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Originally Posted by afv011
Wrong. You don't understand how things work on Android.
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If you say so.
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You use XML layouts that dynamically expand to account for the space. Also, you don't use static images for things like button backgrounds, or list backgrounds, you use 9-patch images that expand without loss of quality.
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I know that, and it doesn't contradict my point.
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And yes, your layout would be identical for 4" phone on 840x480, a 4.3" phone on 1280x720 as it would be on a 1920x1080 5" phone, they would fall into the same bucket (320DP). The screen display will not be identical, for instance the line width of one might be slightly longer (so an email subject might display a few more characters on one device over another), but the layout is the same, you just don't care, it adjusts automatically without loss of quality.
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You're missing my point. I know that the layout will be the same, and my point is that that is not necessarily what you want. The layout that makes sense on a 3.5" phone with a 3:2 aspect ratio might well not be the one you want on a 5" 16:9 phone. You may well have had to make compromises on the smaller display in order to maintain acceptable button sizes and spacing that you do not have to make on the larger display. For example, buttons for functions which had to be relegated to a secondary dialog (or "activity" if you want to use the Android terminology) on the smaller phone may be able to coexist with the rest on the bigger one. Or even more basic - buttons with a "nice" size and spacing on the 5" phone might be too small and tightly spaced to be hit accurately on a 3.5" phone.
In practice, because of the wide variety of Android devices, Android apps don't really have an option but to do it the way you describe. iOS developers, on the other hand, do have options - you can have your UI adapt automatically, but given the relatively small number of display sizes to cope with it's much more feasible to design optimal layouts for each one.
It's interesting to note that in order to achieve an acceptable appearance, the Android docs discuss designing different layouts for different size-buckets, and for each of those providing different bitmaps for different density-buckets. They list 4 size-buckets and 6 density-buckets. Even though not all 24 combinations are common, it still leaves many more bases to cover than iOS.
/JB