Device screen resolutions ordered by OS

Its often a chore to track down what screen resolutions are supported by the various operating systems and devices that are commonly used on the Web. Vendor sites and developer guidelines are often helpful, but it means hunting down information across many sites and documents. Sites like GSM Arena are great, but it often means checking devices one at a time, and useful information for web developers are lost amongst the densely packed information that is of limited concern to us. As I was researching this information anyway, and I’m a bit of a data nerd, I thought I may as well catalogue the information on my blog for easy access at a later date. If the information is of use to anyone else, then all the better.

I’ve grouped the data by operating system, version, and device type, as I wanted to see what resolutions needed to be supported to broadly cover a particular OS. Not surprisingly, some of the more closed operating systems have tighter control and consistency potentially making them easier to support, while more open operating systems have a plethora of different resolutions and aspect ratios.

As Android is particularly varied, and impossible to predict which devices get updated to a subsequent version of the OS, I’ve kept all versions grouped together. The exception is Cupcake and below, as Android only supported one resolution at that time, making classification easy.

I only included operating systems (and versions) that are currently popular on the Web, or I suspect will be in the future. For feature phones, I used the information I gathered from Opera Mini stats to figure out what devices are still popular. I ignored desktop operating systems, as they are too varied to cover without spending longer than I wanted to on this study.

Other information I’m considering adding includes pixel density (but this varies widely as many devices have the same resolution but different physical sized displays), and the device pixel ratio (although this can vary depending on the browser used).

Without further ado, here is the data:

Smartphones

iOS: iPhone and iPod Touch

Android

Cupcake and below

Donut and above

Windows Phone

Microsoft specifies the resolutions that are support for each version of Windows Phone. This ensures consistency between devices.

Windows Phone 7

Windows Phone 8

Note: 1080p is only supported on Windows 8 GDR3 and above.

Symbian

S60, 2nd Edition

S60, 3rd Edition

S60, 5th edition to Nokia Belle (neé Symbian Belle)

BlackBerry OS

BlackBerry 5

BlackBerry 6

BlackBerry 7

BlackBerry 10

Note: The 1:1 display is the standard size for all keyboard BlackBerry 10 devices. 720p is the standard size for all BlackBerry 10 touch devices. WXGA is a one off resolution for the BlackBerry Z10 and the developer device.

MeeGo: Harmattan

The only smartphone released commercially with MeeGo was the Nokia N9 with the Harmattan variant.

Maemo

All versions

Note: Not all Maemo devices are phones, and they’re not particularly popular (outside of a blip in Finland), but the Nokia site made it easy to find the information, so why not?

Firefox OS

Note: The higher end Geeksphone Peak developer preview phone supports a qHD display, while the lower end, and currently announced consumer devices from ZTE and Alcatel support HVGA. Specs from OEMs such as Sony and LG have yet to be announced. This section will be updated when the information is available.

Feature phones

I’ve only included feature phones that have names and are relatively well known, as it is much easier to research data that way. Bada and later versions of Series 40 could be considered low end smartphone operating systems, and are sometimes marketed as such. I’ve kept them separate from smartphones as they are usually aimed at a very different market segment.

Nokia OS/Asha Platform

Series 40, 3rd Edition to Developer Platform 1.x

Note: the HVGA resolution was only found on one device; the Nokia 6260. This has a higher resolution than any subsequent Series 40 devices.

Series 40, Developer Platform 2

Asha Software Platform 1.0

Note: the Asha software platform is yet another rebranding of the S40/Nokia OS platform. It has the same APIs as Developer Platform 2, with additional localisation (JSR-238) and platform APIs. Web Apps use the Gecko engine.

Bada

Bada 1.x

Bada 2

Tablets

iOS: iPad

Android and derivatives

The NOOK and Kindle tablets are also included in this list. Each model shares a common resolution with an already included standard Android tablet.

Windows RT

Note: The original Windows RT includes a “Snap Mode” feature. This displays an app or web page in a sidebar, pinned to one side of the screen. The snapped view takes up 320px, the splitter control takes up 22px, and the remainder for the fill view (the regular web page). On first generation Windows RT machines, this leaves 1,046×768 for the main web page. In Windows RT 8.1, applications can be snapped to any width, so developers should take this into account.

To optimise your site/app to work in the snapped view, you must use the @viewport CSS AtRule.

BlackBerry Tablet OS

E ink eBook readers

eBook readers are not particularly popular for surfing the Web, but I thought it would be fun to include them. They all share common resolutions, so are grouped together.

TV

TVs share a set of standardised resolutions, so all platforms are grouped together. I should include SD resolutions at a later date, as the Wii does not support HD.