Samsung Galaxy Tab 7inch - Layout Issues

2
votes

I have been laying out some Android xml screens on a Galaxy Samsung Tab 7" GT-P3110 which has a screen resolution of 1024 x 600. It is running Android ver 4.0.3

My customer however is running a Galaxy Samsung Tab 7" SPH-P100 with Android 2.2 with the same screen size and resolution.

When the customer is viewing the screens I have created they are being cut-off width ways.

Both devices appear to have the same size and resolution and I'm trying to work out why there are differences in layout ?

Galaxy Samsung Tab GT-P3110 http://www.samsung.com/uk/consumer/mobile-devices/tablets/tablets/GT-P3110TSABTU-spec

Galaxy Samsung Tab SPH-P100 http://www.samsung.com/us/mobile/galaxy-tab/SPH-P100ZKASPR

1
androidandroid-layout
for your tablet you have taskbar for 2.2 it wont be there. – Padma Kumar

1 Answers

7
votes

I've done some digging into this...

Here on SO, there are a few comments like "device manufacturers can select the density of their device to achieve a desired UI -- for example the Samsung Tab uses a density that is a fair amount larger than the actual DPI, resulting in an overall larger UI." from basics of device-independent-pixels, and this is further reported on other sites...

One user has dug more deeply into this - and discovered that the original Galaxy Tab 7 reported that the Galaxy Tab did not obey the developer documents:

160dp is always one inch regardless of the screen density

but instead reports its display as hdpi instead of mdpi. The explanation on the Google blog for this is:

In this context, the Samsung has another little surprise: If you do the arithmetic, its screen has 170 DPI, which is far from the densest among Android devices. Still, it declares itself as “hdpi” (and as having a “large” screen size). The reason is simple: It looks better that way.

For more info on this, see:

With this in mind... the only remaining piece of the puzzle is what's happened in the Galaxy Tab 2... well, my guess is that Samsung have decided in ICS to change the Galaxy Tab 2 back so that it "correctly" reports itself as a medium density rather than high density device...

... and that's why your Galaxy Tab 2 displays content so differently to your customer's Galaxy Tab 1