Drawables are always read from mdpi folder, regardless of screen size

Question

I am trying to create an application that works both on Samsung galaxy tab GT P1000 and samsung galaxy tab 10.1; The samsung galaxy tab 10.1 (1280 * 800) has a much bigger screen than that of the GT P1000, so I am assuming the GT P1000 should read from hdpi, and 10.1 should read from xhdpi. The surprise is that both of them are reading from the mdpi folder. Regards

Answer 1

Large screen size does not necessarily means high pixel density. For pixel density you have to consider both physical screen size and screen resolution.

For example consider Galaxy Note 1 and Galaxy Tab 10.1, both have screen resolution of 1280*800 but galaxy tab 10.1 has physical screen size of 10.1 inch whereas galaxy note has physical screen size of 5.3 inch, which is almost half of galaxy tab size. Thus galaxy note has more pixel per inch than galaxy tab 10.1 and it has xhdpi density, where as galaxy tab 10.1 has mdpi density, check density values in this link-

http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/screens_support.html

For 10.1 tab you should use drawable-xlarge-mdpi folder and GT P1000 should also use mdpi but as I have seen on many online posts that GT P1000 has problem, it has mdpi density but it uses drawables from hdpi, I have not checked myself so for GT P1000 you can try to use drawable-large-hdpi folder, if drawable-large-mdpi does not wok.

And also add xlarge support in your manifest.

                  <supports-screens       
                  android:smallScreens="true" 
                  android:normalScreens="true" 
                  android:largeScreens="true" 
                  android:xlargeScreens="true"
                  />

You have to use 2.3 and above sdk for using xlarge as it was added later.