More information about Android screen sizes was gathered this last month, and is analyzed below.

Android phones
320 px width – 85% of devices queried – phone
360 px width – 4.5% of devices queried – phone
400 px width – 5% of devices queried – 5.3″ screen size
600 px width – 1% of devices queried – tablets
800 px width – 4.5% of devices queried – tablets

The screen sizes are becoming more varied with new devices with new screen sizes and resolutions becoming available, making it ever more challenging for the Android developer.

How is this information useful to you in developing apps?

HTML5 / CSS3 development for mobile browsers needs to be aware of the reported screen size to effectively build a mobile site.

However, the screen resolution listed in the device specifications is NOT the same as what is reported by the mobile browser itself. Specifically, what is the window size information available via JavaScript using window.innerWidth and window.innerHeight. It is usually very different than the device’s screen resolution.

The iPhone and iPad are consistent and predictable. All iPhones report a window size of 320 x 460, and all iPads report a window size of 768 x 1004.

The ‘fun’ part is supporting the wide variety of window sizes on Android devices. However, it is exceptionally hard to find data on the window size different devices report via JavaScript.

A month ago I released a mobile app for Android and iOS called ScoreKeepr. During the update check to my server, the app reports the device’s windows size.

Here are the most common reported screen sizes for Android devices (in Portrait orientation):

Android phones
320 px width – 90% of devices queried
360 px width – 10% of devices queried

Android tablets
800 px width – 1 device reporting (insufficient data)

Using this information, you can more easily develop your CSS media queries, knowing what sizes your app is likely to encounter in the wild.

This will be an ongoing monthly report, and will reflect different reported window sizes when new devices are introduced. By regularly reporting this information, a trend over time can be identified.

What information are you collecting from your apps? Please share your suggestions for additional anonymous information to collect. Information must be available via JavaScript query.

UPDATE FEB 1st: final numbers for January 2012 included

UPDATE July 2010: since the beta 2 release of iOS4, Apple has disabled websockets support. A few readers pointed this out, so I made a trip to an Apple Store it run a few tests.

Confirmed: iOS4 as it is released reports it does NOT have websocket support.

ORIGINAL POST:

Since the Safari web browser on the iPhone is based on WebKit, it makes sense that at some point support for WebSockets would make it to the iPhone.

Safari on iPhone OS 4.0 beta 2 supports WebSocket.

Once OS 4 is available for the iPad, support should be there as well.

Thanks to reader Arun for pointing this out.

WebSockets NOT supported in iOS 4.0 by Jim Bergman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://jimbergman.net/about.

Here is a quick test to see if your web browser supports WebSockets. At the time this post was published Google Chrome developer channel release 4.0.249.0 is the only browser to support WebSockets.

Here is the JavaScript code (or right click and save file as WebSocketTest.js):

function WebSocketTest()
{
  if ("WebSocket" in window)
  {
    // Google example code
    //  var ws = new WebSocket("ws://example.com/service");
    //  ws.onopen = function()
    //  {
    //    // WebSocket is connected. You can send data by send() method
    //    ws.send("message to send"); ....
    //  };
    //  ws.onmessage = function (evt) { var received_msg = evt.data; ... };
    //  ws.onclose = function() { // websocket is closed. };
    alert("WebSockets supported here!\r\n\r\nBrowser: " + navigator.userAgent + "\r\n\r\ntest by jimbergman.net (based on Google sample code)");
  }
  else
  {
    // the browser doesn\'t support WebSockets
    alert("WebSockets NOT supported here!\r\n\r\nBrowser: " + navigator.userAgent + "\r\n\r\ntest by jimbergman.net (based on Google sample code)");
  }
}

Sample HTML code (save file as WebSocketTest.html in same folder as .js file above):

<html>
<head>
<title>JimBergman.net - JavaScript: WebSocketTest</title>
<script type="text/javascript" src="WebSocketTest.js"></script>
</head>
<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<a href="javascript:WebSocketTest()">Run WebSocket test</a>
</body>
</html>