Android 15 may make it simpler to make use of your cellphone in panorama mode

Though Google designed Android’s UI to scale on each telephones and tablets correctly, it optimized the UI to look greatest in portrait mode for telephones and panorama mode for tablets. That makes probably the most sense since telephones are naturally meant to be held in portrait mode and tablets in panorama mode, however there are occasions if you wish to use both system within the reverse orientation. If you happen to rotate your Android cellphone into panorama mode, although, it’s possible you’ll discover that sure system UI parts just like the lock display and the notifications panel aren’t optimized, at the least on inventory Android. Luckily, the Android 15 replace may convey an optimized panorama format for each the lock display and the notifications panel on telephones.

Earlier than I showcase the brand new lock display and notifications panel layouts, I wish to point out how they appear within the present inventory Android 14 launch. Because the lock display can’t rotate in any respect in inventory Android 14 on telephones, there’s nothing for me to point out there. In distinction, the notifications panel does have a panorama format already in inventory Android 14, albeit with some points. For starters, there’s a whole lot of wasted house since two-thirds of the display is reserved for notifications that solely stretch to about half the width of the panel. The highest third is taken up by a row of 4 Fast Settings tiles, which is ok, however different parts just like the Fast Settings edit button, brightness slider, foreground companies activity supervisor, person switcher, settings shortcut, and energy menu shortcut aren’t proven. These remaining parts are solely proven if you absolutely develop the notifications panel, which requires one other swipe down. Luckily, Android at the least manages to fit within the media participant within the unexpanded state, however the draw back is that there’s much less room for notifications.

In distinction, the newer notifications panel format that I manually enabled in Android 15 leaves sufficient room to point out your notifications, 4 of your Fast Settings tiles (in a 2×2 format), the brightness slider, and the remainder of the beforehand talked about parts. In reality, the brand new notifications panel for telephones mainly appears to be like like a shrunk-down model of the notifications panel on tablets.

Equally, the brand new panorama mode format for telephones’ lock screens appears to be like just like the one for tablets.

I first noticed the landscape-optimized UI for the lock display in Android 14 QPR1 Beta 1, launched final September, whereas I noticed the landscape-optimized UI for the notifications panel in Android 14 QPR2 Beta 2, launched in December. Though these landscape-optimized UIs have been round in Android builds for a number of months now, they’re nonetheless clearly unfinished, as I encountered a number of bugs whereas utilizing them. For instance, the media participant overlaps with the lock display shortcut on the left in addition to the At a Look widget. The counter for the variety of Fast Settings pages erroneously thought there have been solely three pages when there have been six (although this was fastened with a reboot). Lastly, when swiping by way of Fast Settings tiles, you may see them clip below the notifications on the precise.

Regardless of these points, the brand new landscape-optimized layouts for the lock display and notifications panel are clear enhancements from the present baseline. I hope Google irons out these kinks quickly so it will probably convey the brand new UI to inventory Android in a future replace.