Why does my device shows a resolution other than that advertised? I bought two different cheap android tablets, in the process of buying a dozen for my company. I haven't had much experience with them before and there's one thing that's bugging me.

I downloaded a few simple apps that show the screen resolution, and the values are 768x976 (portrait) and 1024x720 (landscape). The devices are advertised as 1024x768 (4:3) and indeed, they look 4:3.

What's going on here? Are the devices lying in their specs? Are the apps inaccurate? Is this because the apps omit parts of the screen that can't be used for apps?

The devices aren't well known but for reference, they are: Dinosaur Dino 9.97 and a Go On Touch DC97 IPS 9.7.

The apps I tried are: ScreenSpecs, Screen Resolution and Screen Resolution (same name).
You haven't specified the Android version, but on tablets the difference is generally because the system bar (or "combined bar") is 48px (specifically, 48dpi, but in your case that's 48 real pixels) and the apps are only considering available screen space when they report the resolution:


Portrait = 768 x (976 + 48) = 768 x 1024
Landscape = 1024 x (720 + 48) = 1024 x 768


Some references:


What is the true available resolution of a 10.1 Android tablet?
Asus TF101 tablet status bar steals 48 pixels
Metrics and Grids (from developer.android.com; explains why 48 dpi was chosen for UI components)