Considering the Difference Between Phones and Tablets

Android tablets and Android phones have some obvious differences, and size immediately comes to mind, but there are a few other differences:

Android tablets tend to be much larger than their phone counterparts.

Tablets are designed to be held in two hands, whereas phones are designed for only one.

Android tablet screens tend not to extend past the 7-to-10-inch range, and the largest phones max out around 5 inches.

The line between tablet and phone can blur at the 5-inch mark. Some “tweener” devices are marketed as phones, and others with nearly the same specs are marketed as tablets.

Tablet orientation varies depending on usage, whereas almost all Android phones have settled on portrait orientation for their screens.

Many Android tablets are designed for wide-screen media viewing, so they favor landscape orientation. Others, such as the Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire, are designed primarily for use in Portrait mode. That’s not to say that you can’t run an app in Portrait mode on a landscape tablet (or vice versa), but be aware that many users may run your app in an orientation other than the one in which you completed most of your testing.

Tablets and phones also have some differences in hardware design and operation that affect app design. This list describes them from the tablet perspective:

Tablets often lack always-on 3G or 4G data connections.

Tablets tend to be larger, use larger batteries, and benefit from much longer battery life than their phone counterparts.

Tablets may have cheaper cameras — or no cameras — because tablet cameras typically get less use than phone cameras.

Tablets often lack such common phone capabilities as GPS location service.

In addition, don’t be surprised if you have to design your app (or tweak an existing one) to accommodate new tablet features. Both the original 3.0 and later 4.0 versions of Android tablets support fragments, the user interface element known as the action bar, and the holographic theme (named Holo). Users expect you to add these new tools to your arsenal as you upgrade your app to add tablet support.