It seems as though Android recovery is set to gain touch and gesture support at some point in the future. As a commit on the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) has now been spotted confirming that the feature is currently being worked on and tested. The commit seems to have first shown up towards the end of July, and has slowly been moving forward since then with the latest posting coming through yesterday (August 3).
At present, there are no firm details on what the purpose of including touch support on AOSP recovery is, besides of course, improving the number (and ease) of ways in which a user can interact with the recovery’s interface. For instance, the commit does specifically note that gestures such as “swiping (up, down, enter)” have been tested and are working with the feature. Although, there is also the possibility that touch support may also lend itself to additional (or advanced) recovery features. In either case, beyond the existence of the feature, additional information is currently non-existent. What may be of interest though, is that as part of the commit, it was noted that the new touch support has been tested on a device which was referred as “dorado” – which at present, is a name not known to be associated with any current devices.
The ‘dorado’ name was dropped along with confirmation that the feature is also working on the Nexus 6P (“angler”) and “angelfish” – which is largely understood to be a codename for one of the LG/Google smartwatches (along with “swordfish”) that launched earlier in the year. In contrast, there has largely been no major or direct references to “dorado” reported on before. Although, it is worth noting that as some users are pointing out on social media, references to dorado can be found through places like the Android Git repositories. Interestingly, one of those references does seem to be related to Android Wear. Suggesting that dorado is most likely to be an Android Wear device of some sort. The only issue is whether it is one that is already available (and for whatever reason is currently using the dorado codename) or one that has yet to become available. Although, it is also worth noting that some of other random references do date back quite some time – as they are in relation to Android 6.0 (Marshmallow). Suggesting that even though it might be an unknown device, it might not necessarily be a new device.
Update:
It appears that Dorado may be the Verizon Wear24 smartwatch, based on new details of the kernel commits being authored by the company who manufactures the watch for Verizon – a company called Quanta. While this doesn’t necessarily mean that Dorado and the Wear24 are one and the same, seeing as the Wear24 is the only Android Wear watch that Quanta has manufactured, it seems likely that this is the Wear24 and not a new device.