Alternative drawables

Figure 4. Relative sizes for bitmap drawables that support each density. Almost every application should have alternative drawable resources for different screen densities, because almost every application has a launcher icon and that icon should look good on all screen densities. Likewise, if you include other bitmap drawables in your application (such as for menu icons or other graphics in your application), you should provide alternative versions or each one, for different densities. Note: You only need to provide density-specific drawables for bitmap files (.png, .jpg, or .gif) and Nine-Path files (.9.png). If you use XML files to define shapes, colors, or other drawable resources, you should put one copy in the default drawable directory (drawable/). To create alternative bitmap drawables for different densities, you should follow the 3:4:6:8 scaling ratio between the four generalized densities. For example, if you have a bitmap drawable that's 48x48 pixels for medium-density screen (the size for a launcher icon), all the different sizes should be: 36x36 for low-density 48x48 for medium-density 72x72 for high-density 96x96 for extra high-density

For more information about designing icons, see the Icon Design Guidelines, which includes size information for various bitmap drawables, such as launcher icons, menu icons, status bar icons, tab icons, and more.