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Are there many Android Apps optimized for tablets?

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brig2221

Lurker
I'm thinking about pre-ordering a Nexus 7 tablet to supplement my current iPad2. My wife hogs the iPad, and I really like the thought of using a 7" tablet. A $250 price point for the 16 gig model doesn't hurt either

Anyhow, not being familiar with Android tablets, I thought I would pose my question here before I pre-order. Are there very many apps in the Google Play store that are optimized for tablets? My understanding is that all Android tablet offerings thus far have failed to make much of a dent in iPad sales, leading to very little market share. It would make sense then that a lot of developers might not make tablet optimized versions of their apps for Android.

The last thing I want to do is get my tablet, hit the Google Play marketplace, and find that all the apps I want are phone apps. I would plan on using this as a consumption device, so the types of apps I would be looking at would be mobile banking apps, USA today, newspapers, you know, your fairly major and well known apps.

Any thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated!
 
brig2221 said:
I'm thinking about pre-ordering a Nexus 7 tablet to supplement my current iPad2. My wife hogs the iPad, and I really like the thought of using a 7" tablet. A $250 price point for the 16 gig model doesn't hurt either

Anyhow, not being familiar with Android tablets, I thought I would pose my question here before I pre-order. Are there very many apps in the Google Play store that are optimized for tablets? My understanding is that all Android tablet offerings thus far have failed to make much of a dent in iPad sales, leading to very little market share. It would make sense then that a lot of developers might not make tablet optimized versions of their apps for Android.

The last thing I want to do is get my tablet, hit the Google Play marketplace, and find that all the apps I want are phone apps. I would plan on using this as a consumption device, so the types of apps I would be looking at would be mobile banking apps, USA today, newspapers, you know, your fairly major and well known apps.

Any thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated!
Click to expand...

Unlike Apple iOS devices, our developers design for a variety of devices. As such, seperate versions of applications for Tablets and Phones make no sense, and are a hindrance to rapid development. iPhone apps are designed exclusively for iPhones, and as such look terrible on an iPad. Android apps are designed to run on anything from HVGA devices to 1080p devices.

So it really depends on the application. Most games and video applications should work great regardless. Most newsreader apps should look fine, but may be tweaked over time to work better on a 7" screen. Other print media will depend on where you get it... magazines from the Play store will likely provide an excellent experience. Otherwise, it falls back onto the content provider to provide an app that works well for a variety of devices.

Do you buy a different version of Quickbooks for your laptop (small screen) than you do for your desktop (larger screen)? While you will get a better UI if designed for a particular screen size, a properly designed app will accomodate whichever platform it runs on properly. Considering that most new Android phones are being released with 720p screens (similar to the Nexus7) means that content should be optimized for such a resolution.
 
c4v3man said:
Do you buy a different version of Quickbooks for your laptop (small screen) than you do for your desktop (larger screen)? While you will get a better UI if designed for a particular screen size, a properly designed app will accomodate whichever platform it runs on properly. Considering that most new Android phones are being released with 720p screens (similar to the Nexus7) means that content should be optimized for such a resolution.
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Honestly, that is a very good question, and I've never seen anyone put it in such clear terms. Not being a programmer myself, I have no idea why one would or would not design separate apps for tablets vs. phones.

Having no experience with Android up to this point, I have no idea how it works. I can say that running a native iPhone app on a iPad is terrible. The app is either rendered at exactly the same size (small) and resolution, or, you have the option to "fill to screen", which turns the app into a pixelated mess.

Maybe the way Android apps are designed, there isn't that problem. That said, I've got to think that at least some of them would not render correctly on a tablet, and thus would need tablet optimized version to look right. I'm just wanting to make sure that I wouldn't have to run phone versions of all the apps I want.
 
As a short answer, most apps render perfectly on the larger 7inch screen. I know from experience that apps on my 3.2in OV, worked perfectly on my flyer (7in tab) and on my 4in Evo
 
I think one of the issues that Android tablets run into versus iPad is that Apple can say "we have XXXX iPad apps". It's difficult for Android to give the same figures because there are essentially three kinds of Android apps (my terminology):
Phone apps (which will typically run fine on a tablet)
Tablet apps (this is the "number" that you'll get for tablet-specific apps...and is pretty worthless)
Combined apps...there are many apps that have two user interfaces (phone and tablet) built into one app. If you install the same apk file on a phone and a tablet, you'll see two different things when you launch them. For example, I use Friendcaster (a Facebook app). On the phone, I just get the timeline. On the tablet, I get a scrolling side bar with all the different areas of Facebook on the left (i.e. timeline, notifications, etc.), the timeline in the middle, and more information on the right if I click on an item in the timeline.

"Combined apps" are difficult to spot by looking through the Play Store (sometimes they will have tablet screen shots) and nobody counts them (AFAIK) when they give numbers for Android tablet apps. It would be nice if Google could give a number of tablet apps that includes both the tablet-specific apps and the "combined apps".
 
Brigg,
I have 3 phones with 3.5" screens, my Galaxy Nexus with a 4.something inch screen (I should probably know that) and my wife's Kindle Fire with a 7" screen. I run pretty much the same apps across all three devices and they all look great on each. That would be games, google currents, youtube, online banking, etc.

I'm not a developer so I don't know what voodoo they do to make the apps look great on all my devices. All I care is that they do look great and I don't have to purchase multiple versions of the same app for my phones / tablets.
 
Oh, and here's an advantage of Android and "combined" apps...you only have to buy them once and they work on both phone and tablet.
 
ylexot said:
Oh, and here's an advantage of Android and "combined" apps...you only have to buy them once and they work on both phone and tablet.
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Until certain devs decide months after a paid app was released to start selling an "hd" version instead of just updating the app to support higher res screens. Drives me insane
 
Some developers do write an app that supports tablet design as well as phone - e.g. Evernote has a radically different interface from the phone version - same with Astrid. Other apps like TouchDown have different apps for each platform but consistent license keys thus avoiding double purchases. Then there's SwiftKey that has totally different apps.

The vast majority of apps I have work wonderfully on both my 3.7" Droid Incredible and my 10" Xoom. Very very few apps seem to have problems with the tablet sized screen.

When you access Google Play from a tablet you will have a section for apps that work especially well on a tablet.
 
I'm not even exactly sure what "optimized for tablet" might mean.

Higher resolution icons so they don't look fuzzy when blown up? (Which leads me to wonder why android didn't come with native vector graphic SVG support from day one since it was always designed to deal with different size screens and screen rotation).

The ability to get more information included in a bigger screen?

What else does optimized for tablets mean?
 
Claghorn said:
I'm not even exactly sure what "optimized for tablet" might mean.

Higher resolution icons so they don't look fuzzy when blown up? (Which leads me to wonder why android didn't come with native vector graphic SVG support from day one since it was always designed to deal with different size screens and screen rotation).

The ability to get more information included in a bigger screen?

What else does optimized for tablets mean?
Click to expand...

TouchDown, Evernote and Astrid all have different views on a tablet thus taking advantage of the bigger display. The CNN app for tablets provides more features than the phone version. A couple of browsers have tablet versions that resemble desktop versions (Dolphin & Maxathon).
 
Rachel_Ambler said:
TouchDown, Evernote and Astrid all have different views on a tablet thus taking advantage of the bigger display. The CNN app for tablets provides more features than the phone version. A couple of browsers have tablet versions that resemble desktop versions (Dolphin & Maxathon).
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OK, so mostly just taking advantage of the extra screen to provide more information or a better layout seems like the main optimize for tablet goal.
 
If you look at the Play Store there is a specific section for tablet apps that runs about 4 pages. Nonetheless, having ordered a Nexus 7, I am assuming that any app that runs on my Galaxy Nexus phone will also run on the Nexus 7.
 
Making an app 'tablet compatible' these days is pretty much a matter of a couple of XML files, provided you've been writing to current APIs (which new apps should be, really). Even if you don't do that the layouts rescale, text reflows automatically, etc.

There's little justification for an 'HD' version except maybe for games where you have to come up with higher resolution graphics, but even then there are 720p/1080p phones coming out now...
 
Pulse, a news reader app, is fantastic on tablets. YouTube looks really nice too. The Gmail and Calender apps are really nice, especially on 10" tabs.
For games, ShadowGun, Osmosis, Cogs, Flick Golf Extreme all look great.
 
Anytime I hear someone say that Android tablets aren't worth buying over an iPad due to the lack of "tablet optimized" apps, they usually use Twitter as an example. And then I have to go through the trouble of explaining to them that that's not Android's fault, it's Twitter's fault for having a bunch of lazy developers.
But as many of the other posts have mentioned, theres plenty of "phone" apps and function and look just fine on Android tablets, and then you have the more tablet-optimized versions that look even better, especially with Google apps like G+ and GMail.
The whole "Android isn't as good as iOS for tablets!!!" is a dying argument that becomes more invalid by the day.
 
Speaking of tablet optimized games, it looks like dead trigger was released on tegrazone recently. Only 99cents which is really surprising. I was expecting it to cost like $5. Does have IAP though which makes me wish that it actually cost $5.
 
DanielM426 said:
Speaking of tablet optimized games, it looks like dead trigger was released on tegrazone recently. Only 99cents which is really surprising. I was expecting it to cost like $5. Does have IAP though which makes me wish that it actually cost $5.
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Only 99cents for the bare app then the in game purchases milk you dry. You can't even play without buying guns or grinding for hours to get them. Tegrazone sucks for suckering you in for 99cents then milking you in the game.
 
Oldspook said:
Only 99cents for the bare app then the in game purchases milk you dry. You can't even play without buying guns or grinding for hours to get them. Tegrazone sucks for suckering you in for 99cents then milking you in the game.
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Welcome to the forums Oldspook. :shakehands:


I thought about buying this game and then I read reviews in the Play Store like yours. I'll have to pass on this one.
 
And don't forget, a whole bunch of developers just got their hands on the N7. There's a very good reason why Google gives away devices at their developer conference. ;)
 
And I think what is awesome about the future of the Play Store is that more and more we are likely to see devs rally behind the various tools that will bring apps up to date in terms of 4.1. And remember that once more devs embrace apps that have code to support multiple screen sizes, we will have less apps "considered to be blown up phone apps." If I remember correctly, the beauty of deving for Android is that in one app you can code it for a modicum of screen sizes and according to the screen size the app will scale differently with the ability to customize for said screen size. A perfect example of this is Gmail on a smartphone and Gmail for a tablet. There aren't two apps, just one that is coded properly.

/rant (hopefully made sense :confused: )

jmar
 
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