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How to make layout compatible with different android devices in android studio?

I am designing an app with a .jpeg background and with text views on particular places on the screen. I designed this for my nexus 6 and used dp for the widths and heights of text views and margin-left and margin-top. What my understanding of dp is that it changes with every device according to screen size and density. So it should work on different phones according to the value of dp for them.
But this is not the case. When I run that app on a different phone (nexus 5) the layout is all messed up. I tried using the different resources and qualifiers for different screens (large, small, normal). But the problem still prevails. The app considers both nexus 6 and nexus 5 as large screens. How do i fix this?

this is not the best solution i guess.
i guess your layout is just on the layout folder. i don't know if the first device you tested the layout is large or small but what you should do is create another folder named layout-sw600dp. this folder is used by tablets. the folder layout is used my phones and smaller devices. you could also create the layout-land and layout-sw600dp-land folders for the landscape orientation.
dp do change depending on the device but if your layout gets messed up then i guess the layout called by that device doesn't fit its resolution. i guess dp becomes smaller if the device is bigger and vice versa.

Android : Screen Size

I'm working on android application and got in trouble of multiple screen support. I developed the app for 1080x1920 and when i tested the app on my friends Micromax Unite 2 with resolution of 480x800, it was something else. So i made two folders in the layout as:
layout-1080x1920
layout-480x800
thinking that the 480x800 device will pick up the layout-480x800 folder. But no it used the layout-1080x1920. So what should i do? So that the device having resolution of 480x800 works on layout-480x800

I suggest naming the folders as such:
layout-sw600dp
Where sw600dp means Screen Width 600dp. This layout folder will be used by devices with screen widths of 600dp or more (typically all 7-10 inch tablets, or just very dense screen). And when you are targeting for the phone use just the layout folder without any specified criteria. All phones not matching the sw600dp will use the default layout resources. Possibly also consider using
layout-sw600dp-port
if you need to use specific layouts for portrait orientation, likewise you can do
layout-sw600dp-land
if you wanted to specified layouts for landscape.
The link cricket_007 provided is where I learned this information
Note that 1080x1920 equates to about 540 x 960 dp in dp measurement, which is why I suggested to use the particular 600dp for width

giving the folder names pixel according to android screen support dev page. Even if you know all possible resolutions for every device, the android system takes those *xml files/drawables etc specified by their DPI, not PX. Those dpi resolutions still can change on runtime, such as, when your activity uses a tool bar (which is not part of your dpi resolution). Name your folders layout-xlarge, layout-large, layout-normal, layout-small for *xml layouts. I suggest to put 4 different xml files with same name in each of them and try it again for different devices.

android layout at different screen sizes

trying to get my head around screen sizes so my app looks the same on different devices.
I have two devices a galaxy s3 and a galaxy tab 8. both have the same resolution screen 720 x 1280 but the s3 is 4.7 inches while the tab is 8 inches
When I do a linear layout I set padding to 130 at the top so that the first textview is 130 pixels from the top so the image on the background is not obscured.
This is fine on the s3 but when I load it on the tab the padding needs changing to 190 pixels for it to look the same.
I cant get my head round if the height of the screen resolution is the same (1280) on both devices why do i need larger padding on the screen
is there a way of working out how to make the textview appear on the same location on both devices
Any help appreciated
Mark

Yes there is a way.
First off all you should use DP or SP unit instead of PX. The DP unit have in consideration the size of the screen and the screen resolution. You can see more in here:
What is the difference between "px", "dp", "dip" and "sp" on Android?
Also you can create a folder in res and add different sizes for different devices.
Example:
You already have the folder 'values' with the file 'dimens.xml' in there you can add margins and sizes variables.
If you create the folder 'values-large' and copie the file 'dimens.xml', you can change the sizes of the variables and maintain the name.
In devices 'large' it will load different values from the rest of the devices.
You can see all documentation in here: http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/screens_support.html
Hope it helps you.

You need to add 2 different layouts for 2 different screen sizes. In fact you can provide multiple screen support limited only by your considerations. You can customize layout according to the screen sizes. Here is the official documentation to help you get going.

First of all, you need to use dp instead of px to do these kind of stuff. The reason the result is wrong is that the number of dots per inch on the s3 is much higher than that of the galaxy tab 8. You should really read this link to understand more.
[http://www.captechconsulting.com/blog/steven-byle/understanding-density-independence-android][1]

Is it correct way to create separate layout file for supporting different screens? [duplicate]

I'm really feeling confused. From the docs at developer.android.com, it seems in order to keep my images scaled correctly (aspect ratio too) across all current Android devices I need all these layouts below. Is that really what everyone is doing? Am I missing something, or should I be going about this a different way?
Low density Small screens QVGA 240x320
------------------------------------------------
layout-small-ldpi
layout-small-land-ldpi
Low density Normal screens WVGA400 240x400 (x432)
------------------------------------------------
layout-ldpi
layout-land-ldpi
Medium density Normal screens HVGA 320x480
------------------------------------------------
layout-mdpi
layout-land-mdpi
Medium density Large screens HVGA 320x480
------------------------------------------------
layout-large-mdpi
layout-large-land-mdpi
High density Normal screens WVGA800 480x800 (x854)
------------------------------------------------
layout-hdpi
layout-land-hdpi
Xoom (medium density large but 1280x800 res)
------------------------------------------------
layout-xlarge
layout-xlarge-land

Your app will work on 100% of the devices with the classic layout.
You can just add some buttons or change the layout in landscape mode by adding some qualifiers but that's up to you!
For instance, on LDPI (small resolution) device, you may want to adjust some buttons or change a little bit to fit the small screen.
You may also want to put some buttons on the right in landscape mode and in the bottom of your layout in portrait!
You do not "have to" use them.

According to Android Dev Protip from Roman Nurik about screen size qualifiers:
If you have custom layouts for larger screen devices such as tablets,
now's the time to stop using the -large or -xlarge resource qualifier
and switch to using -swXXdp or -wXXdp qualifiers. The latter were
introduced in API level 13, which basically all tablets now have
support for according to the latest platform version charts1.
means that for basically all cases where -large would have any effect,
-swXXdp can be used instead to provide more granularity.
So which actual sw or w qualifiers should you use? Here's a quick
just-give-me-something starting point:
7" tablets: Instead of layout-large, use layout-sw600dp.
Example: Nexus 7 = 960×600 dp; the smaller of the two dimensions is
600.
10" tablets: Instead of layout-xlarge, use layout-sw720dp.
Example: Nexus 10 = 1280×800 dp; the smaller of the two dimensions is
800. Some 10" tablets are a bit more narrow so 720 is a commonly used switching point.
There's more to it than just that (you really want to choose switching
points based on your content's minimum requirements, not on device
form factor), but that's a #Protip for another day (::cough:: +Nick
Butcher ::cough::).

In the layout if you do not use AbsoluteLayout, you application is going to be resized to fit the screen.
But in some cases, for smaller screens you need declare a new layout with less components for example.
For images:
You has some options.
Simple ignore some resolutions and let the device choose the best image to it.
Declare on AndroidManifest for wich sizes you want to support.
Or has just one and let the resize screw your application.

Yes. You should define different layout for different screen resolution.
When you are supposed to work with tablet kind of application. That time really you feel that. There is a need of different layout. Because Tablets always comes in different size.
One more thing, When you are working on android, means you should always taste your app with real device. And also test with different size emulators.

Android Text Scaling on different resolutions same density

I have 2 devices, a 1024x600 7" tablet hdpi running Gingerbread and a hub attached to a touchscreen which is 1920x1008 22" in size, hdpi running ICS. The Android OS seems to consider both as "large" (240dp).
So, they have the same actual density (240dpi), same generalized density (hdpi), same generalized size (large) but different actual size (7" vs 22")
The text and spacing dimensions that I specify for my layout work great on the 22", but then on the 7" they look enormous and dont fit on the screen.
I've tried using dp and sp, no difference as I think the problem is that Android sees these things as the same size / density. Does anyone have any recommendations on how I can be able to scale sizes appropriately?
This program wil also eventually need to be supported on a 4.5" handheld as well.
Thanks in advance.

Sorry, my previous answer was completely wrong = )
Ideally, you should be able to design for the 7" tablet and have your layout scale up to the TV. But if that doesn't work you should be able to use something like layout-sw1008dp. The "sw" prefix allows you to specify the minimum dimension of the smallest side of the screen - so in the case of a TV, the height.

I am also facing such problem in my application. But i found a good solution for this.
I have only one layout for tablet and directory name is layout-sw600dp.
Now, when part came to height and width problems, I have created several different values directory in which i place dimensions and font size and other stubs. So there will be no constant value in layout of tablet screen.
androd:layout_width:"60dp" // i drop this scenario
androd:layout_width:"#dimen/tab_width" // i used this scenario
and your values directory name will be like
values-xlarge
values-large
All the values will be fetched from your values directory. It will not create different layout, but one layout can be used multiple times.
See my stack answer which may help you.