Design Principles- Comparing iOS And Android Apps

It’s a matter of fact that iOS and Android devices together contribute to about 75% of the global mobile market. The causes look quite apt and well known as these devices provide a very distinct mobile experience to the user. And so far, there hasn’t been any competitor around that might take a dig over these two eminent platforms in the near future.

Now, as these two names are ruling the mobile market all over the world, there has been a tremendous need of designers as well, to consider both the platforms while designing app for the mobile devices. Let’s take a look at what you should actually know while designing an app for an Android device and the Apple iPhone.

 

Initial Phase Of The Design Is Similar

During the initial phase of development, you don’t have to worry a lot as most of the functionalities share common implementations in either of the cases when we talk particularly about the interaction design.

Users

Although Android users are a bit different from iPhone users, but developers of mobile applications might easily group users based on the operating system they might be using i.e. iPhone users are considered cool and trendy whereas Android users are goal-oriented. However, there is no typical difference between the users of two devices.

Contrasting Features of iOS And Android OS

Apart from a number of similarities, there are certain considerations while designing for both the platforms:-

The Home Function– Android employs a home function, so when you design a header for Android the name of the app itself is a link to the home. However, there does not exist complementary home in iPhone applications.

The Back Button– iPhone incorporates a back button in its navigation bar whereas Android includes a left-pointing arrow on the device or at the top of the display.

Global Actions- iPhone apps primarily focus on contextual actions while global actions can be placed in the navigation bar at the top. But in the case of Android, it usually allows space for three items related to the global.

 

Individual Design Refinement Approaches

Feature Options:- iPhone has an on/off switch for feature selection while Android offers a checkbox.

List Options:- In the iOS, list options offer the feature to check once. Whereas in Android, list selections incorporates a radio button with more space for padding between list items. Another distinction lies where Android list selection is a popup or overlay while Apple’s selection appear on the page.

Image Resolution:-

New iPhones make use of Retina display but not the old ones. The size of the image in retina display is 640 x 960 pixels while older phones use 320 x 480 resolution. Talking about the Android, there are wide resolutions varying from 480 x 854 to 2k displays.

 

The Bottom Line

We must anticipate that in upcoming days, companies work together to create design standards to make it convenient for the designers to create apps without having the trouble of multiple operating systems. Through this approach, companies will have to compete on the basis of  usability of the device and its features instead of apps.