Google has decided to intervene in a more incisive way to solve one of the historical problems of the Android ecosystem: the poor application optimization for foldable smartphones. On the occasion of the Android Dev Summit, the Mountain View company announced that, starting next year, the Google Play Store will actively evaluate the quality of the user experience offered by apps on foldable devices. This is a particularly current topic, especially considering the iPhone Duo casewith the many optimization problems that pushed Apple to launch the badge Made for iPhone Duo.
What will change for Android foldables
The new approach of the Play Store will be based on a incentive system: Applications and games that demonstrate their ability to correctly adapt to foldable form factors will receive greater visibility and prominent positioning within the digital store. The specific requirements to obtain these benefits will be detailed over the next few months. At the moment, it is not yet clear whether non-compliant apps will suffer active penalties in search results or whether, more simply, they will be excluded from promotional circuits.
The initiative marks a fundamental change of pace for Google. Until now, the quality of the interface on leaflets was entrusted solely to the guidelines and goodwill of developers, who were often reluctant to invest time and resources in a market segment still undergoing consolidation (despite the recent media traction generated by Apple’s iPhone Duo). The need for truly scalable interfaces it also becomes more and more pressing with the expansion ofGooglebook ecosystem and tablets, environments in which old “stretched” smartphone apps continue to provide an unsatisfactory user experience.
To facilitate the work of programmers, Google is simultaneously releasing new development tools. Among the most important new features is the update of the Compose Adaptive Skill function, which uses artificial intelligence to scale interfaces from smartphones to foldables, laptops and tablets without forcing developers to maintain separate code bases. The tool can now analyze the mobile interface and automatically implement essential elements for large screens, as well as reorganize complex interfaces into specific layouts for the use of foldables in “tabletop” mode.
At a pure code level, these changes are supported by key updates to the platform, including cui Navigation 3 v1.2 and the imminent arrival of Compose 1.13which will introduce stable Grid and Flexbox support for managing responsive layouts. The company’s goal is to transform the old “recommendations” into a qualitative obligation, pushing the entire ecosystem towards a standard that is finally up to modern hardware.
