Google has already unveiled the dedicated OS for large screen devices with Android 12L last year. Now yet again, the company has relaunched the Android 12L which is targetting Android tablets and foldable. In the past, the Android 12L was limited to some developers but from now on the OS will be available.
The company followed up with a few betas builds, and today it is “announcing” Android 12L again, focused less on developers and more on normal users.
Features:
For bigger screens, Android 12L offers dedicated columns for notifications and quick tiles – the former on the right, the latter on the left. As a result of the change, you will be able to swipe away notifications more easily.
Later this year, Google will release Android 12L for tablets and foldable phones
On devices with big screens, settings have a two-column layout, although some variations of this have already been implemented by various Android device makers. Nevertheless, it’s nice to see it finally integrated into “stock Android”.
Android 12L is rolled out to tablets and foldable later this year and the biggest feature is probably the new taskbar. Multitasking is made easier with this feature, not only because it’s always visible and you can tap a symbol to quickly access it.
Split-screen mode can also be entered by dragging and dropping apps from the taskbar. The top of the screen still shows the time, notification icons, as well as connectivity icons, and battery capacity – it looks like only Windows knows how to integrate all of these into one bar.
The user-facing features end there. It plans to update Samsung, Lenovo, and Microsoft’s tablets and foldable to Android 12L. How soon? “Later this year”, which means anything. The three companies named in Google’s announcement are likely to provide a more concrete timeframe. Although we’re sure there are a lot of names missing.
