Exquisite Droid is a site showcasing the best designed Android apps, curated by Web & UI Designer Matthias Kretschmann (@kremalicious on Twitter). For now, all articles are written by me too.
You can follow Exquisite Droid via RSS, Twitter & Facebook. On Twitter all reviewed apps twitter accounts will be added to the exquisiteApps list. There’s also a tumblr where one screenshot of each review and stuff which doesn’t fit here will be posted.
Have questions, comments, suggestions or think your app should be reviewed? Mail me at [email protected] or drop a tweet/message @exquisitedroid
The Mission
- Show there’re developers & designers who care about good design of their Android apps.
- Help those developers & designers getting them and their apps recognized.
- Raise awareness among all Android app makers that good design is honored by Android users.
- Help Android users in finding good apps they can use everyday.
The Rules
To ensure all apps reviewed on this site are the most beautiful and most usable apps some basic rules apply when selecting apps. Depending on future devices and future developments some rules might get adjusted.
Gorgeous design
Apps listed on this site need to show a strong understanding of basic design principles & usability which are executed exceptionally well both visually AND functionally. If an app works super well but the buttons in the app aren’t aligned properly it won’t be reviewed here. Same goes for an app looking gorgeous but being laggy while using it.
Since games require a whole different set of criteria they won’t be reviewed here.
Market distribution & no root
Apps need to make all features work on unrooted devices. If any marketed feature only works by unrooting and/or flashing custom ROMs this isn’t the right place. Preferrably apps are available on Google’s Android Market but exceptions will be made if an app maker isn’t responsible for not being listed there, like Google’s country restrictions.
If you find these two rules hard to understand please accept the fact you’re a proud geek but most users are not.
Tablets are not big phones
All apps get categorized with phone, tablet or both. For getting the tablet category just scaling up the phone interface isn’t enough. A tablet version of an app should make good use of the bigger screen real estate and provide hdpi graphics. Tablet means a device with a screen at least 7″ big combined with a display resolution of at least 1024px x 600px.
Colophon, for geeks only
Exquisite Droid runs on good ol’ WordPress hosted by Media Temple with a custom theme designed & coded from scratch by me. The theme uses the 1140 grid, HTML5 Boilerplate & Mobile HTML5 Boilerplate as a base. I follow kind of an agile approach here and will add features over time so the site’s design is always a work in progress. If you find errors or anything, just drop me a line.
The theme is heavily optimized to be easily viewable and readable on various devices with different screen resolutions by utilizing CSS media queries. The cool kids are calling it responsive design and usually this is the moment where I order you to resize your desktop browser window or change your tablet’s orientation. The break points are at 1024px, 768px and 480px. Additionally media queries serve different CSS images for different pixel densities targeting devices with a factor of 1.5 and up.