A common discussion among app developers involves the pros and cons of developing for both iOS and Android. Among the biggest hurdles in developing for Android is device fragmentation. This is both a software problem (which version of Android is in place) and a hardware problem.

Yesterday, John Gruber linked to a brilliant post showing 7 different Android devices, each running a compass app. The post was also linked in Benedict Evans’ excellent post on Android fragmentation and the cloud.

To sum it up, the compass results were literally all over the place, not something you’d want to see in a compass, especially if you are lost. Gruber ran a similar test using iOS devices. Click here to see his unsurprising results. Steady as a rock, in perfect sync.

This is not about favoritism. This is about the downside of uncontrolled fragmentation.