Beginners Guide to Android Tablet App Development

1. 1 Beginners Guide to Android Tablet App Development Tablet Android Apps Development is the new fever in software development. A lot of people are getting into it and making money out of it. The android tablet application Development market is growing day by day, more and more users are jumping on to tablets rather than desktops for doing their work so developers must produce android apps which can be accessed using tablets as well as smartphones. Writing an android app for a tablet app development involves some additional considerations apart from writing for smartphones. An average user’s requirement may change drastically on the basis of the device they use to access an application. https://www.aistechnolabs.com/

2. 2 To make the best use of the screen space, at times you might want to show two places simultaneously on two different windows on your tablet screen unlike only one view on smartphone screens because larger screens offer you more space. For tablet users it's quite common that they use their tablets while lying on beds or sofas which means optimal viewing angles for them are not straight but from an angle. There might be cases where a user may have to carry his tablet around and he doesn’t always have a support for holding it, so the app should ensure a proper grip on the screen even if a user is holding his tablet in free hand. All these features add up to the list of considerations while writing android apps for tablets. In this tutorial we will provide you guidelines for creating android apps compatible with all screen sizes available i.e. smartphones as well as tablets. In other words we can say that you can create what is known as ‘One APK’ that can run on any android device. There are some obvious things to be kept in mind while doing so which you will come across as we progress through this tutorial. The things that can possibly change due to screen size are 1.Screen Orientation While creating an app for a tablet, one important thing to note is the orientation of its screen which can be either Landscape mode or Portrait mode. Keeping this in mind try to create layouts that are flexible enough to accommodate both modes with minimal efforts. For example instead of displaying all your UI elements on one horizontal line you should display it in two lines with the second line appearing only when required i.e. when user rotates his device from portrait to landscape mode. 2.Density Just like screen orientation density also matters a lot, unlike smartphones where one size of layout is enough tablet screens can have different densities which may cause problems while displaying your app on them. Displaying bitmap images on devices with lower DPI (Dots per Inch) results in poor image quality and the same happens while you try to fit an image of high resolution on a device with low DPI resulting in blurring of images. https://www.aistechnolabs.com/

3. 3 To make sure that you don’t face these problems while developing for tablets we recommend you to create your layouts at ‘Medium’ DPi .If this is not possible then go for Low DPi (120 or 160). You should use Drawables instead of images to display contrasting elements like glyphs and text, so that your app looks good on various screen densities. 3.Transparency Tablets generally have larger screens with better resolutions and viewing angles than smartphones which means there is a lot more space left unused on these devices after displaying application’s content which can be used for adding widgets like clock ,calendar etc. . To make use of this we can make our windows transparent by setting their background color to null or something similar (we will see how to do this later in the tutorial). This way the live wallpaper behind such windows will become visible allowing you to make your home screen look cool with minimal effort. 4.Custom Views Since most tablets come with taller screens than smartphones (average of 7 inches compared to 4.3 inches) it is obvious that your app will look crowded on them without proper resizing or re-organization of UI elements. Using custom views you can design your application’s layouts keeping in mind the dimensional requirements of tablets. 5.Multitasking Tablets generally provide better browsing experience than their smaller counterparts but they lack support for multiple windows which mobile devices have which allow users to switch between different applications using the task switcher bar present at the bottom of most android devices. Tablet computers can also take advantage of this feature by providing support for multitasking so that users can enjoy webpages and other apps simultaneously with their current session. https://www.aistechnolabs.com/

4. 4 6.Media Playback This is an area where we see a clear difference between tablets and smartphones, Most smartphone users use headphones to listen to music hence their devices come with dedicated media player apps for this purpose but the same isn’t true for tablet users as they generally use high end speakers and amps to enjoy music and movies (tablets generally lack 3.5mm audio jack forcing users to use either HDMI cable or Dock Connector port). This doesn’t mean that you cannot provide media playback support on your applications, you can easily implement such features using standard android Media Player class just like you do it on smartphones. A good example of doing so is the official Facebook app which provides us access to our Facebook news feeds and lets us share interesting links and photos to our friends. 7.Drop-down notifications When you develop android apps for smartphones one thing that you should always keep in mind is the limited screen size of such devices which forces developers to use drop down notifications instead of modal popup windows (which waste a lot of space) as these allow users to view more information on their device screens. The same can be said about tablets, since they provide large screens compared to smartphones it makes sense using drop down notifications on them even though this will cause some problems with regards to consistency. We hope that the Android team at google provides support for full screen popups on larger screens in future versions of android OS, until then we have to make do with always available notification tray. https://www.aistechnolabs.com/

5. 5 8.Honeycomb Style UI for Tablets Since Android 3.0 (API 11) Google has started working on making UI development easier which is evident from their support for Fragments and Action Bar in the latest version of android OS. Some developers have already started using these new APIs to develop applications that can run properly on both smartphones as well as tablet computers, a good example of such application is Flipboard for android which uses an action bar at the top with options to share link over various social networks and navigation drawer below containing list of news categories to select from, similar things can be done by other developerstoo. When you build your app try making it look neat on tablets by using more space and by introducing new styles of widgets instead. 9.High quality graphics Android tablets generally come with high end GPUs (GEForce Tegra series) so it is necessary to use higher resolution images in your applications which ideally should be HD. Remember that users will see your application’s icon as well as screenshots for almost a year after installation on their devices, so try designing them keeping large screen sizes in mind or else they will look pixelated or ugly when shown on big screens. To learn how to design beautiful icons read our earlier post on best practices using Android Icons, you can also take advantage of the integrated development environment provided by Eclipse which supports editing HD png files along with providing the option to export properly sized icons for various screen densities. Read Also: What are the resources available to developers to create good tablet applications? https://www.aistechnolabs.com/

6. 6 10.Optimize Battery consumption Since Android apps are coded in java using a virtual machine to make sure you code your app properly to save battery life , a good example of doing so is the official Facebook application which has been optimized for tablets and smartphones thus making devices last longer when compared to other social networking clients. To learn more read our earlier post on how to optimize apps running on android platform , also check out our list of best free utilities that help improve battery backup time on Android phones . In addition, you can access developer consoles provided by Google in order to test your application against different sets of hardware configurations and find out if it is consuming excess resources or not. This will help you catch any potential performance issue in your application. Conclusion Android tablets provide a great opportunity for developers to create high quality and graphically rich applications. However, in order to make the most of this large screen real estate, it is necessary to design your user interface using Fragments and the Action Bar, as well as optimize your code for better battery life. Finally, be sure to test your app against different hardware configurations using the Developer Console provided by Google. Get Ahold of Us to ensure seamless integration while we adhere to the high standards for Android development. Source: https://gamingsoftwaredevelopment.weebly.com/blog/beginners-guide- to-android-tablet-app-development https://www.aistechnolabs.com/

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