Netflix is bringing Mobile Previews to Android soon after having officially introduced the feature on April 19. Netflix unfortunately does not mention exactly when Android users will get the ability to interact with the Mobile Previews, but coming soon suggests that the feature can’t be too far off so anyone who uses Netflix on their Android smartphone or tablets will want to keep an eye out for it. As to what Mobile Previews are, if you use Netflix on the web or other platforms then you may already be familiar with it or you may have at least experienced the feature for yourself and not noticed.
Essentially Mobile Previews is the mobile version of the Video Previews feature that you’ll see in the other Netflix formats, and allows you to scroll over the movies and TV shows in Netflix to see a 30-second cut of the content to “preview” it. This comes in handy if you’re unsure of whether or not you want to watch something that you just discovered as it can help you understand what the content is like without having to click or tap on it to read the description, especially since clicking or tapping on content generally leads to that content playing automatically.
Netflix has made the feature pretty intuitive for mobile devices, starting with the fact that previews will be presented vertically so you don’t have to change orientation of your phone to landscape mode to view them. This means you can open the Netflix app on your device which is already presented in vertical format as well and not have to change a thing. When watching previews, you can tap to play the content or to add it to your list, or if you want to watch the next preview you can swipe to move on. It’s also possible to tap the screen to move on. Like the rest of the Netflix experience the previews you see will be personalized to your user experience, so they should be based on the same content you get for recommendations.