Posted by the Android crew
Kakaonavi prides itself on offering quick, correct routes whereas providing a number of different useful options, together with instructions to the closest EV charging stations, automobile wash order providers, navigation knowledge, upkeep reminders, and extra. As Korea’s high rating driving assistant, Kakaonavi needs to make the every day driving expertise as simple as doable for its customers. Just lately, that meant making its providers constant throughout gadgets.
With an growing variety of folks utilizing giant display screen and foldable Android gadgets, Kakaonavi noticed a must evolve its software to optimize the driving expertise throughout all display screen sizes and shapes. To do that, the Kakaonavi crew targeted on establishing a high-quality person expertise for big screens by utilizing Android’s newest software program options.
Assembly the rising demand for big screens and foldables
Earlier than updating its app, Kakaonavi’s person expertise wasn’t tailor-made for big screens and foldables. The totally different sizes of gadgets brought on the UI to be displayed improperly on them, which affected the person expertise as a result of display screen ratio and backbone have a big influence on usability.
Kakaonavi additionally acknowledged that a lot of its customers most well-liked foldables as a result of they’re simpler to place in automobiles, permitting drivers to prop their gadget on a dashboard or middle console. “The rationale we determined to concentrate on foldables is as a result of versatile show choices supplied by them,” mentioned Jaesun Lee, Android developer at Kakaonavi. “Drivers can view the map nevertheless they like relying on how they fold or unfold the gadget inside their automobile.”
 Moreover, some drivers, together with professionals like truck drivers and taxi drivers, use Kakaonavi with three to 4 different apps concurrently by means of Android OS’s split-screen mode. On the time, the Kakaonavi crew had solely established the sort of multi-window helpfor gadgets with customary resolutions, resulting in a few of its customers experiencing UI points when making an attempt to run a number of purposes directly. |
Cohesive experiences throughout type components
Builders at Kakaonavi addressed these points by creating a standard UI for big display screen and foldable gadgets. They wanted to make sure the UI was constant whether or not the gadget was folded or unfolded, or in portrait or panorama mode. The UI additionally needed to work effectively whereas customers ran a number of apps on their gadget’s primary show. As a result of the flexibility to show map and placement data on a bigger display screen is without doubt one of the advantages of those gadgets, creating consistency throughout layouts was important to Kakaonavi’s success.
Utilizing ConstraintLayout, which lets builders create giant, complicated layouts with a flatter app construction, the Kakaonavi crew displayed a uniform, responsive UI whatever the display screen dimension or ratio. To deal with configuration adjustments which are widespread on these gadgets, corresponding to resizing home windows or orientation adjustments, Kakaonavi’s builders overrode onConfigurationChanged().
Overriding onConfigurationChanged() ensured the app ran easily on all display screen sizes and through view mode adjustments by stopping the system from recreating UI parts triggered by folding and unfolding a tool or opening a number of home windows. Manually configuring these adjustments to protect UI parts, moderately than robotically deleting and recreating them, drastically improved the app’s UI efficiency for these new type components.
“Because the map and UI state are up to date ceaselessly by GPS, we determined that the app would carry out higher by responding solely to adjustments in display screen orientation and display screen dimension with onConfigurationChanged(), moderately than restoring the earlier state by restarting the Exercise,” mentioned Jaesun.
The Kakaonavi crew additionally used multi-resume to boost the app’s multi-window help for big screens and foldables. Multi-resume lets its customers hold a number of purposes in an lively state whereas on display screen, making multitasking extra handy and dependable.
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Constructive outcomes and increasing alternatives
The variety of folks utilizing giant display screen and foldable gadgets has grown considerably and can proceed to develop as extra of those gadgets turn into obtainable. At the moment, there are greater than 270 million giant display screen Android gadgets in use, together with tablets, foldables, and Chrome OS gadgets.
Kakaonavi has seen this similar development in gadgets utilized by its shoppers. Because the model started optimizing its software for big screens in January 2022, its variety of month-to-month lively customers who use the app on foldables has elevated by 24.5%, and the corporate has acquired constructive suggestions from drivers utilizing tablets and foldables as their primary supply of navigation. As of at the moment, Kakaonavi is optimized for all obtainable tablets and foldables.
The Kakaonavi crew is worked up by the alternatives these new type components will deliver by giving its customers extra methods to work together with the app. Trying forward, the model plans to additional optimize its UI with Jetpack Compose and is already contemplating easy methods to additional tailor its multi-window help to giant screens and foldables.
“There will probably be extra gadgets with varied display screen sizes and ratios sooner or later,” mentioned Jaesun. “That’s why we imagine it’s necessary to at all times present an optimized UI and meet the wants of shoppers’ ceaselessly altering screens.”
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