Android 12: notifications become less intrusive in landscape orientation
A new improvement to Android 12 has been discovered with the fourth developer beta. It concerns the design of notifications when the device is held horizontally. The messages will be narrower and obstruct less visibility when playing or watching a movie or series. But they also have less room for quick actions.
A smartphone is used less and less for making calls. What are the most common uses? Messaging and social networks of course. Consulting websites. Applications of all types. Listening to music. Video viewing. Or even play video games. This last use is far from being a minority. According to the SELL (Syndicate of Leisure Software Publishers), 71% of French people aged 10 and over play.
Android 12 allows you to control your smartphone with your face expressions
Videos and games are two uses that have several things in common. One of them is the propensity to turn the smartphone horizontally, in order to enjoy a more immersive experience. Smartphone manufacturers are increasingly responding to the trend towards horizontality by adapting their Android interface to a horizontal grip. Lenovo, with its Legion Duel, is a good example: Legion UI integrates a 100% horizontal mode.
With Android 12, horizontality will now be managed at the operating system level and no longer at the interface. Thus, many graphical elements of Android will be usable in both directions. And notifications will be part of it, information unveiled by the fourth beta of Android 12 intended for developers and relayed by 9to5Google from which the visual below comes. By following the source link, you will find some additional captures.
Android 12 better handles horizontal notifications
The new notification format obviously responds to Material You: colors that change depending on the interface, a rounded format with a hierarchy, the possibility of creating an independent window, etc. The novelty here is the width of the notification : it is much lower. It is therefore no longer a question of a strip that runs the entire width of the display, but a more measured rectangle.
This new format has two consequences. The first is the low intrusion of this notification. It only hides a small part of the content. And it also integrates better with all the graphics. The second consequence is rather negative, since it seems that some quick actions are no longer accessible. If you receive a message, for example, the number of suggested replies is less, since the space available is less. To see if Google will manage to find the right balance between the two between now and the release of the final version of Android 12 expected in a few weeks.
Source: 9to5Google