This morning I posted on mobilephonedevelopment regarding Google’s new article on backward compatibility. I have just read that some developers are viewing 1.5 as a catastophe because they don’t have enough time to download the new firmware and update their application before end users start downloading on their new phones.

One of the problems lies with the Android Market…

“…developers aren’t able to simply create a new, 1.5-friendly update and leave the existing version in place for those without Cupcake”

Whether intentional or not, this seems to force developers to maintain backwards compatibility. It could be argued that we could put up a new application with the title ‘My App for 1.5′ but, as we all know, end users aren’t really going to make any sense of this. Also, the newer application would lose all its ratings and comments.

As for my freeware applications, they are fairly simple and, reading the docs, there shouldn’t be any problems. If there are, I’ll just take them off the market while I fix them. I can see the problem though where people are selling applications. Also, if developers such as myself remove an application while they fix it, how many of them will bother? It might actually cause a reduction in freeware on the Market and/or an increase in the number of applications that don’t seem to work.