ANDROID N – MULTI-WINDOWS SUPPORT

Multi-window support has been a staple feature for Samsung’s Galaxy range of smartphones for quite some time now, and it’s a key selling point for its latest Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge handsets.

Which is why I’m pleased to see that Google has added multi-window support to Android’s core code on N. The feature can be activated within any open application by pressing down on the phone or tablet’s Overview button – the square one on the bottom right of the UI. From there you can select the second app you want to have on-screen and customise how much display real estate it gets using an on-screen slider.

The multi-window support worked great on the Nexus 6 on which I tested Android N, and was a huge productivity aid. The feature allowed me do such things as keep open the reference web page I was reading about on Chrome while I was chatting to colleagues on Hangouts, removing the need for me to switch between apps while multi-tasking.

The multi-window support is also set to become even better as, eventually, it will also be possible to drag an item from one app into the other. This will enable you to drag a photo from your camera reel straight to your Facebook app to upload it, for example. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get the feature to work during my hands-on, since Facebook doesn't run correctly in splitscreen at the moment.