Google has published a set of guidelines for developers to better optimise their apps for edge-to-edge displays that have notch cutouts of all kinds.
From displays with thick bezels, smartphones have now moved towards edgeless designs, and manufacturers are constantly vying for more screen real estate by coming up with alternative solutions to house components like the front camera, sensors , earpiece and more. The notch made it into our lives with the Essential Phone and then Apple’s iPhone X made us come to terms with it. The more affordable flagship makers followed suite by launching phones like the Asus Zenfone 5z, Huawei P20 Pro, OnePlus 6 and the likes. Oppo’s Find X and Vivo’s Nex took the edgeless display concept a little further and included motorised cameras that pop out of the display, without cutting into it like a notch. Google, too, jumped onboard when it announced support for the notch and gesture based navigation with the upcoming Android P OS.
So if Android P is fully embracing the notch, it is but natural to think that Google’s next flagship smartphone series will sport the display element. The Pixel 3 XL, bigger of the two Pixel phones expected to launch later this year, has already been spotted in leaks wearing a notch display. So to make apps function more smoothly on smartphone displays that have the cutout, Google has now released a set of guidelines for developers to help them better optimise their apps with respect to notched devices. The guidelines take into account all kind of notches including, regular notches, double notches (top + bottom notch), and corner cutouts.
“These striking displays present a great opportunity for you to showcase your app. They also mean it's more important than ever to make sure your app provides a consistently great experience across devices with one or two display cutouts, as well as devices with 18:9 and larger aspect ratios,” Google wrote in a blogpost addressed to Android developers.
Google says that for most part, apps should work as intended with Android P which is already bringing in optimisations keeping the display element in mind.
“By default, in portrait mode with no special flags set, the status bar will be resized to be at least as tall as the cutout and your content will display in the window below. In landscape or fullscreen mode, your app window will be letterboxed so that none of your content is displayed in the cutout area,” explains Google.
Google then goes on to advise developers to ensure certain guidelines are followed for the best app experience on devices with Android P. For instance, developers are advised to watch out for any sort of hard-coding of status bar height — this will likely cause problems. Developers should also pay special attention to transitions in and out of fullscreen mode.
These guidelines show that Google is serious about making the notch a success not only on its upcoming flagship phones, but also on phones by other OEMs which will receive the Android 9 update. Notches on smartphone displays are expected to remain popular for time to come. Smartphones with a notch are projected to make up 19 per cent of the total sales volume globally in 2018, predicts Counterpoint research. 300 million notched phones sold this year are expected to house notch displays as per the research firm. Huawei, Vivo, Xiaomi and Oppo devices with notch displays are likely to exceed 100 million units in sales in 2018, said the report.
The Android P beta is currently available not only for Google’s Pixel, Pixel XL, Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL devices, this time around, the company added eight other devices to the Android P beta list. These include – Essential Phone, Xiaomi Mi Mix 2s, Vivo X21, Vivo X21 UD, Sony Xperia XZ2, Oppo R15 Pro, OnePlus 6, and Nokia 7 plus.
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