Mobile UI Design & Development Guide
Best Practices

Font size -- Letters in the same font size will be displayed smaller on the mobile device screen than on a desktop computer, because the physical screen size of a mobile device is smaller than on the desktop computer. You must use a larger font to ensure legibility. In general, 14 - 17 point is the recommended font size, and 12 point is the smallest font size that can be easily read.

Font style -- Font styles such as Bold, Italic, Underline (scarcely used) etc. may be supported depending on the mobile OS fonts.

Font color -- The mobile OS default font color is Black.

Font types -- There are a bunch of fonts commonly supported by both iOS and PowerBuilder, such as Arial (recommended font), Courier New, Euphemia, Georgia, Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Times New Roman etc. The iOS default font Helvetica is not available in PowerBuilder, we recommend you use Arial which exists in both iOS and PowerBuilder and looks very similar to Helvetica. If you use a font that is not available in iOS, it will be displayed as Helvetica in iOS.

Android is an open platform and the available fonts in Android are mostly dependent on the device manufacturers, so the fonts may vary on different devices. The default font in Android is Roboto which looks very similar to Arial and Helvetica. If you use a font that is not available in Android, it will be displayed as Roboto in Android.

For the mapping rules between Windows fonts and iOS fonts, please see the table below: