Mobile
Android 3.2 to Bring New Way of Viewing Non-Tablet Apps
It’s no secret that Android tablets are lacking in the optimized application department with current numbers for optimized Honeycomb applications hovering around 250-300 in number. And it doesn’t help that the rest of the applications, the ones designed for phones, often look and behave terrible. Well, to combat that, Google has announced that it will optimize those phone apps better using something called ‘zoom’ mode, a feature that will likely be coming in Android 3.2.
Right now, phone apps on Honeycomb tablets run in ‘stretch’ mode but owners will, after the update to Android 3.2 (Google says ‘upcoming’ update but it will be Android 3.2), will be able to switch between stretch and zoom modes.
Zoom mode is going to emulate a normal/mdpi screen and then scale up to the point that it fills the screen.
In cases where an app does not properly resize for larger screens, this screen compatibility mode can improve the app’s usability by emulating the app’s phone-style look, but zoomed in to fill the screen on a tablet.
If you’re wondering how that looks, here is a before and after image, the zoom feature shown on the right:
Not bad, but quite frankly, this should have been available from the get-go and still does not remedy the fact that there are a minimal amount of tablet optimized applications on the Android Market right now.
Android 3.2’s roll out to the Motorola Xoom is imminent so this feature should be available to owners of that tablet very soon.
Via: ThisIsMyNext
aashish
07/11/2011 at 7:12 pm
android really rocks
Internet Dude
07/11/2011 at 8:08 pm
Its coming along nicely.
Dan Jay
07/11/2011 at 8:12 pm
I like Android but I think it’s running on too many devices. They need to limit the OS to a couple of phones or at least a couple of platforms. Too many API’s and devices make the system less stable and prone to annoying bugs. This is why Apple’s iPhone works so great because they only have to develop the OS for one phone. An iPhone is an iPhone. Write an app once and it works on all phones. Testing the software is also much easier as well.
Han
07/12/2011 at 1:20 pm
This is a welcome update, but “often look and behave terrible” is stretching the truth a bit. I have over 30 downloaded non-Honeycomb apps, and only 4 have acted/looked weird.