On launch, I am fading from my launch image to the application’s interface. To achieve this, I am adding a UIImageView with “Default.png” and animating its alpha just before makeKeyAndVisible.
Should Default.png always return the device-specific (or resolution-specific) version of the launch image? Or should I be checking the screen’s bounds and scale to pick the right one for the retina vs non-retina and 3.5 vs 4 inch screens?
I expected Default.png to behave much like other image resources – use the @2x version when supported (and the -568h version on the iPhone 5). But my experimentation in the simulator leads me to believe otherwise. Running the 4 inch simulator, the 3.5 inch image is used. This results in a splash image that does not extend to the bottom of the screen. The screenshot below shows the transition mid-animation.
Unfortunately I don’t have each device so was unable to confirm if this is just a quirk of the simulator.
In short, I want to be sure that the retina image is used on retina devices, and the 4 inch image is used on 4 inch devices.
The answer is you will have to explicitly load the device specific version of the image. This is custom animation and you cannot rely on Apple’s Default whatever loading behavior to achieve what you want.
First make sure that you you are configured properly and the correct default load image is displayed on the devices (dont trust the simulator too much (aka I never even use the simulator its so buggy))
And then as previous commenters suggested load a view with your images.
Remember that the default image is going to be loaded and shown by the cocoa framework. All you can do is show a view afterward, if you try and do some of the admittedly clever hacks with the on load that are on the web you will find that they will always break in some way.
If you need a full screen image animated or not on iPhone 5 you need to load that image explicitly for the device thats all there is to it.