design team icon

Application сross platform design or porting iOS/Android

Build awesome mobile products design for hot tech startups and digital products. We made design for a lot of web and mobile products. And we now have experience in such industries: Medical, Financial, Social ... About our studio


Read more about сross platform design or porting iOS/Android | Request a quote


icon appleicon android Cross platform apps or Porting of iOS / Android applications

When porting the design, the following works are available:

  • porting of design applications between iOS / Android platforms to create cross-platform mobile application.
  • compliance of styles, visual identification of application, operating systems guidelines.
  • preparation of the necessary documentation for developers, including a technical specification for design porting.
  • porting of the design when porting between iOS / Android.
  • ported application stores familiar interface and functions set on another platform.

Application Styles

When porting from iOS to Android is important to preserve the visual identity of applications and at the same time to fit it into the existing design of the platform. The style of iOS apps differs by sophisticated lines, gradients, layerwising is shown composedly. The material design of Android is based on the elements of the layers and shadows. The palette of application has the basic colors and color-accent.

Porting Bars
Each operating system has its own location Bars elements.
For example, in Android the panel ‘app bar’, ‘action bar’ are always at the top and at the bottom – the bottom action bar ‘split action bar’. In the iOS-app ‘app bar’ is at the top and the ‘action bar’ is at the bottom. The exception is an Instagram, but there is a nuance – the absence, in principle, lower drop-down controls.
Porting Controls
‘Controls’ it is the basic application controls.
The essence of ‘Controls’ porting from iOS to Android is that in application only the standard controls for the operating system were left. For example, the Android-applications have drop-down lists below (Facebook). For iOS, this element is non-type.
UI-kit Porting
The Set of UI differs for iOS and Android
When porting from iOS to Android UI-kit, in particular is a library of icons. Internal icons in iOS and Android applications belong to different image styles. Material Android icons look dense and sketch enough inside. iOS-applications have thin and hollow elements.
Changes in navigation and gestures
What is standard in navigation for Android will look strange for iOS.
The navigation bar in Android is on the left, but in iOS is on the right. Android has the right only to the optional menu. Also in the Android system gesture of 3D-touch is absent (a context menu is called by prolonged strong pressing the start icon). This means that the application cannot perform the key options for the call from the desktop
Change of the movement mechanics
Material design for Android has a number of specifications on animation.
The Android operating system has a different mechanics of movement elements than iOS. Material design of Android is based on the natural physics of motion, and animation has become an accompanying part of the navigation, confirming user actions.
Product icon
Sliced graphics iOS icon is not suitable for programming under Android.

Icons for iOS and Android have different standards for corners, the area of contact, the transparency of the background and other parameters. Moreover, of iOS rounds the corners of their icons automatically, and it needs to load a square one.

Display density
Android runs on devices with a wide range of sizes.

Recent smartphones – from 4.5 to 5.7 inches and three (only the main) types of resolutions, use different types of displays, which in their turn, differ by color reproduction, lamination, the degree of embeddedness in form-factor. iOS devices use the Retina display with greater pixel density than Android. But at last there is some additional measured values to fit for the existing screens.