Android is improving split-screen mode, and it’s no accident

Out of the blue, Google has just updated Android to support left-right split-screen mode in portrait. From there to thinking that the Pixel 9 Pro Fold is affected, there is only one step.

Android now supports split-screen mode to position two apps on the left and right in portrait mode. A configuration that is perfectly suited to a smartphone with a foldable screen… like the future Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold.

Google is preparing Android for the Pixel 9 Pro Fold’s split-screen mode

Since Android 7.0 Nougat at the end of 2016, Google has supported multitasking by splitting its screen in two. When you use it on a smartphone, it is done between two applications positioned at the top and bottom when the screen is vertical. When horizontal, it logically switches to the left and right to exploit the full width of the screen. But until now it was impossible to put an application on the left and an application on the right when the phone was vertical. For the simple reason that a classic smartphone could not exploit it.

But the advent of foldable smartphones has changed the game. Indeed, they allow you to share their large interior screen as if you had two phones side by side, vertically. In addition, some models have a rather square screen format, as should be the case with the future Pixel 9 Pro Fold that Google could present this summer. This would quite easily explain the Android split screen mode update to support this new vertical left-right display, just weeks before the release of the future folding device.

Source : Mishall Rahman / Android Authority

This can be seen in the QPR2 version of Android 14, released last March. Once enabled in the code, we can see the full potential of this display in a use focused on productivity or the consumption of multimedia content. The other interesting information unearthed in the code by Mishall Rahman concerns the display resolution supported in portrait mode, which could be that of the internal screen of the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold: 2076 × 2152 pixels.

Read: This is what the Google Pixel 9 looks like in pink

Android 15 should push split-screen mode even further by giving the ability to add pairs of split-screen apps to the home screen to display them with a single click. A feature that already exists on the interface of some Android manufacturers, but which is always good to have natively on the mobile operating system. See you on August 13 at the Pixel event to see if Google has other new features up its sleeve around multitasking management.