: What's wrong with Droid fonts? I have seen on various places that people consider Droid font family with contempt. In latest Android it has been replaced with another family called Roboto. I'm

@Shakeerah625

Droid Sans doesn't have separately designed italic glyphs, but relies on browsers to "fake" italics by adding slant. Hence the inconsistent rendering.

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@Gloria351

Roboto was definitely an upgrade from Droid Sans. They created a sharp typeface with a more modern feel.

As far as Matias is concerned, it seems like a lot of his answers to decisions made are mostly fluff.

Simply put, Droid Sans (because of the way it was built) was made for smaller physical devices sizes (better readability), and now that displays are being created with more and more pixels, they can create something that feels a bit softer, and more progressive.

I know that most of you think that the articles are BS, and I assure you that most of them probably are, but implementing Roboto was indeed a good decision. Things move forward with technology, even typefaces ;)

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@LarsenBagley460

There is nothing wrong with Droid fonts. As we know when we have something better everyone moves towards them same thing happened with Droid fonts.

"When we announced Ice Cream Sandwich, we also got a chance to introduce Android’s new typeface Roboto", says Matias Duarte, Android’s User Experience guru.

According to Android Tablet blog:


The reason for the new change is — the old Droid font was made for lower res devices and wasn’t displaying correctly on the now official 1280×800 screen resolution.


So they introduced something new, which GottaBeMobile described as:


It was built from scratch and made specifically for high density displays. Google describes it has having a “dual nature. It has a mechanical skeleton and the forms are largely geometric. At the same time the font’s sweeping semi-circular curves give it a cheerful demeanor.


Here are some more links about this change. Give them a read.


Roboto is a Four-headed Frankenfont
Android 4's Roboto font: It's for humans
Why Mr. Roboto
Matias Duarte Explains Reasoning Behind Roboto Font
The birth of Roboto typeface for Android

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