Days ago, one of my firends blog that iOS has a fixed resolution for
iPhone and iPad while Android and other OSes have not. It makes very
different experience for application programmers and users. Apps for
iOS usually provide better user experience than apps for other OSes.
Because, iOS programmers have better chance to optimize UI for
devices.
It reminds me that PC has defacto(?) standard resolutions. Although,
you can use some wier resolution, but most people use 800x600,
1024x768, and recently 1280x720. Programmers have a chance to
optimize their application for these frequently used resolution,
although we don;t full-screen for most time.
For mobile devices, screen size and resolution are various today. If
there is an API that devices can suggest frequently used resolutions
(QVGA/WVGA/...), it can help app programmers to improve app UI. For a
device that does not provide frequently used resolution, it suggests
apps to use one of frequently used resolutions that the device can
rescale it well. For example, if the screen of a device is very
closed to WVGA, it can suggest applications to use WVGA, and rescale
and shift screen properly to get better user experience. All that app
programmers have to do is to optimize their UI for some (a few?)
frequently used resolutions to get better output. It also encourages
vendors to produce devices with frequently used resolutions.
I don't know UI well. It is just an idea that I got suddenly. I post
it here for finding some one who really knows this issue.