A few months ago, Android 12L was released in Beta, a version exclusively for foldable, tablets, and Chrome OS devices. To tout the app’s usability improvements on larger-screen devices, Google is now sharing some statistics on its Chrome browser usage.
Google said the development team has been experimenting with several features in order to ensure consistent multitasking and productivity capabilities between the desktop version of Chrome and larger-screen devices such as foldable and tablets.
The team took advantage of Android 12L features such as the taskbar and Samsung edge panel, which allows people to open and use multiple Chrome windows at the same time. The idea is to ensure that users can multitask and still be able to use this capability within the constraints of the device, such as memory utilization.
Testing has shown that people can comfortably use up to 5 instances of Chrome side by side, so the app was updated to support this use case. Shortcuts to new windows are also more prominently displayed in the menu so that users can discover and take advantage of them.
Google’s results show an 18x increase in multi-window usage. This statistic has been boosted by the company’s previous research showing that multi-instance usage of the Chrome browser has increased by 42% on tablets and foldable devices compared to phones.
Google hopes that by sharing its learnings and data, it can encourage more developers to build features that are also optimized for larger-screen devices, especially when it comes to Android 12L.