Android SMS Messaging like UI

I'm going to make an app which will require messaging. Now I have questions about making the messaging UI. I want to make it similar to Go SMS Theme Minimal UI

I am assuming that I'll have to use listview and 9 patch png.

But I need a expert advice.

Solution

I would say that that is a good approach. You will definitely need a list view, the real question is just how to build the list item background.

Looking at the image you shared, the pointy part of the box (outlined in red) is really all that can't be stretched, so you could make a 9 patch similar to this.

enter image description here

The top and left are the important part, they tell the 9 patch which parts can be stretched (or repeated, really. The bottom and right tell it which parts can contain content. So if you always need a certain amount of padding then you can use those to define that.

I'm not a designer, but what I like to do is take an image like this, obviously trim out the content, then trim it down in the middle so one black line on either part (top/bottom, left/right) is only 2 pixels wide. This allows the smallest possible asset so you don't load as large of a bitmap, but still gets all of the appropriate information.