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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 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 necessary to create "small, normal, large and xlarge android xml layouts" folders if i want my application to run of all Android devices

I am developing an Android Application that supports all kind of Android devices like mobiles and tablets. But it's time consuming to create multiple folders (small, normal, large and xlarge android xml layouts) to support all the Android devices. Is there any way to build an android app that runs on all android devices without creating these folders:small, normal, large, xlarge etc?

You only need to create unique layouts (ie. *layout_mdpi* ) if you want something unique for that particular screen size.
If you want to use the same layout on all different screen sizes, you will only need to create a single layout (in the layout folder).
Only if you want to customize a particular layout would you need a new FOLDER in layouts (named: layout_mdpi) in that folder you would have multiple copies of customized layout with same name (ex. my_layout.xml)
To clearly answer your question - you will only need the layout folder and no other ones in your casel
Ex.
res\layout\my_layout.xml // this folder is all you need if this layout will work on all screen sizes
res\layout_mdpi\my_layout.xml // you ONLY need this if you are presenting something unique on this screen size.

In Android we need to maintain different folders for the layouts with different resolution reason behind it is the use or the resolution of the Android Device on which the application gonna execute.
small Resources for small size screens.
normal Resources for normal size screens. (This is the baseline size.)
large Resources for large size screens.
xlarge Resources for extra large size screens.
Android OS select the specific layout it self by checking the compatible device and its resolution.
So, better to create folders to support in multiple screens
For More Info refer this

Is there any way to build an android app that runs on all android devices without creating these folders:small, normal, large, xlarge etc
Consider this, you have a button (with match_parent) that stretches full width of a screen in portrait mode of a 4 inch phone, that's fine it looks alright, but then that same layout on a 10 inch tablet in portrait is now 3-4inch wide, that's not great looking.
"So what" you say, make it wrap content, okay then so the button now only fills up part of the width on phone, still looks okay but then on a tablet you have huge amount of space now either side of the button, maybe that's looks okay, maybe not.
Maybe same button on a smaller screen takes up too much space?
Now apply the above to every single layout element in your app.
Do you think it'll look good, using the same layout, do you think your users will be okay with an app that was so little care to its UI and UX?
SO, in conclusion, yeah it's possible to only use one eg normal, for all devices but it'll probably look terrible on most of them.

Different InfoWidget.xml for App Widget

i have a question about the app widget in android. I'm a litte bit confused, cause i define in the info xml (res -> xml) the values for width (250) and height (110) (http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/ui_guidelines/widget_design.html). Now i expected my Widget take the in the width 4 cells and in the height 2 cells.
I tested it with a Nexus S (HDPI), all works fine, i tested it with a Nexus 4 (XHDPI), all works fine, i tested it with an Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1/Emulator tablets (MDPI), it doesn't work, Nexus7 (Emulator) (TVDPI) also it didn't work.
OK, I looked in the Menu and i see the system takes 3 and not 4 cells for the width.
Now my Question is there a way to define specific xml files for the tablets (please notice that i would support device with android 2.3.3) or am I missing something?

Have you tried putting your layout for the widgets into different folders, so that it will be rendered out differently on different screen sizes? For example, when supporting tablets you would have a layout-xlarge folder which contains the layout for your Widget on extra large screens. See here for more information about Tablet layouts.

Android app: Support all screen sizes

According to this
there are four size screens, small, normal, large and xlarge. So these qualifiers correspond on specific screens. For example, normal qualifier is a 3.7inches screen and small is a 2.7inches screen. So, what happens with the others sizes? How does my app cover other sizes, like 3.3inches or 3.2inches for example?

The screen sizes you mentioned are meant to be ranges. For instance, a 3.3 inch screen would probably fall into the 'normal' category , as it is bigger than the 2.7, but less than 3.7. now that said, there are some minor changes in terms of pixel density and that kind of thing, but the idea behind the screen sizes they chose is that there isn't a whole lot of difference between a 3.2 inch screen and a 3.3 inch screen, so if you write your layout properly (using relative widths, etc.) then your app should look the same whether you are on a 3.2 or 3.3. The reason they add in all those sizes for the SDK is that you might want to have more information shown or have things laid out differently if your consumer is using a really small screen vs a really large one (like a tablet). For the most part, however, relative layouts are king - don't use hard coded pixel values for sizing of view elements if you can avoid it, and keep your layout fluid - that way all screen sizes can be supported with minimal work and testing on your part.

Its not like that
2inch to around 3.7 inch comes under small screen
around 3.5 to 4.5inches is normal
where 4 inches to 7 inches means large screen
and 7 inches or more comes under xlarge screen

You can't cover all sizes. You can read this article - http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/screens_support.html