How to filter out apps based on hardware requirements

[iinlane]

Hi,

I wonder if there's a way to filter out apps that are written to meet certain hardware requirements? I recently bought a Nexus S with glorious 800x480 screen, 1GHz processor and multi-touch capacitive screen only to find out that pretty much all apps are written to work on 5 year old hardware with tiny screens and slow processors. The apps still work on my phone but the solution is far from optimal and games look plain ugly.

I would really like to have an alternative method for browsing apps that are designed (not just tested to work) for 4" HD screens and fast processors with hardware accelerated graphics. Something like apple did with iPad app store - all iPhone apps are still listed but the apps that are designed for iPad are prioritized. And yes - the difference between iPhone and iPad is smaller than difference between low-end and high-end android phone.

Br, Robert

PS! I am willing to pay for hq apps but unfortunately the paid android market is not available in my country.

PPS! Microsoft has minimum hardware requirements for WP7 (took from wikipedia):

• Capacitive, 4-point multi-touch screen with WVGA (800x480) resolution
• 1 GHz ARM v7 "Cortex/Scorpion" or better processor
• DirectX9 rendering-capable GPU
• 256 MB of RAM with at least 8 GB of Flash memory
• Accelerometer with compass, ambient light sensor, proximity sensor and Assisted GPS
• 5-megapixel camera with an LED flash
• FM radio tuner

 

[Szadzik]

Do not get overexcited just because you got a new phone. There are lots of phone with the same specs and even better - Nexus S is only better in that it ha Android 2.3, nothing else.

P.S. 800x480 is nothing great, Milestones have 854x480 and so what?

 

[iinlane]

Do not get overexcited just because you got a new phone. There are lots of phone with the same specs and even better - Nexus S is only better in that it ha Android 2.3, nothing else.

You're missing the point. I don't require apps written specifically for nexus s but I do want apps that are designed for some minimal threshold (the nexus S is quite close to Microsoft minimal hw threshold but there are plethora of similar phones from samsung and htc). I ditched Nokia 5800XM solely because the quality of apps - most of the apps on OVI store are designed to run on Java ME on 128x160 screen and know nothing about touch screens let alone multi-touch. Google could easily implement the Java ME on android and claim quadrupled size for android market but you would't want those apps on your phone, would you?

A good example of what I want would be Google Maps as it is designed for modern hardware but scales back functionality when GPS or GPU is not available. Bad example is RoboDefence that uses ugly low-resolution textures while it could easily look as good as fieldrunners had the developers targeted larger screens.

 

[Szadzik]

If a game was designed to look like RoboDefense it was not because it was designed for crappy hardware but because the dev either did not know how to, was not good at it, did not care or simply intended it to be a retro-looking game.

So no, there is no way to sort and you can only evaluate yourself if you like an app or not.