Google is experimenting with bringing the tablet taskbar to phones running Android 15. This new version could be called the “tiny” taskbar.
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
I would use that. I really hope they make it an option.
android phones are shit for multitasking anyway. things are constantly redrawing and reloading, even with a lot of ram.
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.
I feel like I’m the only one who still reverts navigation to the 3 dots and doesn’t use any of the new stuff they’re releasing.
This taskbar looks like it’s going to make things happen without me wanting them to, I hope we can turn it off.
I hate, hate, hate, that I can’t turn off the “At a glance” top section as well as the “Google search” bottom section in my Pixel home screen.
They got rid of the Google Assistant microphone icon that I could tap and say stuff like “remind me to buy milk in 2 hours,” and replaced it with a similar icon that does voice search. Yuk (and no, shaking, squeezing, gestures or activating the always on ‘hey google’ prompt are not worthy replacements.)
The non removable Google search bar was one of the reasons I put Graphene on my pixel.
How do you like Graphene? Any specific issues you haven’t resolved yet? Can you access your bank apps and everything from it?
