Creating different layout for android phone and tablet

Question

This is a basic android question. I have app which need to have different screen design for a phone and a tablet. The phone needs to have a ListView and the Tablet need to have a GridView of items.

I wish to know how can I do this without making two different apps.

Thanks

Answer 1

Basically you have to make different layouts for both android phone and tablets. Android is smart enough to differentiate. For example for large screen you can just make a new folder namer Layout-large. and put your tablet xml in it. Android will pick xml from here and in case of phone it will pick from simple layout folder. The configuration qualifiers you can use to provide size-specific resources are small, normal, large, and xlarge. For example, layouts for an extra large screen should go in layout-xlarge/.

I would recommend if both phone and tablet screens and totally different you can make two different apks and load on same Id on google play. This way your application will be light weight and will be be fast. Google play automatically can detect that application is for tablet or or phone.You need not to worry about that.

Answer 2

You basically need to provide different layout files for different qualifiers.

As a very brief example, xml layout files places in the layout-sw720dp (or layout-large for API level < 13) folder will be used for devices more than 720 dips wide (i.e. 10" tablets).

Check Supporting Multiple Screens and Providing Resources in the Android documentation.