Recommended android version for development?

After installing android with eclipse it came along many versions. some people recommended to use v2.1 and v2.2 and not 开发者_C百科v2.3 since it is not supported by many devices.

Is the idea of using the latest edition (2.3) good? Which one do you recommend?

what about programming wise rather than audience wise?

It depends on what you want to do and what versions you want to support. Of course, the more versions you support the more people will be able to use your app. This graphic may help:

It also demonstrate why it's not a good idea to use Android 2.3.

It depends what your target devices are for your app. Usually you'll want to target Android 1.5 if you want to cover all devices. Targetting 2.1 will still give you about 90% device coverage and is better if your app is very performance heavy; 1.5/1.6 devices are on the low end and probably wouldn't run these types of apps well anyways.

This page shows the distribution of Android devices and their OS versions that are currently out there.

http://developer.android.com/resources/dashboard/platform-versions.html

There's still a lot of Android 1.5 and 1.6 out there. Historically, many handsets did not allow for OS upgrade. Ignore them at your risk...

I personally think that 1.6 or 1.5 is a good starting point. Alot of "cheaper" contracts and phones have 1.6 installed with the option of upgrading. If the app runs well on 1.6 it'll be even faster on later versions.

But again, it depends on your app and what you want to do. Some very cool features were released after 1.6 you might want to make use of.

I personally think that if you don't want to make use of them, 1.6 is a good place to start and covers the most users.