I can relate to this so well. Especially the part where on older versions apps could block eachother but on new one they couldn't read the settings.
I have my own small story to tell. I did some code that used OpenGL ES 3.0. I was able to develop it before it was officially supported in Android devices by using desktop gpu's.
The day when first 4.3 devices supporting ES3 came. Got few testing devices. Wait. GDB doesn't work? Whoops. 4.3 had an issue where you had to root the device in order to actually debug your native code in the device. Sure it was fine on the few test devices but you cannot really root all of the myriad devices your users might have just to debug. We had an unresolved crash bug on a device we didn't dare to root.
And then there was the lovely day when 4.4 came out. Ok the debugging started to work but it also broke most of the graphics debuggers because the gl libs switched from /system/lib/ into /vendor/lib or whatnot.
These kinds of issues is why I prefer desktop development by far.
I have my own small story to tell. I did some code that used OpenGL ES 3.0. I was able to develop it before it was officially supported in Android devices by using desktop gpu's.
The day when first 4.3 devices supporting ES3 came. Got few testing devices. Wait. GDB doesn't work? Whoops. 4.3 had an issue where you had to root the device in order to actually debug your native code in the device. Sure it was fine on the few test devices but you cannot really root all of the myriad devices your users might have just to debug. We had an unresolved crash bug on a device we didn't dare to root.
And then there was the lovely day when 4.4 came out. Ok the debugging started to work but it also broke most of the graphics debuggers because the gl libs switched from /system/lib/ into /vendor/lib or whatnot.
These kinds of issues is why I prefer desktop development by far.