Designing a Viz for Multiple Screens - A Pragmatic Perspective

I was preparing to tinker some more with a d3.js visualization from last year, with the idea to improve the experience on mobile devices. In looking at it, I had forgotten I had already done this in a first pass, so that it is roughly usable on iPhone and iPad.

Android - Notes on Determining a Representative Set of Screen Sizes/Resolutions to Test

I need to set up some representative Android virtual devices in order to test an app for different screen sizes and densities.  The app will run on Android 2.1 and later.

There are several main sources of information that it seems you have to tediously pull together:

1) Breakdown of devices that have accessed Android market, by screen size category and density

2) Details on the size/density categories, including actual screen densities

3) Actual screen sizes for Android devices from wikipedia

4) More screen sizes for Android (and other) Devices


Here are the (rough) specifications from Android on their size/screen categories

Illustration of how Android roughly maps actual sizes and densities to generalized sizes and densities (figures are not exact), from http://developer.android.com/images/screens_support

From http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/screens_support.html#testing, the representative density values seem to be:

• ldpi: 120ppi
• mdpi: 160ppi
• hdpi: 240ppi
• xhdpi: 320ppi

The table below was pieced together from the links above.  While there are 16 possible combinations of Android size and density, only eight register on the latest stats, and the top two account for 90% of the devices.

Draft Breakdown of Device Size and Density for Android Devices, October 2011
% of Devices (Cumulative)	"Android" Size,Density	Actual Pixel Dimensions	Representative AVD Specs	Comment
71.9 (71.9)	Normal, hdpi	FWVGA854 WVGA80 600x1024	FWVGA, 240ppi WVGA, 240ppi 600x1024, 240ppi	I assume 600x1024 is for some of the tablets (e.g, Galaxy Tab)
17.6 (89.5)	Normal, mdpi	HVGA	HVGA, 160ppi
3 (92.5)	Large, mdpi	FWVGA854 WVGA800 600x1024	FWVGA, 160ppi WVGA, 160ppi 600x1024, 160ppi
2.7 (95.2)	Small, hdpi	480x640	480x640, 240ppi
2.6 (97.8)	Xlarge, mdpi	WXGA 1024x768 1280x768	WXGA, 160ppi 12024x768, 160ppi 1280x768, 160ppi
1.2 (99)	Small, ldpi	QVGA	QVGA, 120ppi	Even the home screen looks unusable in emulator
0.9 (99.9)	Normal, ldpi	WQVGA400 WQVGA432	WQVGA400,120ppi WQVGA432, 120ppi
0.1 (100)	Large, ldpi	1024x600	1024x600, 120ppi
0 but will hit Fall 2011	Kindle Fire, Large, mdpi(?)	600x1024	600x1024; 169ppi	Kindle Fire to ship Nov 15, 2011; emulator specs from here, found via stackoverflow

And here's a reminder list of the dimensions for the named display sizes:

• FWVGA854: 480x854
• WVGA800: 480x800
• WXGA: 1280x800
• HVGA:  320x480
• WQVGA400: 240x400
• WQVGA432: 240x432
  
• QVGA: 240x320