I can see 800x480 on 1.5 as a stop gap measure, so I'm holding off for 1.6 devices before buying 800x480 hardware.
The reason for this is that I could spend time sorting out a 800x480 layout which works on a 1.5 device only to find that all that work goes out the window when the OEM releases a firmware update to bring the device to 1.6 and adopts donuts method of layout scaling. An example of what I've seen in terms of difference between the 1.5 Archos WVGA skin and the 1.6 SDK WVGA skin can be seen with image sizes; If you have an app which doesn't have a supports-screens tag or declare a minimum SDK level of 4 (yup, declaring minimum SDK of donut alters the layout behaviour) and a layout file within it has an ImageButton containing an image which is 48 pixels high (i.e. 10% of the screen hight in portrait mode) it's hight is still 48 pixels on the 1.5 Archos WVGA skin (thus making it only 6% of the screen hight in portrait mode), but on 1.6 it's scaled so the image ends up being 72 pixels high (thus making it around 9% of the screen hight, closer to the original). This means that on a 1.5 WVGA device the layout can look sparse and odd, whereas on 1.6 it looks a lot closer to what you originally had. Given the state of the open source repo (I've been using the 1.6 build from the open repo for a few days and it seems rock solid) I'd suggest we're in the last weeks of Donut development the useful lifespan of a 1.5 supporting non-HVGA layout is most likley limited. Al. On Sep 7, 11:41 pm, Mark Murphy <mmur...@commonsware.com> wrote: > Dianne Hackborn wrote: > > There shouldn't be any until WVGA is officially supported in the > > platform. That is planned for 1.6, but 1.6 is not yet officially > > supported, and there is a fair lag from when the platform software is > > done to new devices being released with it. > > Uh, no offense, but HTC Magic devices shipped with Android 1.5 right > about when the SDK became available. In Spain, IIRC. You may recall > modest gnashing of teeth over this. > > While the core Android team may know timelines vis a vis product > launches, we out here in the hinterlands have to plan for another > possible "here's the SDK! better support it tomorrow!" release. > > > Afaik, the Archos tablet is based on 1.5, and thus does not use the > > official screen support in the 1.6 platform. I have no idea what > > exactly they are doing, but unless it is a 1.6-based device, it would be > > of questionable value for someone wanting to follow the standard platform. > > If it sells in decent quantity, or looks like it might, whether it is > "the standard platform" or not means little -- we have to know how to > support it. That means some of us will need to get our grubby > medium-sized hands on it, to test apps and advise others. In fact, the > possibility that they *do* deviate from the norm is all the more reason > some of us will need hardware, since we will not be able to rely upon > emulators as much. > > As the long-standing Chinese proverb/curse goes: "May you live in > interesting mobile OS platforms" (or something like that)... > > -- > Mark Murphy (a Commons > Guy)http://commonsware.com|http://twitter.com/commonsguy > > _The Busy Coder's Guide to *Advanced* Android Development_ > Version 1.1 Available! --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Developers" group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
