IOS and Android

Quirks, Things to know

• Mobile device develop much more rapidly than desktop systems.
• There is much more variation in the marketplace.
• Parts of this presentation will no longer be valid in 6 months.
• HTML5 standards are being gradually adopted.
• You cannot assume all devices have all features.
• To check if an OS has a particular feature, check http://www.caniuse.com

iOS

• 75% of users are on iOS 7 (the latest) already
• Less than 5% are older than iOS 6.
• All devices made by Apple

Android

• 45% of users are in Android 4.x
• More than 50% are in Android 2.x
• Android 2.x devices are still being manufactured
• Two versions of the brower: Android Browser and Chrome.
• Android browser is no longer being developed.
• Chrome browser is much more advanced.
• Chrome browser only runs on Android 4+
• Devices are made by hundreds of manufacturers
• Since Android is open source, there is no standard on how Android is configured.
• Some manufacturers (Amazon, Samsung) put their own software on top of Android.
• As a result, Android devices have more quirks than iOS.

Dealing with different screen sizes

• Making apps which look good on all the devices they run on is hard.

Different screen sizes

• Physical screen sizes on phone devices run from 3.5 inches to more than 5
• The ratio of width to height is not always the same.
• For example, the iPhone 4 is 320x480, while the iPhone 5 is 320x568.
• Actually, since the iPhone 5 is a retina, it is 640x1136.
• Positions on retina devices are based on the 320x578.
• Text and images are drawn more precisely using the extra pixels.
• Use SysInfo(2) and SysInfo(3) to get the current width and height.
• It is usually correct.
• No method has been found yet that gets the correct width and height for all devices!

Orientation

• If you want to run your app in both portrait and landscape, you have to program this yourself.
• Simply scaling the controls will not work in most cases.
• You may even want to rethink the design for usability.

Tablets

• You cannot simply scale all the controls up in size.
• If you do, your app will look terrible.
• Consider using the extra space for more usability.
• For example, display two forms size by side.