Compatibility and compliance

About Android compatibility

Google defines Android compatibility in its Compatibility Definition Document (CDD), and a compatibility test suite (CTS) that can be used to assess implementations of platforms supporting APK applications. This suite comprises some 18,000 automated tests, plus a number of manual tests.

At present the CDD and CTS are oriented to the needs of tablets and smartphones. Therefore, not all compatibility requirements are relevant to QNX platforms, which are designed for automotive or general embedded systems. Features typical of tablets and smartphones may not be supported because:

the required hardware sensors, such as a barometer, gyroscope or light sensor aren't supported
the features or behaviours tested are not relevant to the QNX platform

This disparity between the CDD and CTS specifications and the requirements the QNX platform is designed to meet means that the QNX Runtime for APK isn't able to achieve a 100% success rate with the CTS. The success rate is currently 95% overall, and 97% for tests relevant to the QNX platform (telephony-specific features, personal information management (PIM) removed).

CTS exclusions

The QNX Runtime for APK doesn't support all capabilities available for APK applications. Some capabilities may be unsupported for reasons such as unsupported services, settings, permissions, or hardware or software features.

QNX platforms don't support telephony-specific features such as SMS. QNX has also customized a number of CTS tests to take into account the specifics of the QNX platform. In order to understand correctly the results of these tests, you should review them with consideration to the lists of unsupported capabilities, modified tests, exclusions, and other anomolies. For detailed information about the CTS results, please contact your QNX representative.

Currently, QNX platforms don't support the following APK capabilities:

Accessibility: These CTS tests are excluded because they are not relevant to the HMI of QNX platforms.
Bluetooth: The CTS tests presume that Bluetooth is used to connect a smartphone with a slave device (e.g., a telephone headset). However, QNX platforms are not smartphones and therefore, these tests are irrelevant.
Calendar: As a sandboxed environment on the QNX system, an Android calendar is not created.
Contact management: As a sandboxed environment on the QNX system, an Android contacts database is not created.
Launcher/Home screen: Launching of APK applications are controlled by the HMI on QNX platforms.
Renderscript: The QNX Runtime for APK doesn't support Renderscript at this time.
Telephony: QNX platforms are not smartphones and don't need to offer telephony services; therefore they may run on boards that lack the hardware required to support telephony.

Tests for applications or features that require these capabilities will fail.

Testing application compatibility

The compatibility tests generate five levels of warnings, from mild (Level 1) to severe (Level 5). If an application receives no warnings or only Level 1 warnings, then it is considered compatible with the QNX platform. You will still need to perform additional verification to make sure the application will run on your specific platform.

Applications that receive warnings of Level 2 or higher are generally considered incompatible, and will not run successfully on QNX platforms.