Posted by Maru Ahues Bouza, Director, Android Developer Relations
From foldable innovations to seamless connectivity, Google and Samsung continue to work together to create helpful experiences on Android phones, tablets, smartwatches and more. Today at Galaxy Unpacked in Seoul, Samsung unveiled the new Galaxy Z Flip5 and Z Fold5, Galaxy Watch6 series and Galaxy Tab S9 series.
Here are four more reasons to make sure your app looks great on all your users’ favorite screens with these new tools from Samsung. Here are three ways to make sure your app is ready for these great new Samsung devices.
1. Provide a great folding experience
The launch of the new Galaxy Z Flip5 and Z Fold5 brings two new foldables to the Android ecosystem, so it’s important to offer experiences with fully adaptive UIs. The bottom line is that layout and application behavior depends on the device’s configuration and available features, not the device’s physical type.
When it comes to delivering a great foldable experience, here are some of our top tips:
- Use window size classes to guide layout decisions based on the current window state, incorporating feedback from common device types.
- Check out the folding features in Jetpack’s WindowManager, which provides folding features that span your application’s current window.
- Make dynamic, runtime decisions based on whether a feature is available, rather than assuming that the feature is available for a given device.
- Simply referring to the user’s device as “device” in the UI covers all forms and is the easiest to implement. However, distinguishing between the many devices a user may have provides a more intuitive experience and allows you to display the device type to the user using heuristics relevant to your use case.
Learn more about how (and why) to implement the tips above in this detailed blog post, and check out support for different screen sizes for best practices for updating your app.
2. Design multi-device experiences in mind
With new devices, big and small, it’s important to think through the user experience you want to accomplish. A big part of that is your app’s UI and design – depending on screen sizes and types, special considerations need to be made in branding.
Making sure your app looks great on big screens is a critical part of your users’ experience. Material supports beautiful, sleek tablet and foldable experiences — and at Google I/O this year, the team delved into the latest updates to its big-screen guidelines for designers and developers. You can also get inspired by the new design guide and mockups by checking out the big screen gallery.
To aid challenges in designing and building great watch experiences that work for everyone, we created our The Wear OS Gallery This blog and accompanying video series was created to help you design inclusive smartwatch apps. For more information on beautiful smartwatch design, check out the new Wear OS Gallery, where you’ll find comprehensive design tips, straightforward use cases, and implementation ideas.
3. Prepare for Wear OS 4
The next generation of Wear OS is here! The Galaxy Watch6 series comes with Google’s new smartwatch platform, Wear OS 4. This platform update will also be coming soon to other Samsung Galaxy watches, including the Watch4 and Watch5.
Wear OS 4 is based on Android 13, which is several versions older than the current version of Wear OS, so your app will need to handle the system feature changes implemented in Android 12 and Android 13. We recommend that you start by testing your app. And releasing compatible updates first – a basic but critical quality step that gives users a great app experience when devices upgrade to Wear OS 4.
Download the Wear OS 4 emulator by Android Studio Hedgehog to explore new features and test your app on the Wear OS 4 developer preview.
The release of Wear OS 4 comes with a number of exciting changes – including a new way to build watch faces.
The new Watch Face format is a descriptive XML format that allows you to configure the appearance and behavior of watch faces. This means there is no code to implement to create a watch face and no code is included in your watch apk. The Wear OS platform takes care of the logic needed to deliver a watch face so you can focus on your creative ideas, not code optimization or battery performance.
Get started with watch faces using our documentation or create your own watch faces with Samsung’s Watch Face Studio design tool.
Start building a multi-device experience today!
With amazing additions to the Android ecosystem from Galaxy Unpacked, there’s never been a better time to make sure your app looks great on all the devices your users know and love – from tablets to notebooks to watches.
Learn more about building multi-device experiences from Deezer, where they increased their monthly active users 4X after improving multi-device support. Then get started with Jetpack WindowManager to help you build a responsive app for large screens by checking out the documentation and sample app. Finally, get to know Wear OS 4 and try it out with your app!