This afternoon, Android Police got a pretty big exclusive. It’s basically showing what early explorations of multi-window looked like for Google. This means, that Google has at least looked at trying to bring a feature like Samsung’s Multi-Window to all Android devices, which is a pretty big deal. Samsung was the first to do a split window type feature in the mobile world. Since then, many other OEMs have attempted to recreate it, or make it better. So far, no one has done it perfectly. LG’s is a little slow, Samsung’s is a little clunky, not to mention it doesn’t support many apps and Huawei’s is a bit clunky. So can Google do it? Can they make it perfect? Probably.
How it looks like this split window feature would work is that users could swipe an app to the left or right, and it’d snap into place. Obviously it’d be better on a tablet or a large phone like the Nexus 6. While the other side of the screen would have the home screen or recents screen. The half of the screen with the home screen would still act normally, giving you the ability to work with notifications, Google Now, etc. Additionally, the “OK Google” hotword would still work on which ever screen was not being “focused”. The explorations that Android Police saw, were of a 4:3 tablet, which is what the Nexus 9 is. Obviously it would still work on a bunch of other screens as well.
We may see this in the Android L release later this month – could be a big reason why Google went with a much larger screen this time around. However, we don’t have much longer to wait. So let’s be patient now. How many of you are interested in this multi-window experience that we may see in Android L? Let us know in the comments below.