koobas.hobune.stream
iOS development: what hardware for testing?
As per the subject: if you are going to develop for iOS what hardware (i.e. phones and tablets) properly represent the variations? What can you get by with as a minimum? What is preferred (if in budget)?
If you want to support the original iPad it's best to have one. But is it necessary to get a 2 and a 3/4?
I assume the mini can be skipped as it's essentially a shrunken 2. If something runs on the 3 I'd assume it'll run on the 4 no problem (though not vice versa).
So minimum ipads:
iPad (original)
iPad2
iPad Retina (3rd gen)
What about iPhone/iTouch? Is it worth attempting to support anything older than the 3GS?
There are 3 resolutions to support, so one of each?
3GS
4
5
Given that the iPad 1 never was sold that much and is no longer supported, you could skip it. The mini on the other hand is a tricky thing. If your game is not dependant on touch precision, then right, you can skip it. But if you depend on touch precision then the 'same as ipad2 but much smaller physical space' actually has an impact and the experience can suffer significantly.
As for older than 3GS: you can not support them at all anymore. 3GS is the oldest that can be targeted any longer (ARMV7).
If the 3GS is of interest to you depends on your targets. 3GS can not update to iOS6 anymore and its performance is often not enough to do anything with more sophisticated calculations or physical setups. It is also severly limited on the ram side.
Whats relevant is to get an ipod touch 4 / iphone 4. They have the same gpu as the 3GS but need to render 4 times the pixels which often causes major framerate problems whenever a game is GPU bound. Also an ipod touch 5 is a good idea if you can afford it. Its interna is the same as iphone 4s but it has iphones 5 new 4" retina resolution which add extra space
I already have an iPad 1 (well multiple) so that's not an issue. I'd be curious what the numbers are for what's out there. According to wikipedia over 15 million ipads sold before the release of the iPad2. So I'd expect there to be a fair amount of them still out there.
Did the iPad2 do significant;y better than that?
Excellent point on the iPhone 4. Looks like 4 and 5 are my best for the phones.
Yes, any iPad after the iPad1 did significantly better as in 40$$anonymous$$+ and given the iPad2 as well as the iPad $$anonymous$$ini are still being sold through apple, you can at least double that number by now though I would assume it to be more in line with 100$$anonymous$$ install base.
Also the iPad1 dropped out of support too and many people likely stopped using it quite some time ago at least for ga$$anonymous$$g because its an iPod Touch 4 with an even bigger screen basically so it has the 3GS gpu, 256mb of RA$$anonymous$$. Thats an extremely deadly combination for its 1024x768 screen resolution, you are often forced to lower visuals to the level of 3GS to keep it going unless the game was simple right from the start (angry birds or 2d ish for example).
The iPad2 has 2-3 times the cpu power, 2x the ram (which means you have 200-300mb of ram to use in your game ins$$anonymous$$d of 80-100) and the gpu is 5-9 times as fast depending on your overdraw.
Good info. I can see the issue for more complex games (and you are limiting yourself if you use the iPad 1 as the lowest common deno$$anonymous$$ator for 1,024 × 768). I do know 40 people who own the original iPad and most still use them (last employer purchased them for all the employees the christmas they were new). As you said stuff like Angry birds or Ski Safari or Temple Run work fine (well at least temple run 1 and 2). So if one is going that route an original iPad might be fine.
Food for thought.
