where should incompatibilities with different android devices be reported?

Question

i developed a home screen widget. the first release was tested on a nexus one, htc evo 4g and motorola droid. worked fine. after release in the android market, someone reported that it didn't work on a samsung fascinate (galaxy s). it turns out there are 2 incompatibilities (bugs?) with the galaxy android implementation. one is with layout and the other with intent handling.

they're easy enough to work around, but where should something like this be reported?

Woolgathering

How do you know they're "bugs"? Is it not working the way that android requires it to work? Or is it just different? – Luckin

i did put "bugs" in parentheses with a question market. i wouldn't have a problem saying that different behavior from stock android is a bug. i intentionally referred to them as incompatibilities though. – Woolgathering

upon further investigation, it appears that my issues were related to differences between 2.1 and 2.2 and not the galaxy (i always assume it has 2.2 since it's a new phone. doh!). although, i'm not sure where these should be documented either. should a bug report be filed? 2.2 works correctly so it wouldn't need to be fixed, but it's things people may want to know if they run into the problems. – Woolgathering

Answer 1

I would start by posting questions here on StackOverflow, describing your actual symptoms (one question per theorized bug, please), so we can hash out if indeed there is a compatibility issue. Or perhaps your problems have already been addressed here in other questions.

Once we have determined that there appears to be genuine flaw in a device, depending on the manufacturer, I can perhaps alert them about the problem. While there are few public channels for this sort of thing, I try to establish relationships with as many device manufacturers as possible, just for these kinds of issues.

Also, once the compatibility flaw is confirmed, I, you, or somebody can file a bug against the Compatibility Test Suite (CTS). This is a battery of tests that a device must pass to qualify for the Android Market and related apps from Google. Genuine compatibility problems should be picked up by the CTS, so we do not run into similar compatibility issues in the future. For example, here is a CTS bug I reported related to a flaw Samsung phones, and here is a CTS bug I reported related to a flaw in HTC phones.

It is fairly important that I see compatibility-related StackOverflow questions. Since I don't know if the @ syntax works in questions, you may wish to append a comment to your own question, addressed to @CommonsWare, to increase the odds that I'll find your question.

Poll

i'll try the @ syntax. i'm also going to add the "android-compatibility" tag. unless there's a better suggestion. – Woolgathering

turns out i can't create the "android-compatibility" tag since i don't have 1500 reputation points. – Woolgathering

@jason gilbert: Consider android-compatibility tagged. – Poll

Answer 2

In general, bugs with particular Android phones should be reported to the manufacturer. Unfortunately, you often need to do a bit of digging to come up with a place to contact the manufacturer. For Samsung, you could try just filing a support request? I couldn't find any Android specific bug list.

Somewise

that's a part of the problem. finding a place on each individual vendors website is a pain or impossible. a central location would probably be better for developers and users. – Woolgathering