What size of screenshot should I use in the Android Market?

Question

Android Market now allows you to upload screenshots in three sizes: 320x480, 480x800, or 480x854. Which size should I use?

The 320x480 screenshots look pretty blurry on my 480x800 Nexus One. But I'm afraid that if I use larger images, they will be illegible on 320x480 (my screens have a lot of text on them).

Looking at http://developer.android.com/resources/dashboard/screens.html it only shows densities, not screen sizes. Those densities are split equally between "Normal/HDPI" and "Normal/MDPI".

Would it be possible to upload both and have the market serve 320x480 images only to phones that need them?

Answer 1

I'd go with 480x800. As someone already pointed out, they got scaled down for thumbnails anyway, and also for fullscreen pics on MDPI devices. I've had issues with 480x854, where it looks like a strip on the left and the bottom of the picture has been removed on the thumbnails when viewed on a 480x800 device like a Desire. Fullscreen pictures seem ok though. As there are more 480x800 devices than x854 ones, I'd go with 480x800.

For reference, I'd be interested on how the thumbnails in these apps look for you on your phone:

market://search?q=pname:de.boersego.gmt.android (480x854 screenshots)

market://search?q=pname:com.kevinread.profanitybuzzer (480x800 screenshots)

Answer 2

If you upload the bigger resolution the market will automatically resize it down. On the small screens there would be no difference regarding your text readability because the text proportions would still be the same.

Answer 3

Uploading in 320x480 seems to fix the cropping issue but then the screenshots zoomed looked terrible on 480x800 screen.

Since 480x800 seems to be an increasingly popular resolution, I'd settle for that.

No matter what the resolution is: Google's JPEG quality setting is ultra-low so your screenshots will always looks horrible.

If you come from iOS background where screenshots (all at the same size) are perfect I am sorry to tell you there is no solution: you have to get used to this until Google decides to resize screenshots proportionnaly and use a decent quality compression that doesn't leave huge artefacts on the screenshots.

Keep uploading high quality PNG24 at 480x800 so they have a good source the day they hopefully decide to recompress the screenshots with a better quality.