Folding smartphones are increasingly popular but at the moment there are not many applications that make the most of the special form factor of this type of device and the potential it could guarantee. Last March it emerged that the Gboard development team is working on a new feature for this popular keyboard whereby users should be able to take advantage of a “split mode”.
The first images of Gboard’s Split Mode
Well, with the latest beta version of Gboard the owners of Samsung Galaxy Z Fold3 see in the Settings menu, in the Preferences section, the item “Split layout to include duplicated keys”, although it is not yet possible to enable it.
Here’s how this feature is described:
When the keyboard is set to split layout, some keys will be duplicated on both sides.
According to what was reported by 9to5Google, some users have had access to this new function and the following screenshots allow us to find out what the design of the “split” Gboard keyboard will be (although at the moment it is not possible to exclude that some changes will be made before the release for all users):
Gboard in Split Mode splits the center keys with five keys on each side into the first three rows and the letters “G” and “V” are duplicated on both sides while the bottom row notably has a long space bar. This split keyboard is primarily intended for foldable devices, especially those with square displays, and not for tablets, although it is likely that Google will focus on the latter in the future. At present, this functionality is not yet available but it probably will soon be and the first devices to receive it should be the folding ones.