As the launch of the first developer preview of the next Android version, Android 12 nears, we are already starting to expect some new features which the latest version of Android will bring along with it. One thing to keep in mind is that the features may or may not arrive with the release of Android 12 as an official announcement is still awaited.
These are the top 5 features that are expected to arrive with Android 12:
One-handed Mode
This feature is present in a lot of custom skins including Samsung’s OneUI, Oppo’s ColorOS and even Apple includes it in iOS. Now, Google is looking forward to bring this feature that will be baked right into the software as smartphones get taller with every new release.
One-handed mode helps you reach all parts of the screen with a single hand meaning you won’t have to wobble your phone around or hold it with two hands to reach the top of the screen for pulling down the notification panel. It is still unknown whether Google will make it compulsory for the OEMs to adopt this feature in their Proprietary skins but those skins who still don’t have this feature will be able to adopt Google’s version of one-handed mode.
PiP Stashing
Picture-in-Picture has been available in Android since Android 8.0 Oreo that allows users to watch a video even while performing other tasks on their phone as the software brings the video in a small window form. In Android 11, the feature was optimized to include the resizing feature where one could resize the PiP window by dragging it from one of the corners.
Now, Google is expected to introduce another optimization related to PiP where one can ‘stash’ the PiP window where the PiP window will temporarily hide. Users will be able to do so by dragging it to the left/right EDGE until about a third of the PiP window gets hidden. One can unstash them by clicking on the window. Not only this, but Google will also introduce new ways to resize the PiP window where you can pinch to resize as well as double tap to automatically resize the window to its max size.
Game Mode
Google is said to be working on a new ‘GameManager service’ which will help users focus more on gaming while doing so, so that there’s no distraction. This “gaming mode” should help manage some basic settings like automatic brightness, autorotation, Do Not Disturb mode, and more.
There’s good news for those too who use a Bluetooth controller to play games on mobile as Google will be introducing a new feature that will let games detect the battery level of connected Bluetooth controllers so that it can notify the gamer that the battery level of the controller is low.
Smart Auto-rotate
Android’s manual auto-rotation suggestion feature fails to work properly for most of the users as a result of which people rely on third party apps that either suit their needs or completely disable the rotation.
To improve this, Google is working on a “smart autorotate” feature in Android 12 that will take help from the front camera of the phone which will detect the position of your head before changing the orientation. This feature was first spotted to be in works by 9to5Google.
App Pairs
The App pair feature has been mainly spotted on foldables or devices with dual screens such as the LG Wing. The App Pairs feature will help users multitask better by launching set up pairs of apps to in a split-screen view. This feature was first reported by 9to5Google.
Bonus: New UI
Android hasn’t seen a major UI revamp after Android Lollipop but that’s allegedly going to change with Android 12. Along with all the features mentioned above, the search giant will introduce a new Notification panel with better animations, Bubbles feature with new and improved animations, a new QS tile that will instantly reduce brightness and much more. The leaked screenshots also point towards the same possibility.