Over on the main forum page under Community & Android news, the voting shows that, the smaller the screen, the more you want 16:9 format. I expected just the opposite. Just figured that the bigger the screen, the more useful the narrower dimension would be & with a 7" screen you would want the extra width of 4:3. If you haven't voted, check it out. BTW you can vote for more than one screen size to show your size preference for each.Cheers,kevhttp://www.slatedroid.com/community-android-news/5263-screen-size-aspect-ratio-poll.html
Screen size preferrences poll, curious results so far.
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When you read while lying down, you tend to grab these devices at their base. At least I do. When held this way in portrait mode, a longer screen would move the center of gravity higher. While that isn't a big issue with smaller displays, as the screen size goes up, it becomes more of an ergonomics issue.Normally as a developer, I'd prefer 16:9. Laptops, desktop monitors are all going 16:9 and haven't looked back at all, so knowing there's a standard configuration is helpful when designing. However, the resolution is also important, perhaps even more so than the aspect ratio. Anything with a 480 pixel dimension is not going to cut it. Websites, for example, are now designed assuming at least 800x600 resolution, with assumptions of 1024x768 being more and more common. A portrait mode of 480px's wide is practically useless in web browsing, unless you like sidescrolling all the time. Even if sites are shrunken to fit the 480px width, the amount of shrinking required to go from their 1024px or 800px width designs to fit 480px could make them either unusable or unattractive.
Pocket Aces,I agree that 4:3 is more useful when browsing the web, but I also find it better for reading ebooks on the smaller screens like 7" devices. I talked to a VP & product developer for Velocity Micro & he said their research shows a 50/50 split in preference for 16:9 vs 4:3 for tablets.
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16:9 is also fine for surfing the web. It just needs to be at a higher display resolution. It's anything with a 480px side that I don't like, and, oddly, many devices have decided to do just that. A 600px width is the bare minimum. We can barely see some sites with our 800x600 in portrait orientation, websites resized to fit width, as it is now. Sidescrolling is the about the worst thing you can do to an end user (in terms of usability).
I started some research on designing tablets a while ago: fineoils.blogspot.com , it might be now in Older posts now, because of recent developments. My preference are:1. For predominantly multimedia (video, audio, tablet gaming) tablet it's definitely 16:9 (better 16:8, or even 16:7.5, but the industry doesn't want to hear about these form-factors) on a 7....12" tablet. In portrait (eReader) mode such tablet might have ample space for book/library controls, notes, bookmarks, highlightes, twits, whatever on top or bottom of a page2. For a predominatly eReader use I'd still rather have 16:9 -- just to have these controls handy. 5"...7"...8" looks fine with me -- and when reading in bed, lol. Sure 4:3 format is quite OK for all the millions of unwashed masses and iPad fanboys, but I'd buy a 16:9 s3c6410-based ereader any day now. Retina class (>200 dpi) IPS transflective display here, please.3. For a "universal" tablet -- anything within these brackets
Oh, forgot one thing: in my blog I was talking how good leathered tablet case would feel. Or pressed bamboo. Somebody in China listens: shanzai.com: HeroTab RK7 Android 2.1 Tablet unboxing - ARMdevices.net
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It's not about iPads or being unwashed. When you hold the tablet near it's bottom, you've essentially created a lever. The center of gravity then produces torque. A higher center of gravity increases the distance from the pivot and produces higher torque, which your hand must then counteract. Not a big deal with smaller displays, but it will become a nuisance as the size increases.
As far as I'm concerned, 16x9 is only good for one thing ... watching movies. I have a 55" HD TV for that.When I read I want the screen to match a traditional book or magazine page as closely as possible. I haven't seen too many books or mags in 16x9 so 4x3 is my preference for any tablet or eReader. I know I'm on the losing side, though, so will have to just suck it up and accept a crappy 16x9 experience.
Having both a 7" 16:9 and 4:3 device, I prefer 16:9 for the following reasons:-App compatibility. Ive run into a number of apps, notably games that just dont run right on the PDNs 4:3 screen (ex: Air Controller maps the touchscreen to a 16:9 ratio but stretches the graphics to the PDNs full size making it unplayable, Jewels runs but shows jibberish on side of the playing board)-Form Factor. I can hold my Archos 7" device in my hand like a phone in portrait mode, it takes 2 to hold the PDN comfortably-Multimedia. I know its subjective but, I enjoy watching video on the go, and 16:9 dominates video
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[quote name='garstan;43811]As far as I'm concerned' date=' 16x9 is only good for one thing ... watching movies. I have a 55" HD TV for that.When I read I want the screen to match a traditional book or magazine page as closely as possible. I haven't seen too many books or mags in 16x9 so 4x3 is my preference for any tablet or eReader. I know I'm on the losing side, though, so will have to just suck it up and accept a crappy 16x9 experience.[/QUOTE']Yep, add me to the 4:3 list. I also voted for a 10", though obviously it will be a year or two before such devices are comfortable to hold (too heavy right now).In a sense, what this poll is asking is: what things would you do most with your tablet? The answer is kind of a confluence of two factors. First, we want to do several things, like read books and magazines, browse websites, play games, view movies and photo slideshows, etc. Second, we want--as much as possible--to do all this on a single device (funny, less than 5 years ago such a request would have sounded silly). Obviously, no single form-factor can do it all perfectly, so the "ideal" tablet is probably just a weighted combination of (a) which activities we would do most often, and (
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the optimal screen size and aspect ratio for doing those particular things. In other words, if I valued "watching movies" the most, then I'd expect 16:9 to be the preference. But for many of us (not all, obviously) I'd guess that if eBooks were the priority, then 4:3 might be the preference (i.e., book page aspect ratio). The fact that the poll is leaning toward 7" 16:9 tells me that most users are interested in using their tablet for video on the go. That's my logic, anyway. -Matt
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