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Google is in a current battle to avoid fragmentation of Android, while preserving at least some of the openness that attracts many supporters. Its latest step is to extend its Fragments API (application programming interface) to older OS releases, allowing developers to modify their existing programs for newer devices.

Fragments appeared with the new Android 3.0 or Honeycomb, aiming to simplify the task of getting legacy Android apps onto the larger screened devices that the OS release supports. Such apps would not take advantage of all the capabilities of Android tablets, but the same is true of most iPad products – as the GigaOM blog complains in a post, on the iPad “we’ve seen application after application come to market as just an incremental improvement of the web or desktop versions of the same (or similar) application. Why? Because apps, content and consumption experiences on iPads and other tablets need to be rethought and reimagined by combining the hardware capabilities with software.”

However, for those who just want to update their apps quickly to run on new devices, Fragments will be welcome. As a self-contained component with its own user interface and lifecycle, Google says if can be reused in different parts of an application's UI depending on the desired flow for a certain device or screen size.

Originally, the new API did not help developers using earlier versions of the OS, but this has now changed. Android SDK technology leader Xavier Ducrochet wrote on the Android Developers Blog: "Today we've released a static library that exposes the same Fragments API (as well as the new LoaderManager and a few other classes) so that applications compatible with Android 1.6 or later can use fragments to create tablet compatible user interfaces." The library, called ‘Android Compatibility package’, is available for download via the SDK Updater.

According to the latest stats from the Android Developers Devices Dashboard, release 2.2 now powers almost 58% of devices, while 31.4% run release 2.1. The latest smartphone release, 2.3, only represents 0.8% so far, while the tablet release 3.0 is too new in the market to make an impact (its main commercial product, Motorola Xoom, only just shipped). Among the older Androids, 1.6 still runs on 6.3% of products in use and Android 1.5 clings on in 3.9%.

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