Tablets and foldable phones are becoming more and more choices for people, OPPO, Xiaomi, honor have released their own tablet and folding screen products. The portable large screen brings better visual effects, whether it is watching movies, swiping videos, taking notes or video chatting, large-screen devices have inherent advantages.
However, Android large-screen devices have not had a dedicated system, and there are not many suitable applications, which has become a major pain point for Android users. With the official release of Android 12L, Android tablets and foldable phones have ushered in the opportunity to "turn over".
What changes has the official android 12L version brought? Let's take a look.
01 New dual-column layout improves browsing efficiency
The larger the screen, the more space the relevant information takes up, and the use of space is particularly important. Android 12L optimizes the display of pages such as home screen, lock screen, notification bar, settings, etc., making it more suitable for the large screens of tablets and foldable devices.
For example, people often slide down the notification bar to view messages or use shortcuts such as Wi-Fi switches and Bluetooth switches. On Android 12L, the sliding menu will be displayed in two columns, with commonly used shortcut settings on the left and all notification information on the right.
The lock screen also uses a larger two-column layout to highlight notifications and clocks, and system apps like Settings will also make better use of the large screen space.
02 Taskbar drag and drop split screen
Android 12L added a taskbar, commonly used applications can be placed in the taskbar to quickly call and switch, with gesture operations can further improve the use of the taskbar efficiency, swipe up into the home screen, quickly switch can also browse recently used applications.
In addition, users can drag and drop any application from the taskbar to enter split screen mode. In split-screen mode, users can do more things, watch videos on the left screen, take notes on the right screen, or reply to WeChat messages while watching videos.
At the same time, users can show or hide the taskbar at any time by long pressing and holding.
03 Improve app compatibility experience
Many apps are already optimized for large-screen devices, and Android 12L provides developers with additional conveniences, providing a great experience with features such as adaptive layout, multi-window mode support, cross-screen coherence, and device folding state variations.
For apps that haven't been optimized yet, Google has made visual and stability improvements to compatibility mode to give users a better experience while making those apps look better by default.
04 Add a dedicated application scoring mechanism for large-screen devices
To make it easier for users to find the best-fit apps on tablets and foldable devices, Google has also tweaked the App Store to highlight apps that are optimized for large-screen devices.
Android 12L adds a new inspection service that evaluates the quality of each app according to the App Quality Guidelines for Large-Screen Devices to ensure that the app delivers the best possible experience on large-screen devices. For apps that aren't optimized for large-screen devices, there will be a notification alert on the app's details page.
In addition, Google also plans to introduce a dedicated app scoring mechanism for large-screen devices, where users can score the health of large-screen apps.
Conclusion: The dual-column layout and drag-and-drop split screen feature brought by Android 12L can make the Android large screen more easy to use, but the Android manufacturers who released the large-screen device have already introduced these features in advance. In the Apple ecosystem, these are already mature experiences. I have to say that Google is one step slower this time.
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