Android. Too small text in TextView

Question

I follow the Android guideline and set text dimensions in "sp" units. In one of my layouts used for a ListView row all TextView sizes set to 8sp or 12sp. I tested the app in emulator with all possible screen dimensions and things went well. But some users (with Galaxy Ace and ZTE Blade) say that text in that ListView is too small (a couple of pixels per char). Why does it happen?

8sp is really small regardless. For readability, I would never make anything less than 12sp. — Jason Robinson, Apr 28 '12 at 09:30

score 1 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:32

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read this post What is the difference between "px", "dp", "dip" and "sp" on Android?

personally use "dp" unit; is more consistent

edited May 23 '17 at 12:32

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answered Apr 28 '12 at 09:21

Jimmy Collazos

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With "dp" instead of "sp" those users encountered the same problem. I thought it was because of "dp", so in a new version of the app I've replaced dimensions with "sp". But the problem remains. – tilex Apr 28 '12 at 10:07

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 28 '12 at 09:27

Basically you're letting the user select the font size when using SP. This is not a bad thing per sé, but it can lead to unexpected results when devices reports small sizes to the API (either because of user actually selecting a small text size, or a bug in the device software).

If possible, try increasing the units font size to find out what font size the user is using on his device. My guess is that it is set to be very small. If you don't have access to the devices I would stick with using DP.

Android. Too small text in TextView

2 Answers2