Although Google had planned to introduce a multi-column app layout for tablets in Android 3.0 (Honeycomb), that didn’t happen. To this day, many apps are still not optimized for large-screen devices like foldable phones and tablets.
With Android 12L (One UI 4.1.1), Google has rebooted its plans to optimize the experience on large-screen devices and continues to improve its own apps to better fit foldable phones and tablets. Google is also recommending that app developers make similar adjustments to their apps and games to improve the overall experience for users of all large-screen devices.
Igeekphone noted that Google recently announced its new initiatives to improve app compatibility for large-screen Android devices. In the Android 16 Beta 1 article, Google explained how Android 16 removes restrictions that allow developers to lock in specific directions or aspect ratios of their apps. Google plans to go a step further with Android 17, removing developers’ ability to opt in to such restrictions altogether.
In its latest blog post, Google made it clear that starting with Android 17, developers won’t be able to choose to limit their apps to a specific orientation (landscape or portrait) or aspect ratio. As a result, developers need to better adjust the layout of their apps according to Google’s UI design guidelines. Since Android 17 stretches unoptimized apps over the entire screen area of foldable phones and tablets, unoptimized apps will look unattractive, which will inevitably force developers to optimize their apps to take advantage of the larger screen. Google has published an article on how to design apps that work well on larger screens.
Google plans to release Android 16 in the second quarter of 2025 and Android 17 in 2026. As a result, starting next year, apps developed for Android 17 won’t be able to be limited to portrait only or black edges around the screen. Google also cited animation app FlipaClip as an example, noting that usage of the app by tablet users grew 54 percent after developers optimized it for large-screen devices.
In addition, Google describes how developers can use the Espresso testing framework and Jetpack Compose testing API to test how their apps perform on different screen sizes and device formats.
With updates to Android 16 and 17, expect smartphone brands and third-party app developers to come out with apps that perform better on foldable phones and tablets. The optimized app displays well in both landscape and portrait mode, and works better in split-screen multitasking, full-screen, or window mode.