Fairphone is in!

Yes it's in (well already for over a month), the Fairphone! Since I was one of the first 10.185 backers, a special edition with an extra message:

Android SDKs, screensizes and resolutions: comparable hardware

Trying to get an overview of the possible combinations of Android SDKs and screensizes and resolutions, *and* what physical devices are comparable, I came to the below overview. If you know some more comparable hardware, please let me know, I'll update the tables.

The first table shows the different screensizes defined as per Supporting Multiple Screens | Android Developers, mapped on real existing devices.

Id	Screensize, resolution, physical	Comparable hardware
A	QVGA (240x320, low density, small screen, 3.3”)	-
B	HVGA (320x480, medium density, normal screen, 3.9”)	HTC Hero 1.5 but really has 3.2”
C	WVGA800 (480x800, high density, normal screen, 3.9”)	Google Nexus One but really has 3.7”
D	WVGA854 (480x854 high density, normal screen, 4.1”)	Motorola Droid (aka Milestone) but really has 3.7” and Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 (screensize unclear)
E	WQVGA400 (240x400, low density, normal screen, 3.9”)	-
F	WQVGA432 (240x432, low density, normal screen, 4,1”)	-

The table below shows which SDK supports the above screensizes.

SDK	Screensize Id
1.5	B
1.6	B-D
2.0	B-F
2.0.1	B-F
2.1	B-F

Remarks:

• The total nr of possible sdk+screensize combinations is 19!
  


• Android has organized the screensizes and resolutions into three generalized sizes and three generalized densities, see here.
  


• To support all these resolutions, you don't have to create icons/images for all possible combinations. By default Android tries to scale resources. Up to a certain limit it could be acceptable to let it do it for you, minimizing the number of images to create.
  


• An example setting is minSdkVersion = 3, targetSdkVersion = 4 (where 3 = 1.5, 4 = 1.6). Targeting 1.6 ensures that different screensizes can be supported if the device has 1.6 or higher.
  


• Cool skins you can find here. If you look at the configuration files, you can validate whether the screensize and resolutions are actually what you expect.
  


• Sources: Droid, Nexus One, Hero, Xperia X10.