Screen size

Unlike PC displays, which have standardised to two or three common sizes, mobile phone displays still come in many shapes and sizes. The screens have grown larger, while smaller screens still exist at the lower end of the market. Displays typically support both portrait and landscape modes.

A large proportion of new devices ship with 240 x 320-pixel (QVGA) displays, and with the launch of S60 5th Edition, we are seeing the introduction of even larger displays — 360 x 640-pixel (nHD) touchscreens —in devices such as the Nokia N97 mobile computer. Many of the older and entry-level devices currently in use have smaller displays, including the popular 176 x 208-, 128 x 160-, and 128 x 128-pixel formats.

Figure: Screen size progress

There has been steady progress from simple, small-screen devices to today’s large-screen multimedia computers. Even today, however, low-cost devices such as the Nokia 2323 classic are being released with small, 128 x 160-pixel screens.

To deal with this diversity in screen size, the common approach in both design and development is to group devices into families that have common characteristics. Screen size is certainly one of those characteristics. Others may include browser type, XHTML and CSS support, and colour depth. Once devices are grouped, rules are established to adapt graphics, layout, styling, or even content for each device family. In the case of screen size, the impact on design depends in part on the platform you are designing for.

While the more limited devices ship in great numbers, they rarely are ideal target devices for Web or Flash applications. For Web and Flash, QVGA is a reasonable and safe standard to aim for.

In this section:

• Mobile Web sites

• Native applications