What is the benefit of using Fragments in Android, rather than Views?

Question

When developing for Android, you can set your target (or minimum) sdk to 4 (API 1.6) and add the android compatibility package (v4) to add support for Fra

Answer 1

I'd say Fragments are useful in two scenarios: if you split up views on some devices/orientations and show them in two activities and show all the content in one on other devices. That would be a use case if you go on a tablet or maybe even in landscape mode on a phone: e.g. you show the list of items and the details on one screen. on a phone or in portrait mode you just show one part.

Another use case are reusable views. So if you have some views that are visible on different activities and also perform some actions you could put this behaviour into a fragment and then reuse it. Obviously you could probably do that with custom widgets too.

I wouldn't see any reason for using Fragments for every View and I guess it would just be an overhead. I'm only using them in the first use case and I'd say here it is a simplification.