It’s well known that Android is fragmented or, as Google CEO Eric Schmidt contends, “Differentiated.” In a bid to codify design principles for the operating system’s look and feel, Google unveiled Android Design at CES 2012.
This website seeks to help app developers create apps with a more uniform look and feel for Android 4.0, also known as “Ice Cream Sandwich.”
“[Google] definitely wants to have a uniform look. They never have provided a style guide before,” Melissa Skrbic-Huss, creative lead at Amadeus Consulting, told LinuxInsider.
“This is Google’s attempt to try and rein in the craziness of how Android apps look,” said Al Hilwa, a research program director at IDC.
The major issue with Android’s fragmentation “is the loss of brand identity,” he told LinuxInsider. “If you call a device an Android device, what does that mean?”
The Android Design website goes into great detail. Among other things, it spells out Google’s creative vision, design principles, style, themes, typography, patterns, gestures, building blocks, and switches and dialogs.
Google has three overarching design goals for its core apps and the Android OS at large.
One is that apps should be sleek and aesthetically pleasing on multiple levels, with crisp, meaningful layout and typography, and clear, fast transitions. The experience should be “magical,” Google said.
The second is that the apps should be intuitive and easy to use, without overwhelming users with too many choices.
Third, the apps should empower people to try new things and use the apps in inventive new ways while feeling personal.
The Android Guide is Google’s attempt to inject a level of standardization in Android’s look and feel. Google is probably trying to resolve some of developers’ complaints about Android.
Developers have to worry about differences in the UI of different versions of Android, differences in hardware specs, and differences in the versions of Android that run on various hardware platforms, Simon Khalaf, president and CEO of Flurry, told LinuxInsider.
“Software and applications are the fuel of an ecosystem, and software developers make that fuel,” he pointed out.
Fragmentation enabled the rapid pace of R&D development — “a key factor in Android’s success,” according to Hilwa — but the problems with the OS “will become more prominent to the extent that the market matures and the growth rates flatten.”
Schmidt’s discussion of fragmentation “is evidence that it’s an issue for the brand and the platform,” he argued.
You’ve brought up an important Android issue – many hardware platforms. We are new to the mobile apps design. A question for you: If you were designing a phone app today, what pixel count would you use for the UI layout? For example, one can use 480 x 320 pixels for iPhone as a layout guide.
Here you could find all the necessary information http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/screens_support.html Please, see Table 3.
With more and more people choosing Android based devices, the demand for Android apps has shot up. Android application development is big business these days, and both businesses and individuals want to get their very own android app developed for a specific purpose. If you are one of these, it’s important to note that the most essential part of any mobile application development is choosing the right developer. So, if you want the best Android app, you need to choose a good android app developer.
The market now offers a variety of smart phones through which one can easily have accesses to the virtual world of internet. If the business has a website that is compatible with the desk top PC but not compatible with the operating system and the platform of the smart phone the users of the smart will not be able to access the website. Ultimately it is the loss of the website not the smart phone user. Most of the smart phones are based on Android platform.
The recession hasn’t been hard on everyone. There is one group of professionals who have barely noticed the economic slowdown. Android Application Developers have been extremely busy the past year creating new and innovative applications for phones that use the Android operating system. These developers have used this recession as a time for innovation. Industry reports state that 18 phones will be coming out within 6 months that utilize the Android operating system. The first phone that introduced the Android system is the T-Mobile G1. Google realized that there was potential at this point. This is all in an effort by Google to expand its reach of the mobile market share against its arch rival Apple.
It’s not tough to spot the best Android app developers. All you need to do is simply look at their applications. Even the brand-new Android owner can tell you which apps took talent and which were hastily done without regard to the end result. The best Android app developers release app after successful app, and all share similar characteristics. This holds true whether the app is aimed toward the gaming population or to the practical users who use their Android to make life easier.