One of the big new features coming in Android N is multi-window. Allowing you to use two apps at the same time, on the same display. In the first two developer previews for Android N, this worked pretty well. Allowing you to have one app in one window and another in the other window. But what about using the same app in both windows? For some that may seem redundant. But with a web browser, it makes a whole lot of sense.
In the third developer previews, which Google pushed out this week, you are now able to use Chrome windows side-by-side on the same screen. It’s multi-window, using the same app in both windows. This is a pretty big feature, especially for those that rely on their smartphone or tablet to do a lot of web browsing. This allows you to view multiple webpages at the same time. There is now a new option in Google Chrome in the third developer preview, to “Move to Other Window”. So there’s no fancy workaround to get this to work, and it’s actually pretty easy to do. You can also resize the windows pretty easily, and depending on how the website is formatted, it may reformat the page. But that is done pretty quickly.
Where this is a developer preview, it is possible that Google may take this feature out before the final release, which is still a couple of weeks away. As we saw last year with Multi-Window which appeared in the first Android M developer preview, but didn’t make it to the final release in the fall. Although it is pretty unlikely that this will be removed from the Android N final release, unless there’s a lot of bugs included that Google hasn’t figured out in time. Which is possible.
Android N is slated to have two more betas before the final release comes out in the end of Q3. It’ll be coming to the Nexus line first, before coming to other devices like the Galaxy S7 and LG G5. It’s looking like Android N is going to be a pretty big update, even though there’s no number for Android N just yet, nor a name.