Android N will offer native support for pressure-sensitive screens
The latest developer preview of Android N includes native support for pressure-sensitive screens, which means that '3D Touch'-like features could be coming to the next wave of Android devices.
Image Source: Google
A new version of the developer preview for Android N was just released last week, which means that Android aficionados are already poring over the code for clues as to what to expect in the final release. Other than new emojis, better notifications, and split-screen multi-tasking, the most exciting feature looks to be native support for what the world probably knows as 3D Touch, although Google most likely will not be using that name.
The latest version of Android N – Marshmallow’s successor – includes support for something called “Launcher shortcuts”, which essentially allows developers to “define shortcuts which users can expose in the launcher to help them perform actions quicker”. That sounds fairly obscure, but what it’s really saying is that people can do in Android what they do now with the iPhone 6s – pull up a pop-up menu in the launcher that lets them directly access a specific part of an app.
Phandroid even teamed up with the developer of Nova Launcher, a popular third-party launcher, to test out the new “setDynamicShortcuts(List)” feature. While Android did not explicitly specify how these shortcuts would be activated, it seemed like the most sensible method would be a pressure-sensitive screen. And if you still have doubts that this means that Android N will support pressure-sensitive screens natively, Google has since confirmed with The Verge that the feature is indeed coming to the next version of Android.
According to Google, this would benefit manufacturers because they wouldn’t have to develop their own methods, as Huawei did with the Mate S. And because developers will now be able to code for all Android devices instead of having to figure it out with individual OEMs, we’ll likely see even more applications and use cases for the feature.
However, it still isn’t a foregone conclusion that all Android N devices will support pressure-sensitive screens. But native support does mean that manufacturers hoping to implement the feature will be more likely to include Android N on their new devices, which should hopefully prompt speedier adoption of Android N on the next generation of non-Nexus phones.
Source: Phandroid via The Verge
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