Size of the Icon

[t g]

Hi there,

I only want to know which size of the icon used on my cellphone delivers the best results?

Greetings from Germany

[Peep Prants]

http://developer.android.com/design/style/iconography.html

[SteveJG]

The simple answer is always use 48x48 for the apps' icon ...the image you assign in AI2 to the Screen1 Properties Icon on the Designer.  This image needs to be a png, jpg or similar file; oddly you can not use a .ico file. 

Within the app, the answer depends, The excellent article Peep points to shows that.   What makes sense to me:  The design screen for AI2 Apps using Android API 3 (the current AI2)  is expecting a 3" screen with dimensions of 320x480 pixels.  That image size is probably the maximum size image most users should use within the app for images.  Larger images are not going to provide better resolution.   Larger images will work because AI currently scales down larger images; this is at the expensive of larger file size (which could be a design issue).

Oh, but what about tablets and their larger screens?  Well, this is an issue with AI2.   In order to allow development for tablets using API 3, the AI "magnifies" the images used in the app to display on the larger screens.  Wonder why the images are a bit fuzzy on some Tablets?   The answer is largely because everything, the images, fonts etc. are magnified and when that happens, image quality is lost.

Hopefully, when MIT implements Android API 4 (the api that was designed to allow tablets and other neat things) this issue will be ameliorated (perhaps).   You notice form the article Peep pointed to there is a discussion of screen density.  Accommodating HDPI, XHDPI, xxHDPI etc is a challenge while at the same time providing compatibility with the old standards.

Regards,

Steve