I am developing an Android application. I want to know the minimum usable screen width that is recommended by best practises working group for a mobile web application.
I did search on this topic, but can't find out appropriate solution for this. Can anyone help me in this regard?
If you look at the supporting screens information provided here
http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/screens_support.html
you can see that even screens that fall into the 'small' profile are generally at least 320dp (dp stands for density pixel and translates to 240px for low density devices and 480px for higher density devices)
With that, I would suggest supporting at least 240px to be very safe, however the number of devices with this profile are somewhat low and I would think it would be OK to only support a width of at least 320px.
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I've got a design list for 480x800, 1024x600, 1280x800. How do I ask android to use exact markup based on user screen's resolution ?
As far as I know there're only abstract means(hdpi,xdpi) for solving resolution difference.
How do I ask android to use exact markup based on user screen's resolution ?
Talented developers don't do that. Talented developers realize that only a percentage of Android devices run at the resolutions listed above, just as desktop Web browsers do not run at only three window sizes. Talented developers work with the graphics designer to come up with fluid layouts for different screen sizes (e.g., -normal, -large, -xlarge), which may or may not run at the aforementioned resolutions. For example, there are devices with screen sizes ranging from 4" to 7" that run at 800x480, and there are devices with screen sizes from 4.5" to 10.1" running at 1280x800 (or thereabouts).
As far as I know there're only abstract means(hdpi,xdpi) for solving resolution difference.
-hdpi and -xhdpi have nothing to do with screen resolution. They are for screen density. Density is independent of resolution, and density is largely independent of size.
Create folder based screen width or height. For example
res/layout-w480dp, res/layout-w1024dp, res/layout-w1280dp
Or
res/layout-h800dp, res/layout-h600dp
Read more here, Table 2. Configuration qualifier names.
Afaik, you can markup the layout folder by that is the minimum required screen resolution for the layout you can set one to min600 and one to min 800.
I think this markup scheme is supported in honeycomb and above and since these are tablets resolutions, they will have either anyway.
see this and this
This is might seem to be a sort of silly question to ask but I would like to know while testing our apps what is the best resolution to be used (HVGA/WVGA/QVGA?etc)?
I ask this because I want the layout and the performance of the device to be consistent across most screen sizes.
There is a regularly updated diagram with the screen sizes and densitys available at the android developers site:
Source
This doesn't tell you an exact resolution, but seperates all phones into 4 sizes (small, normal, large, xlarge) and densities. This should give you a hint at least.
The biggest chunk is obviously Normal/hdpi, I guess that should be a lot of 3.7" HDPI displays with a 480x800 resolution (or at least close to this res). Like the Nexus One or HTC Desire (there are sure some newer ones, but I only keep an eye on the market when I'm searching for a phone to buy).
You can use all resolution to test your application, because some phones have QVGA resolution, some HVGA or WVGA resolution. Tablets have others resolutions.
More informations : http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/screens_support.html
If you use the dp unit for the sizes of your screen elements, then you shouldn't need to worry (as much) as this is a relative size, based on the pixel density of the screen.
When I design Android apps, I use HVGA resolution in the emulator. I saw (on YouTube and other videocasts) that some developer use higher resolution like WVGA or similar.
Which resolution is best for designing nowadays Android apps? Why?
Why restrict yourself to one resolution? You are perfectly able to customize the design for all screen resolutions. See this page in the developer docs: Supporting Multiple Screens
It tells you how to support multiple screen sizes and how to test them.
The best resolution to design for is the resolution that the user is using. That sounds obvious, but as there are a plethora of Android devices, there are also a plethora of supported screen resolutions. What you need to do is make sure you design your app to support a multitude of resolutions so that it looks great on all devices, not just one. #Tchami points out how to get started.
All of them, simultaneously, because there's nothing more annoying than getting 95% of the way through an app and discovering your boss is testing it on an HTC Desire, her boss is testing it on a Galaxy Tab, and they both want it to look right for them.
For your design time, Tackle multiple resolutions first, landscape/portrait second. Build a ton of emulators with a ton of different screen sizes, including tablets. Those are my priorities. You can always make someone use something that works in the orientation they dont want, but you cant make them use something that doesnt work in either orientation.
The other comments here are all correct that it should work at all resolutions. If you want to know which ones you should focus on and make pixel perfect, use the Android Device Dashboard, which provides a breakdown of all the screen sizes and densities of the last week worth of Market users. This will let you know which screen types are especially worth targeting (normal hdpi and normal mdpi dominate at the moment)
http://developer.android.com/resources/dashboard/screens.html
I always design 768px X 1280px canvas size, this is about xHdpi resolution and you should resize all elements in canvas to 4 sizes or 5 which are mdpi,hdpi,xhdpi(baseline),xxhdpi,xxxhdpi(optional) then you have a device independent design for your app.
mdpi = 160dp = %50 (resize)
hdpi = 240 dp = %75 (resize)
xhdpi = 320 dp = %100 (baseline)
xxhdpi = 480 dp = %150 (resize)
xxxhdpi = 640 dp = %200 (resize)
I am new to Android. Like in iPhone we have a standard pixel sized of 320*480 to work with on the screen. What are the specifications for Android based devices.
There are many different Android devices with many different screen sizes. You can read the official documentation for advice on how to handle these variations.
http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/screens_support.html
The variety is to large to limit your app like that. On iPhone you have two devices (now, also iPad), here you have a limitless number.
You would better use the DPI (density independent pixel) and also scale your image to the screen dimensions (gathered at run-time)
http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/screens_support.html
I'm an iOS developer and I'm looking into Android programming. On the iPhone I can count on pretty much one screen size on all devices, but that's not necessarily the case on Android.
How is that handled on Android? What if you need a widget to be at least some size?
Is it possible to specify a lower bound for Android devices that you can use your app? Can I say I'll only allow touch-screen devices with some minimum screen size and prevent people from purchasing the app if their devices don't meet the minimums I'm expecting?
Thanks!
Bill,
The android developers page has pretty good information on supporting the various screen sizes: http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/screens_support.html
And yes, you can limit your application to particular screen sizes via: http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/manifest/supports-screens-element.html
good luck!
You can restrict applications based on a range of enumerated screen sizes. The market will filter apps based on those.
http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/manifest/supports-screens-element.html
Some widget design guidelines are available here. Please be aware that many custom home applications do not honor the standard sizes.
http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/ui_guidelines/widget_design.html
You could specify minimum specifications for your app, but that's not necessary. The Android Developer Documentation states that applications don't work directly with resolution and pixels, but rather with density independent pixels that allow you to scale your applications across a range of screen sizes.
Android provides you with an API for getting the real pixel density of the screen as one of 4 categories (low dpi, medium dpi, high dpi, and extra-high dpi), so your application can choose to display the proper visual resources for a given pixel density. In addition, there are a number of best practices that you can use to ensure that your application scales nicely across screens.