Even though Android 12 was just introduced last week, Google is already introducing Android 12L, the next “feature drop.” Since this release is geared toward tablets, foldable, and ChromeOS devices, that L stands for Large screens.
Soon after Android 12 tablets and foldable hit the market, Android 12L will be made available. Google has released a developer preview of Android 12L for emulators, and it will be coming to Lenovo’s Tab P12 Pro “soon”. While most of Android 12L’s features won’t be accessible on smartphones, a public beta for Pixel devices will be available later on.
Features:
According to Google, there are over a quarter billion Android-powered tablets, foldable, and ChromeOS devices in use today, with over 100 million Android tablet activations only in the last year. That’s a year-over-year increase of 20%. Foldables and ChromeOS laptops are both growing in popularity, as is the use of Android as a mobile operating system. All of this points to Android 12L as a logical conclusion.
On large screens, the user interface has been improved. So, for example, you can customize the lock screen and recent applications panel without changing anything else on your phone. System apps are also optimized for wide screens, using a new two-column style for the notification shade and other system surfaces.
With Android 12L’s redesigned taskbar, you can quickly switch between your favorite apps while multitasking. Split-screen mode is now much easier to find, as all you have to do is drag and drop an app from the taskbar to use it. Now that Android 12L is out, all apps may make use of the new split-screen feature.
Google is asking app developers to keep their programs up-to-date in order to take advantage of Android’s support for a wide range of screen sizes. This includes phones, foldable, small tablets, and landscape-mode tablets and PCs, as shown in the image above. New API makes apps fold and hinge aware, so they may be used as UI separators by folding and hingeing.
If a user accesses the listing from a large screen device, Google will notify them about apps that aren’t suited for large screens in the Play Store. For each app, Google’s quality requirements for large-screen apps will be assessed using new checks. All of these changes will take effect beginning next year, with the exception of the large screen app ratings.
