UI Guide for Android Application Design for Phones and Tabs

As the smartphone segment in the mobile industry is experiencing huge demand for Android phones and tablets across various geographies, it is vital for developers to pay special attention to the Android application design and cater to different sizes of screen and display resolutions.

Android app developers are expected to build applications which are device independent and function seamlessly over a wide range of android devices. Let us address certain key concerns an app developer faces and offer tips and solutions for Android development.

UI Design

UI design or User Interface design plays a crucial role in determining the success of an Android app. Your app is only considered flawless when the UI design can adapt to different Android devices. To build an effective UI design, it is important for app developers to segregate android mobile devices into categories or buckets of mobile devices on the basis of their screen sizes and display.

Screen Density

Do note that though certain mobile devices have the same screen size, they may differ in screen density. So build your Android app accordingly. Screen density is the screen resolution which is measured in DPI or dots per inch. It is insufficient for a UI designer to categorize mobile devices solely on the basis of their screen sizes, but they must also classify them based on screen densities.

Density-independent Pixels

To figure out the effect of multiple screen densities on a mobile device, consider a 35-pixel button, which on a low-end Density-independent Pixels (DPI) device appears relatively good. But the same button can appear minuscule on device with high-end DPI. To prevent this disparity, the Android Application Design must have a DP unit of measurement rather than standard pixels. This will help in making the images look standardized on a vast range of Android devices, irrespective of the varying screen densities. UI designers must also utilize images that can adapt to vast-ranging screen densities.

Alternative Resource Folders

It is recommended to build alternative resource folders for layouts and images to support the Android OS in loading relevant images based on the screen resolution and density of the mobile device. To make sure that images seem standard on different devices you should establish alternate drawable resource folders for varying screen densities, keeping MDPI (Medium DPI) as the base density.