Help Why is Android list font & padding increasing with newer versions and larger screens?

[Deleted User]

My first Android phone was the Motorola Droid, and list views seemed fine, I could see 9-10 items per screen and scrolled accordingly. Now that we're at Android Lollipop 5 with Material Design, list views have more padding, bigger fonts, and show like 5-7 items per screen and I have to scroll more often.

Why is this? It's not like I had a hard time seeing content on the screen (and if they did they could have just had more padding and bigger fonts relative to the screen size to begin with), and phone screens are larger now, just magnifying content and making it look more like a child's toy.

Why the movement to more padding and bigger fonts? It's like I'm looking at marshmallows with colored frosting over everything. It just looks and feels over-padded and over-sized. Have our sausage fingers really gotten that much fatter in five years?

 

[mikedt]

That sounds like more recent versions of Tapatalk. Been a lot of people howling about that one, with the points you specifically mention. What apps are you actually using and have changed?

 

[Deleted User]

Look at the Android Settings list from Froyo to Lollipop; how many items do you see on the screen going through the versions? Look at any list that matches the Android theme in any app from Froyo to Lollipop; more padding, less info on the screen, yet larger screen sizes.

The first time I really noticed this was on the Galaxy Nexus, when its 4.65" screen came out with the latest Android, there wasn't more items on the screen, there was less, because Google had increased not only the font size but the padding of each list item. Now with Lollipop they've increased it again.

Screen sizes are bigger, we should be able to see more on the screen, not less. I don't understand this movement to larger screens with more padding and less information on the screen.

 

[mikedt]

I count 6 settings items with the Froyo one. Mind you it's a few years since I've actually used a Froyo or Gingerbread device. Don't know about Motorola Droid, I've never seen one of them, I'm in China. And my Samsung Galaxy that had Gingerbread 2.3 died of a busted screen about three years ago.


This is Lollipop 5.0 on my current Oppo phone, has a larger screen than my late Samsung S,
there's 8 settings items visible, which is more.

Manufacturers do customize Android and do different things to it, Samsung, Motorola, Oppo, etc. How does it like compare with like "vanilla" Froyo or Gingerbread compared to "vanilla" Lollipop and the forthcoming Android M version. I know it happened with Tapatalk, more white space and less items in new versions, and many people were not happy about that at all. I use plenty of other apps that have become Material themed, and haven't been like that.

 

[funkylogik]

Here's my lollipop set on hugest font (bad eyes)

Here's it is at tiny font

Not much difference, just more padding
(i have no point here lol)

 

[mikedt]

Some padding is necessary, I've got reasonable eyes, but have fat fingers that may not be particularly accurate. And the last thing I want to be using is a stylus, remembering the absolutely tiny menu items of Windows CE on a PDA I used to have.