5/16/2023 0 Comments Alarm clock by doubletwist![]() ![]() ![]() Talking to manufacturers and reading up on their roadmaps and statements, we can deduce what screen technologies major Android OEMs are marrying themselves to and thus, what to optimize for. Thanks to usage metrics in our rather popular other Android app, doubleTwist Player (used by millions of users every day), we were able to weigh these (often rather subjective) test results against what devices are most prolific in the wild, and would be in the future. You have to be extremely creative to circumvent the Android gamut problem: some devices having a limited color gamut and others an extremely wide gamut with wildly oversaturated colors.Samsung (S)AMOLED screens do not only crush darker greyscales, the newer versions of the screens are getting progressively worse at reproducing dark shades of grey.Even for devices with identical panels, gamma and white balance vary extremely from device to device (this is true for iOS devices too, to a lesser extent).No phone maker, with the notable exception of Motorola, cares about accurate reproduction of color.Interesting things we found through researching Android screens in general: With this much variety, you have to surrender your notion of designing for perfection in one place, and find what is the best in all places. Using remote viewing applications and a variety of lighting conditions, we verified gamma curves, color reproduction and our applications’ UI legibility and quality individually, time and time again.ĭid we find a perfect solution? No. Android devices come with TFT-LCD panels of varying quality and with various technologies: (S/)PVA, (S/H-)IPS, AFFS, each with their own unique dynamics and often manufacturer-calibrated specifically (yes, there’s different gamma curves), as well as AMOLED displays with similar varying characteristics. The answer is quite simple: an exhaustive process of testing. We tested the clock on various displays in a large variety of lighting conditions and settings. doubleTwist Alarm uses a very dark color scheme to ensure it is pleasant to use in dark spaces and uses a small amount of battery power on most Android devices - AMOLED screens actually use over double the power of ‘normal’ screens, like the iPhone’s, when displaying bright colors - and it prompted numerous other designers to ask me what the secret was: how did we overcome the challenge of designing for such a wide target and ensure a legible design that didn’t appear banded, jagged or otherwise completely screwy on ? Take for instance all the screen technologies and qualities between the hundreds of Android devices out there. It wasn’t just difficult for the obvious reasons, like implementation details, aesthetic preferences, and because you want to add more and more to an application as you go along designing it, but also because Android is simply a really hard platform to design for. Now there’s a problem that’s simply begging for a solution.ĭesigning the app was difficult. To start your day off frustrated and displeased doesn’t just throw your mood into a funk, it can actually be quite unhealthy. It’s kind of terrible: you can compare it to waking up every morning to find you’ve been sleeping on a small pebble. We wake up with it every morning - and it simply hasn’t been done right. The answer is simple: because this is extremely essential tool we use every day. Yet, the first question on anyone’s lips was always the same: “Why an alarm clock? Why would you take a swing at something so trivial and small, something so elementary to any cellphone made since the 1980s?” It has received universal acclaim, from Google executives to design publications and many Android and gadget websites. DoubleTwist Alarm has been an overwhelmingly successful project. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |