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Comment by ConstantineXVI | Hacker News Reader

There's yet to be a real standard-bearer for Android tablets (the Transformer was close, but Asus alone didn't have the name recognition to push it) before the N7; so I'd expect the quality of tablet apps to start shaping up finally. ICS being on a respectable number of devices should help as well (since 3.0 was a "breaking" release).

IMHO, with the exception of games[0] and such, Android handles phone-tablet scaling much better than iOS does: the UI properly fills the screen, text isn't pixelated, and you aren't forced into a phone-size keyboard that doesn't even reach the screen edge.

[0] games are typically very specific wrt resolution, this isn't a tablet problem as much as an Android problem thanks to the wide variance in screen aspects.

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“Android handles phone-tablet scaling much better than iOS does: the UI properly fills the screen, text isn't pixelated, and you aren't forced into a phone-size keyboard that doesn't even reach the screen edge.”

iOS has none of the problems you mentioned, so what exactly makes Android better than iOS in that regard?

Only on tablet-built apps. Foursquare (for example) only has a phone app.

on a N7: https://www.dropbox.com/s/vhy3ucrsmvtui76/Screenshot_2012-07...

and on an iPad 3: https://www.dropbox.com/s/gao416zu3ltikra/Photo%20Jul%2021%2...

Except the difference is: there are tens of thousands of iPad apps. How many Android apps are optimized for tablets?

(Silly example btw, who would use Foursquare on a 10" tablet?)

The point is that there's less of a need for a separate tablet version of many Android apps than there is for iPhone/iPad since Android's scaling is much more sophisticated.

iPad versions of apps aren't simply about scaling the UI. Take Twitter on Android tablets[0] for example, it's clear that merely enlarging the UI elements doesn't automatically result in an awesome UI on tablets.

Similarly, an UI design that works great on a phone (like with gestures from the side) might feel awkward on tablets.

[0]: http://www4.pcmag.com/media/images/285099-twitter-for-androi...

I write ipad apps for a living. I understand how scaling works.

The point is that a scaled up android app will usually look a lot better than a scaled up iphone app.

iPhone apps render at 3:2 rather than reformat to fit the iPad's 4:3 screen.

Even with games, if you use vector graphics and the aspect ratio is close-ish it can work pretty damn well. I tried out the phone version of Angry Birds on a Transformer at some point and if it weren't for the extra button on the bar allowing me to choose scaling modes I couldn't have known this wasn't targeted for tablets.

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