When Affinity for android systems?

[Raquel Ribeiro]

Hi. I've been using the affinty on my work pc and i am loving working with them. However i have a android tablet where i would love to have the softwear instaled, but it is only available for android.

 

[Paul Mudditt]

On 12/2/2024 at 2:41 PM, Raquel Ribeiro said:

Hi. I've been using the affinty on my work pc and i am loving working with them. However i have a android tablet where i would love to have the softwear instaled, but it is only available for android.

 

Asked many times, it will never happen as the iPad has a much more lucrative market than any alternative individual manufacturers device.

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/search/&q=android&quick=1&type=forums_topic&nodes=50

[R C-R]

6 hours ago, Paul Mudditt said:

Asked many times, it will never happen as the iPad has a much more lucrative market than any alternative individual manufacturers device.

I think it is more about how much more powerful the relatively few supported iPads are than most Android devices are, & how much similarity between the macOS & iPadOS there is. To develop for Android would be much harder since in effect they would be starting from scratch & would have to find some way of running on Android powered phones & such.

[drkanukie]

Android tablets are too fragmented to make this feasible I wouldn't bother with any tablet apart from an iPad these days for work and I used to work for Android. The kindle fire is fine if you want a cheap video or reading slab but it's not going to be good as a design tablet.

[Raquel Ribeiro]

Thanks for your feedback.

The thing is, that i realy whant a good design tablet, and found one. It is dedicated to arts, but is android system. Guess i'll have to give another app a try.

[paulo Dekkers]

I think If you focus on a select set of devices that are capable enough to run Affinity we have great start. Or focus on a specific chipset. e.g. Snapdragon 8 based tablets and newer. You can versions that support older chipsets later on. 

[terryTx]

What I see is blatant i-misrepresentation of the facts. I love y'all i-heads, but please get your facts straight.

Android is the LARGEST worldwide market in portable apps. Not i-whatever.

What makes Affinity so special that it is incapable of doing what at least 40 other graphics developers can and use android? These apps will tell you if your OS version and/or chipset is incompatible,  and refuse to load. Is Affinity unable to jump through this simple hoop.

Be biased, but please don't misrepresent other OSs. Android is a bulletproof OS. 
 

[Paul Mudditt]

4 hours ago, terryTx said:

What I see is blatant i-misrepresentation of the facts. I love y'all i-heads, but please get your facts straight.

Android is the LARGEST worldwide market in portable apps. Not i-whatever.

What makes Affinity so special that it is incapable of doing what at least 40 other graphics developers can and use android? These apps will tell you if your OS version and/or chipset is incompatible,  and refuse to load. Is Affinity unable to jump through this simple hoop.

Be biased, but please don't misrepresent other OSs. Android is a bulletproof OS. 

 

Samsung seems to be doing ok at 27%, but still 52% of marketshare is Apple’s for tablets. As for any others, too few to even beta test on I would imagine or are you proposing software should be simply pushed into an android app store untested on the majority of devices, I guess it could be an option so long as they have a decent refund system in place.

https://gs.statcounter.com/vendor-market-share/tablet/worldwide

[mopperle]

Although I like Android, there is something more serious to consider:
- iPadOS: there is only one iPadOS
- Android: every smartphone/tablet vendor (>10 ?) got its own "version" of Android and it is up to the vendor, which version you get when you buy a smartphone and how long you will get updates. And this varies from vendor to vendor.

So Serif would not only have to build an Android version, but also maybe subsets for the various versions depending on the vendor.

While I understand the demand from some users, this reminds me of the ongoing question for Affinity for Linux.

[paulo Dekkers]

I think it is a matter of determination. If you want to reach an extra part of your target audience you should consider developing both for Android and iOS/iPadOS.
Callipeg for Android runs smooth in phone mode and tablet mode without having to relaunch the app on my One Plus Open smart phone. And I know it works on lots of other android based devices as well. both tablets and phones. Keep in mind this app is created by 3 people. And they started their app on iOS/iPadOS first. 

Its currently in beta availeble for Android right now.
Callipeg (Beta) 2D animation - Apps op Google Play

Why they are doing it???  This opens up their market.
A huge untapped part of their target audience owns an Android device. On Android devices you do have more formfactors to deal with but that should not be a huge problem. The common denominator is Android. If you aim on the devices using most popular chipsets on the market first you are safe. And from that you can finetune for the more exotic devices if there are device specific issues. 

if a small company with only 3 people can manage it to develop an Android version with feature parity between the iOS/iPadOS version that runs smooth on a variety of Android tablets, smartphones wit pen support and even foldables.  Affinity should be capable to do this as well. They have a huge team of developers compared to callipeg. (they have One programmer, one designer, One animator.)

If Callipeg can do it.... Affinity can do it as well.    

[Paul Mudditt]

2 hours ago, paulo Dekkers said:

I think it is a matter of determination. If you want to reach an extra part of your target audience you should consider developing both for Android and iOS/iPadOS.
Callipeg for Android runs smooth in phone mode and tablet mode without having to relaunch the app on my One Plus Open smart phone. And I know it works on lots of other android based devices as well. both tablets and phones. Keep in mind this app is created by 3 people. And they started their app on iOS/iPadOS first. 

Its currently in beta availeble for Android right now.
Callipeg (Beta) 2D animation - Apps op Google Play

Why they are doing it???  This opens up their market.
A huge untapped part of their target audience owns an Android device. On Android devices you do have more formfactors to deal with but that should not be a huge problem. The common denominator is Android. If you aim on the devices using most popular chipsets on the market first you are safe. And from that you can finetune for the more exotic devices if there are device specific issues. 

if a small company with only 3 people can manage it to develop an Android version with feature parity between the iOS/iPadOS version that runs smooth on a variety of Android tablets, smartphones wit pen support and even foldables.  Affinity should be capable to do this as well. They have a huge team of developers compared to callipeg. (they have One programmer, one designer, One animator.)

If Callipeg can do it.... Affinity can do it as well.    

I don’t think the 40x difference in app size +/- ~ functionality is so easy to brush away.

 

[paulo Dekkers]

1 hour ago, Paul Mudditt said:

I don’t think the 40x difference in app size +/- ~ functionality is so easy to brush away.

 

Callipeg and Affinity Designer are completely different apps in both Complexity and file size. I Intended to point out  the fact that it is not impossible to convert an iOS/ipad OS app to Android without sacrificing functionality. If even a 3member team with one programmer can make it happen, Imagine what the team at Affinity can create if they want to. 

Affinity has been successful porting the MAC version to PC and they've build a touch first iPad OS version. An Android version cannot be left behind.

Affinity can just port the iPad OS version to Android. in terms of functionality Affinity Designer, Photo and Publisher for Android should be the same as the iPad OS version. 

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, paulo Dekkers said:

I Intended to point out  the fact that it is not impossible to convert an iOS/ipad OS app to Android without sacrificing functionality.

Consider first that Affinity is an integrated suite of 3 apps that must inter-operate if this is to match what the Windows, Mac, & iPadOS versions are capable of. Beyond that, consider that current & recent iPads include M or A series processors that are quite a bit higher performance than what most Android tablets are fitted with, so it could be difficult to build Android versions that would perform well enough to be usable for anything other than the most lightweight tasks for most Android tablet users.

TL;DR: while not impossible, it likely is not a very commercially attractive idea to Serif.

[lacerto]

18 hours ago, paulo Dekkers said:

I think it is a matter of determination. If you want to reach an extra part of your target audience you should consider developing both for Android and iOS/iPadOS.

I think you have a point here. Photoshop (similar as recently released for iOS) has been announced for Android. I have no idea how well that would perform on Android tablets, and the full features with Firefly will be subscription only. But it is not technically impossible and not a market and an audience to ignore...

[paulo Dekkers]

13 hours ago, R C-R said:

Consider first that Affinity is an integrated suite of 3 apps that must inter-operate if this is to match what the Windows, Mac, & iPadOS versions are capable of. Beyond that, consider that current & recent iPads include M or A series processors that are quite a bit higher performance than what most Android tablets are fitted with, so it could be difficult to build Android versions that would perform well enough to be usable for anything other than the most lightweight tasks for most Android tablet users.

TL;DR: while not impossible, it likely is not a very commercially attractive idea to Serif.

I think a lot of (apple minded) people are seriously underestimating the current state of Android device.

More and more devices with the snapdragon elite are coming on board. It is not inferior to the Apple silicon. The snapdragon generation before it. The 8, series may be slower than the elite, but it runs very smoothly. 

The iOS/iPadOS app LumaFusion is also available for Android. It is not yet a feature similar to the iOS/iPadOS version, but with every update they get closer together. LumaFusion: Pro Video Editing - Apps on Google Play  (One of the best iOS apps for video editing on the iPad. It rivals Final Cut and Davinci resolve.)

It's just a matter of will. Then everything that runs on iOS/iPadOS can be transferred to Android. All the popular apps have been there for years. 

[paulo Dekkers]

5 hours ago, lacerto said:

I think you have a point here. Photoshop (similar as recently released for iOS) has been announced for Android. I have no idea how well that would perform on Android tablets, and the full features with Firefly will be subscription only. But it is not technically impossible and not a market and audience to ignore...

The Snapdragon ( Elite and Snapdragon 8 ) based chipset in high end models of Android based foldables, phone's and tablets perform similar to what you see on recent iPhone and iPad. Of course, there are Android devices available with slower chipsets. That's right. 

If there are any differences between Snapdragon elite and Apple silicon, they are so smal, that is not going to be the deciding factor on Android phones and tablets. That won't be a minute difference, rather seconds. 

Android and the available high-end hardware are significantly underestimated.

 

And the other way around: recent iOS/IPadOS apps on older chipsets don't run much slower compared to how it runs on the latest apple cilicon. 

Look at the iPad from now and 4 years ago. Run Affinity Designer, Affinity Photo, Affinity Publisher, procreate dreams, callipeg, LumaFusion, and photoshop on it and compare that with the speed on a model today. I bet that the current models are not much faster. They only offer more layers to work in because they have more RAM at their disposal. And there will be noticeable differences in support for the Apple pencil generations en camera/lidar gerelateerde functies. But dat is dan ook alles. 

And this is when using heavier apps. When browsing online, reading an ebook, playing a game, you don't notice any difference 

[Paul Mudditt]

For comparisons, look to the Affinity benchmarks, the M4 iPad roasts snapdragon on windows and also iPads from 4 years ago.

[paulo Dekkers]

17 minutes ago, Paul Mudditt said:

For comparisons, look to the Affinity benchmarks, the M4 iPad roasts snapdragon on windows and also iPads from 4 years ago.

On paper Apple silicon in faster... but is the difference in performance in real life realy noticeable?
is it minutes faster? seconds? milliseconds faster in daily tasks? 
And if so... how bad is it?

You still get the job done. 

This should not be the reason to skip development for Android.
Keep in mind that we were able to do the things we do on much slower devices before.
How fast is fast enough? 


Test it in real life and you'll notice the gap in speed is less noticeable than the benchmarks show. I've used iPad and iPhone for years and now I'm on Android. If you try and compare apps like LumaFusion, RoughAnimator, Krita, Callipeg on iOS and Android on (capable)recent devices you'll not notice any difference in speed and handeling.  I use a OnePlus Open with the Oppo pen for example. For me is a perfect iPad replacement as an animator/illustrator. It gets the job done just as I could on my iPad.

I'm in the market for Affinity Publisher, Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer versions for Android.
 

[thomaso]

19 hours ago, mopperle said:

- Android: every smartphone/tablet vendor (>10 ?) got its own "version" of Android and it is up to the vendor, which version you get when you buy a smartphone and how long you will get updates. And this varies from vendor to vendor.

So Serif would not only have to build an Android version, but also maybe subsets for the various versions depending on the vendor.

This is hardly the case, because otherwise not only would every provider have to have its own app store, but also only "Google" phones would be able to use apps from the "Google Play Store". (… as there aren't different app versions for different iOS versions).

[paulo Dekkers]

 

19 hours ago, mopperle said:

Although I like Android, there is something more serious to consider:
- iPadOS: there is only one iPadOS
- Android: every smartphone/tablet vendor (>10 ?) got its own "version" of Android and it is up to the vendor, which version you get when you buy a smartphone and how long you will get updates. And this varies from vendor to vendor.

So Serif would not only have to build an Android version, but also maybe subsets for the various versions depending on the vendor.

While I understand the demand from some users, this reminds me of the ongoing question for Affinity for Linux.

If you develop for a specific android version 80% should work on all devices running that version.
The rest is finetuning for formfactors and specific processors and graphical chipsets.

The wide variety in Apps that are already available on each platform proves this is doable. 

 

[Pšenda]

40 minutes ago, paulo Dekkers said:

this is doable

I think that, as with the aforementioned Linux version, the problem is not in feasibility or perhaps in the lack of platform performance, but in doubts about the economic profitability of this development work.

[R C-R]

Until such time as Adobe offers InDesign & Illustrator "Express" versions for Android, I think it is spurious to compare the 3 app Affinity suite to just the Photoshop offering.

[PaoloT]

14 hours ago, lacerto said:

Photoshop (similar as recently released for iOS) has been announced for Android.

Isn't it a bit generous to call that thing "Photoshop"?

Paolo

 

[lacerto]

1 hour ago, PaoloT said:

Isn't it a bit generous to call that thing "Photoshop"?

It is PS alright compared to PS Express. As Adobe characterized it, it is "mobile (and specifically mobile phone) first", and not of course meant to be compared with the desktop version. But as stated above, it shows determination, and is definitely something to consider for anyone taking photos on Android devices...

EDIT: For someone on Android getting the mobile PS (the one that is now available for iOS), might well be the trigger to go for a full PS subscription (lowest price today around EUR20 while you could get the Photo plan at around EUR 10 a few months ago), and get it for all platforms (+web and cloud). That's not a bad strategy.

[AffinityMakesMeWonder]

Forget Affinity Suite on Android - why?

Three disadvantages on Android, Piracy piracy piracy…

If diehard Android users really look closer on the iPad platform they will pretty soon see that iPad software is miles ahead against Android.

iPad is a more mature and better overall device then all Android tablets out there, and, I don’t mean screen quality, OS performance or OS security, I really mean that iPad is superior, in every way.

Talking about Adobe Photoshop, it’s sucks on iPad!

Adobe is a shitty company that should be banned by the users worldwide.