Google recently released the Pixel C, a 10.2-inch Android tablet with a beautiful glass and aluminium build and a nifty keyboard attachment. It seems like an ideal work tablet at first blush, but dig deeper and you’ll find a bit of a deal breaker: there’s no way to have two apps on screen at once.
(That’s likely a consequence of the Pixel C’s troubled development. The tablet is speculated to have begun life as a Chrome OS laptop, before being switched to an Android device.)
Not having split-screen or multi-window support was once was a given for a mobile OS, but things have changed — since Windows 8 and iOS 9, both of Android’s major competitors have enjoyed split-screen functionality. Android surely needs better split-screen support to make the Pixel C a viable option, and Google have confirmed that it’s on the way.
Speaking in a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) interview with the Google Pixel C development team, Android and Chrome UX directory Andrew Boyers stated that better split-screen support would be coming to the next version of Android, version N:
We’re working on lots of things right now for N that, of course, we wish we had, you know, yesterday. But we’d spoil the surprise of N if we shared all of them. Split screen is in the works!
Android and Chrome UX director Glen Murphy also chimed in:
We’re working hard on a range of enhancements for Android in this form factor. There are many things, like multi-window, that we’ve been spending a lot of time on — hopefully we can share more about this soon.
Android N — Nutella? — should be announced at Google’s I/O conference in May or June next year, followed by a general release in autumn. We don’t know too much about it yet, but a new focus on improving Android on tablets would make sense.
What other features would you like to see Google add to Android? What could make things better for Android tablets? Let us know in the comments below.
See our Pixel C accessories here >