Android: Deciding between SurfaceView and OpenGL (GLSurfaceView)

Question

Is there a way to decide up front based on the expected complexity of a game/app in the planning phase whether to use regular Canvas drawing in a SurfaceView or to go with O

Answer 1

All I can say is that it depends on how many sprites you're gonna use. Chris Pruett from Google has also documented this part very well.

Google I/O 2009 and Google I/O 2010.

Below is a picture from one of his slides that are related to your topic:

With that knowledge, you should go with OpenGL using the draw_texture extension. Remember to query out the string and check if draw_texture is supported on the actual device.

For further information that are related to game development in general, see this.