CODEWITHSUNDEEP
androidandroid-layoutscreen-size
Jack BeNimble
Jack BeNimble

Reputation: 36663

To support 800 by 480 screen size on Android or not?

I'm having an issue with getting all the fields to fit on an 800 by 480 display because the submit button disappears off the bottom. That got me to wondering if I really need to support a display that small. The app I'm working on is not for mass-consumption, max usage of a few thousand people, but it is targeted at "normal" users, i.e. the group profiles to the general population.

I did some checking and found two interesting links, especially this one:

https://gigaom.com/2014/07/09/android-screen-sizes-arent-as-big-a-challenge-for-developers-as-you-might-think/

It states that the 10 most popular phones used by the developer's customers corresponded to the 5 following layout sizes: 

720 x 1280
768 x 1280
800 x 1280
1080 x 1920
1440 x 2560

The next link:

http://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html

shows that just 6% of phones checked into Google Play are using versions of Android less than Android 4.0, and only 10% are using less than Android 4.1.

I then checked the history the screen sizes for the various versions of the Samsung Galaxy S series, and you have to back to the Galaxy S2, issued in April 2011, to find the one with 800 x 480 screen size. The next S version, the Galaxy S3, was issued in 2012 and has the lowest screen size found on the list of layouts shown above.

The issue is that although the minimum supported Android version in my app is 4.0, someone with an S2 could have upgraded to it. Plus there are some phones issued even recently which have have 800 x 480 displays, e.g. the Samsung Neo. The S3 was the first one issued with 4.0 as the native OS, so if the S2 users didn't upgrade, they wouldn't be able to use the app anyway. Most of them probably have a new phone by now, I'm hoping.

I'm probably going to try to wrap the submit button inside of a relative layout and see if I can let the 800 x 480 users scroll to it, but that display is so tiny I'm not sure I can make it work.

So I guess my question is, how concerned should I be with the 800 x 480 display issue?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 950

Answers (1)

Edwin Lambregts
Edwin Lambregts

Reputation: 408

I myself used the link you provided for research for my internship a couple of months back as well. The images I provided below indicate that a normal hdpi screen takes up 38.3% of all phones. This would be either 480x800, 480x854, or 600x1024 (if I interpreted it correctly). 38% is a serious amount and should not be discarded.

screen densities screen densities2

Not to sound degrading, but did you consider using a ScrollView in combination with sizing in dp?

Upvotes: 1

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