I have a Java app that had been written originally to run on a HTC P6500 Windows Mobile device using a JVM from Esmertec (or whatever the company is now called). For whatever reason, before I ever joined the company, the app was written using absolute positioning and the main AWT Frame of the app is set to 240×295 in size. For a long time that has been fine because our app has only ever run on one type of device. We are now being asked to ‘port’ our app to the HTC HD2 device which has a screen resolution of 480×800. A while back one of our customers gave us a device and we ran the app on it and as you would expect it didn’t take up the full screen and just looked really small. So we came up with an estimate of how long it would take to refactor the app to work on any size screen.
Now, I am supposed to start working on it, and again we have been given a loan of another device for testing. I have just installed the app on the device again and everything looks fine. The app takes up the entire screen space and all the text and buttons etc. seem to be stretched to compensate for the higher resolution. On the one hand this is great because I don’t really need to change anything, but on the other hand I am worried by the fact that it appears to differ between the two devices I have had.
Does anyone know of any reason why this difference might have occurred? Is there something in the device or Windows Mobile software that forces an app to stretch to full screen and thus scale up all components within the app (i.e. text labels, buttons, text fields etc.).
Works fine on the HTC HD2, so it must just be stretching it to fit the screen, case closed.