Android device mode

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Introduction

This document discusses the Phone-mode and Table-mode layouts supported with Android 4.0 ICS release.

Displays

According to the Android CDD the following categories of displays are defined in android:

• small
• medium
• large

Operating mode

Based on the display dimensions, android selects the mode:

• Tablet-mode for displays with minimum 600 pixel height and width
• Phone mode for all other displays

Differences between Phone mode and Tablet mode

The following screen shots show the various modes depending on screen size.

Phone mode-Portrait AM37xevm with 640x480 LCD

Phone mode-Landscape AM335xevm with 800x480 LCD

TBD

Tablet mode Beagleboard xm with DVI output configured for 800x600

Impact of LCD density

An LCD panel (say 800x480) can be available in different physical sizes e.g 5-inch or 7-inch. The UI experiance on a 5-inch device may be different compared to the experience on a 7-inch device.

Android introduces the concept of lcd density to compensate for such physical differences. LCD density (dots/inch) is defined as ( formula for dpi goes here).

Android defines the following standard lcd densities:

• mdpi (160)
• ldpi (120)
• hdpi (240)
• xhdpi

Android assumes mdpi display by default unless explicitly overridden by modifying build.prop.

You can change the dpi by adding the following line in /system/build.prop

  ro.sf.lcd_density=120

This changes the dpi to 120

Take example of LCD screen of 800x480

with dpi=160 (default) the effective resolution = 800x480

with dpi=120, effective resolution increases by about 30% (160/120 = 1.33) = 1066x640

References

• http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/screens_support.html