5mo ago

Android 15 could bring the tablet taskbar to phones: Here's your first look at the 'tiny' taskbar

Google is experimenting with bringing the tablet taskbar to phones running Android 15. This new version could be called the "tiny" taskbar.

23 comments

Time is a flat circle. I remember when honeycomb launched with a bottom navbar, only for Google to delete it later in favor of a (terrible) phone like gui

And why on Earth would I want that exactly?
- Have you checked Smart Dock? I think it is cool, and a faster way to launch apps.

Hey Google, I just...don't know how to phrase this to you. Start doing some hard work on the Android platform to make the aging bits better, the dirty bits better, bring back more open-source, bring back more openness. Drop the YouTube crap and have dedicated apps on the phone for Music, Podcasts, etc.
Their current and next couple of years of dev cycles will probably be wasted on "AI" as the rest of the platform drifts and their C suite drools over a GPU-powered fever-dream that can't even play Tic-Tac-Toe for more than 4 moves without forgetting the rules.
As it stands right now, I know several Androiders that see no reason to even stay with Android anymore and will likely switch to iOS for their next device replacement. I'm not sure I really want to bother sticking around either, although I'd prefer a tertiary alternative that as of yet doesn't exist. (Speaking of, this dock sounds like something just borrowed from WebOS.)
Make the mobile OS something that can stand on its own instead of the data-mining marketing cesspool it has become, and put it on hardware worth buying instead of the janky Samsung modems.
Sincerely, some rando on the Internet

android phones are shit for multitasking anyway. things are constantly redrawing and reloading, even with a lot of ram.
- Give me my janky choppy Android 11 multitasking back, I have 8GB of RAM and I'll use it as I please
- Ugh, and I thought my 6 GBs of RAM phone sucked for multitasking... You are discouraging me to get another one with at least 8 GBs of RAM lol.
- Yeah please stop trying to act like multitasking on a small screen is something anyone wants. There's enough bugs out there for app switching to fix that you coulda focused on that instead of adding another half assed product on top of your current half assed product

Oh gdi we're up to the point in Android models that we've reached Dragon Ball Z characters and my brain has to double take headlines.

Taskbar is crap until it's no longer baked in with the phones default launcher.
- Oh yeah never thought about that, is the bar that pops up when you swipe when you're already in an app also part of the launcher?
  Wonder how they did that, or if they just gave their own launcher some special integration like they usually do, to allow it to somehow listen to global gestures or something.
  
  Yeah, if you swap launchers it hardly ever works when you swipe up. Recents menu has been like this forever as well and why it can stutter / looks less seamless when using a different launcher, it has to run the system laumcher to show the recents menu.

I already don't like that the navigation-gesture bottom bar takes up a few millimetres of my valuable screen space. Why does it need to be one click away and always wasting space as opposed to one swipe away and not? Hopefully it will be an option and not an Apple-style "we've decided for you" arrangement.
- Navigation gestures... I opted for the buttons instead. And I surely miss the physical buttons.

23 comments