app for Android it needs to work across about 4,000+ devices. Appke make n OS and apps that need to work on 1 device and they do it very well. The Apple architecture is solid and known. The Android base is having more devices added to it weekly. It's hard to program a stable app for that.


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## Jack Henry (Apr 14, 2014)

The typo should read 'Apple make an OS and apps that need to work on 1 device'


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## johnbeardy (Apr 14, 2014)

thany said:


> That's just the one site. Lemme give you some proper statistics



Your statistics aren't relevant as they merely show the entire mobile market. Mine show the devices Lightroom users are using.

Thanks, Victoria, interesting that our statistics coincide so closely.

John


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## clee01l (Apr 14, 2014)

thany said:


> ...
> That's just the one site. Lemme give you some proper statistics


Your link also says that XP is the second most popular OS.  Most Mfgs have stopped supporting XP.  What does that tell you about statistics?   Here is another and official web browser statistics site http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_mobile.asp.  It groups all iOS devices together and all Android devices together and Android devices show up at almost twice the rate as iOS devices.  
While Android is out selling iPads now, 51% of the installed tablet base is iPad and 40% Android (all flavors). http://bgr.com/2013/12/20/ipad-versus-android-tablets-installed-base/  The iPad installed base was probably much higher when Adobe started developing for an mobile platform 12-24 months ago.


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## davidedric (Apr 14, 2014)

I have a 10" Samsung tablet, which I use for sharing photos. It would never occur to me to do photo editing on the tablet.  The speed and power of my desktop work for me.  So Lightroom on Android really wouldn't deliver anything I need to do. 

Dave
.


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## johnbeardy (Apr 15, 2014)

But what does "photo editing" mean? Does it always mean exactly the same as you would do with all that desktop horsepower? Well, no, and that's where there is space for tablets - quick and dirty broad adjustments, and done at your leisure in moments when you're not chained to your computer. With broad adjustments already in the bag, you can put your serious face on again later and devote that working time more to the fine tuning. You'll also have thought about the picture and what it needs. 

Secondly, the app really isn't just about editing. I find its best use is presentation - just running a quick slideshow on the TV or showing your pictures directly on the iPad. Yes, I know there are apps that do this (I have 3-4 of them), and it's not rocket science to get pictures into them from LR via Dropbox or whatever (I figure it out afresh each time I tweak my iPad portfolios), but when IT-savvy people like me find that a pain.... None of these methods is remotely as simple as clicking a button next to the collection.

Third, it's for casual evaluation, just flicking through images when you've escaped from the desk and deciding which you like or not. Here Adobe dropped the ball - you can only use flags - but it can still be used. 

John


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## davidedric (Apr 15, 2014)

Thanks  John.   I headed over to your Web site and read your article, and I can see I hadn't really thought this through.   I certainly agree that the current process of going from Lightroom to tablet is very ugly,  not least because of the difficulty of getting the images in the order that I want.   

I still don't think I'd be doing much quick and dirty editing, though.   Coming from an IT background, too, I would be interested to learn how Adobe have tackled the issues raised by potential parallel and asynchronous editing.  It certainly caused the early dbms creators some grief. 

Dave


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## RikkFlohr (Jan 15, 2015)

http://blogs.adobe.com/lightroomjournal/2015/01/lightroom-mobile-for-android-phones.html


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