Android VS. iOS: 20 UI Components & Patterns Explained (Part 1)

20 differences between Android and iOS you should know when designing for cross-platform apps

中文版 Original Chinese version published on Dec 10, 2016

Android VS. iOS: 20 UI Components & Patterns Explained (Part 2)

There are more and more apps launched for both Android and iOS. But we can find those app design may not tackle or notice the differences between Android and iOS on UI components or behavior patterns. Sometimes we could find the iOS components are used on Android apps or Android patterns are applied on iOS apps. The misused components/patterns may cause users confused.

In order to let the developers or designers understand the basic difference between Android and iOS easier. I would like to introduce and compare the UI patterns/components, which sometime have different names on the two platforms, with some screenshots as examples:

1. Navigation Drawer, Tabs & Bottom navigation VS. Tab Bars

We would like to talk about navigation design first because it is an essential issue about information structure that designers need to tackle when designing apps at beginning.

Navigation drawer was the most representative of Android design on 2013. The category items in the top level of information structure are put into a drawer which can be hidden to make the UIs look simple and clean. But later, with lots of…