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Podcasts - Season 3, Episode 2
Go big or go home with large-screen devices
Head behind the scenes with Google experts and explore the perks of larger form factors with Pixel Fold and the Pixel Tablet
Large and in charge

Foldables are the fastest-growing mobile category, while tablets remain firmly embedded as large form factor devices in our lives. But what sets two of Google’s latest devices, the Pixel Fold phone and the Pixel Tablet, apart from the crowd? In this episode of the Made by Google Podcast, Allen Huang, director of product management for Pixel and Android System UI and Intelligence, and Andrea Zvinakis, product manager, walk through the unique elements of Pixel’s latest large-screen devices.

Optimization station

Both Pixel Fold and the Pixel Tablet share the Android app ecosystem and OS design optimized for a larger screen. When the team began designing Pixel Fold, seamless unfolding – including continuity and increased content options across the big screen – was a top priority. Tent mode, for example, allows the outer screen to remain on while unfolding until the 90-degree mark is reached, at which point the content transitions smoothly to the inner screen of the device. 

Allen says the Pixel Tablet reaped the benefits of the team’s many years of experience with Android on tablets. Leveraging Google’s insight that tablets are typically unused at home 80% of the time, the team designed content and controls for the Pixel Tablet that are proactively helpful, visible at a glance, and shareable in the home. 

All about apps

How does Google ensure that your favorite apps work just as well on bigger screens? Here Google is leading by example. With already 50+ apps optimized for large screens – including Gmail, Photos, and Meet – Pixel Fold and the Pixel Tablet are primed to make the most of the form. Google is also working with partners like Spotify, Minecraft, and Disney+ on intuitive apps for larger screens.

Tune in to the Made by Google Podcast to hear more from Allen Huang and Andrea Zvinakis on the full range of possibilities for Pixel Fold and the Pixel Tablet.

Transcript

Rachid Finge (00:00): So, Andrea, Allen welcome to the Made by Google Podcast. Great to have you both. Maybe Andrea, I can start with you. What's your role at Google and how did you end up here?

Andrea Zvinakis (00:10): Sure. yeah, so my name's Andrea Zvinakis. I'm the product lead for Android Foldables and large Screen devices. I'm actually based out of London. I've previously worked at Google in both the Bay as well as in New York. I've worked on a variety of products including YouTube, Google Plus Docs and AR, VR. And now I work on the Android platform team building, functional and beautiful system UI surfaces for all of our large green devices at Android.

Rachid Finge (00:37): Amazing. And we'll get into that in a bit, but we have Allen here as well. Allen, how did you end up at Google and what's your current role?

Allen Huang (00:44): Yeah, so my name's Allen. I'm a director of product for Android Large Screens and System UX. How did I end up at Google? I think actually both Andrea and I came through the associate product manager program which is this amazing program for sort of training up people coming out of college or sort of recent in their careers into product. Just because it's kind of an unusual role.

I've been on Android for nine years now. I started work here on the ultimate large screen Android TVs. And I'm coming up on my 13th anniversary here at Google. So I worked on a ton of projects, worked on ads, worked on Chrome, and have been focused on different parts of Android for a few years now.

Rachid Finge (01:20): Amazing. Seeing it all. That's great, Allen. Now to get us started, maybe you can tell us a little bit about the two kinds of devices we're focusing on today.

Allen Huang (01:30): Yeah, so we're, we have two new, exciting new additions to the Pixel lineup, the Pixel Fold, and the Pixel Tablet. These are sort of the culmination of a lot of work that we have put in on the Android side into really making large screens just a thing again.

So with the Fold, we leaned into a form factor that gives people the best of the phone and a tablet. You've got a very usable outer screen when it's folded in a familiar phone aspect ratio. And then when you unfold, you have a small tablet that's great for media consumption, multitasking etc.

With the Pixel Tablet, you've got everything you love about Pixel, but we know that tablets are becoming more and more of a thing. We've had that insight that a lot of people end up with tablets kind of in their drawers. You know, when they want it, it's not charged and so they've gotta charge it. And so we've been really focusing on this dock experience and building a tablet that's great on the go as well when it's back in the charging dock. Both of these products share the experience of Android, sort of our overall operating system, and our amazing app ecosystem optimized for that larger screen.

Rachid Finge (02:34): Amazing. So I guess at some point someone within Google decides, you know what, we're gonna create a tablet and they think of the hardware and this beautiful idea of putting the screen on the dock, getting it off.

And then I guess Andrea, Allen, it's up to you to come up with the proper software and make that a great experience on those larger devices. So why is a larger form factor so important?

Allen Huang (02:59): Yeah, and so I think, you know, Google can't take all the credit. Like we have amazing partners that have been shipping great Android tablets, and I think shipping a Pixel Tablet is really about us leaning into that experience and really showcasing the best of Google on the device.

I think for a long time, tablets were sort of an afterthought to mobile, if we're being honest, like stretching mobile out. But people are buying into these device ecosystems, right? Not only are they buying a phone, they're buying into amazing watches, tablets, earbuds or even their TVs and cars. And so having that complete experience, having a Pixel Tablet and Pixel Fold device really rounds that out.

So research is showing foldables as one of the fastest growing mobile categories. It's driving a lot of new excitement and freshness after many, many generations of mobile phones.

Allen Huang (03:47): And when you're at the airport in the lounge, you're seeing people working on tablets more often. They're valuing the flexibility of these devices. They're easy to carry around, but they're also powerhouses.

Android 12 was sort of the first step of our recommitment here, showing our momentum, showing our app developers and our device partners how important this type of device could become. Android 12 L had refreshed surfaces, it introduced the task bar, it had an app compatibility mode to ensure good experiences on the larger screen.

With Android 13, you're seeing sort of a step function leap on this in large screens. Both on the operating system and on the apps.

One anecdote, I'm so excited to give my dad both of these devices. He always has his settings on a Pixel phone set humongous and you really only get a few words across the smaller screens. And so this is gonna be pretty awesome for him.

Rachid Finge (04:45): That indeed is gonna be great. Now, Andrea, turning to you. So where do you start sort of designing an OS for these kinds of devices with a brand new and, and larger canvas, literally?

Andrea Zvinakis (04:58): Yeah, definitely. So as we were going through the design process, we developed a few really key principles that really guided us in the OS design for both the Pixel Fold and the Pixel tablet, but also for, for just large screen devices across the entire Android ecosystem.

So the first step was really building around the large screen and not making everything stretch and be bigger. So we really made conscious choices around each of the OS surfaces, for example having two panels of notifications and quick settings and really extending your home screen when you open up the foldable device, just so that this is like a really great experience when you open up this device.

We've also invested in more widgets built with Material You to really take advantage of the screen and be beautiful. And just really let that launcher experience shine.

Also since people wanna do more on these devices, we've really focused on making multitasking easier. And so we've built out the taskbar so that users really get easy access to apps to open up in a split screen. We launched the first version of this task bar in Android 12 L and during our internal testing, we've also done more refinements in preparation for these latest launches.

So we discovered from internal test testing that having a permanent app taskbar sitting on your screen ended up taking space away from being able to use your current apps. So while the task bar was useful during the times when you wanted to split your screen and run two different apps at once, the interaction to hide and show it felt very cumbersome.

So users often left it hidden. So the team really sprinted to make it more of a floating transient task bar that's just a quick swipe away when you need it, but out of sight when you don't.

Rachid Finge (06:41): That's a really smart way of doing it, I guess. So I guess foldables and tablets are very different. So Andrea, from your perspective, what are the differences and what are some unique aspects you have to think about supporting both of these devices with Android?

Andrea Zvinakis (06:56): Yeah, definitely. So for the foldables, our priorities are really around the unfolding experience. It's just because it's such a unique device. So you really want continuity when unfolding and surfacing more content for users when unfolding. You don't want to lose your place in the app that you're in when you're moving from a smaller outer screen to a bigger inner screen.

And really, like, latency is also super key here. Like every millisecond really matters and it feels extra long when you're waiting for your video to expand when you're moving between screens. So we really spent a lot of time optimizing Android to switch screens really fast. And foldables are such a unique form factor which enables new postures and new use cases for this type of device. And so we really wanna leverage the unique postures of the foldable.

Andrea Zvinakis (07:44): So tabletop mode, for example, is when the device is propped open like a laptop and that really allows for hands-free content consumption without needing an extra stand. Which is really awesome. And to make this tabletop experience really useful, we worked with video apps like YouTube to optimize their controls so that they were in the lower half of the screen because when the controls are in the upper half of the screen, trying to skip around in tabletop mode might tip the phone over and it's just like really hard to access. So it's a really great use case for being able to watch sports or TV on the go with friends, like when you're sitting at a restaurant or you know, in transit on a long trip together.

We've also heard from internal testers that they really wanted to use the device propped up like a tent as well, just so that they could also watch shows and movies hands free on the outer screen and just leverage, you know, a new type of posture. So that led us to build out tent mode. So basically the outer screen stays on when unfolding until you reach the 90 degree mark to support these tent mode use cases. And after you unfold past 90 degrees, the inner screen turns on and it transitions. So that was really interesting.

Rachid Finge (09:00): Right. So tent mode was something you weren't originally working on, but after internal testing you were like, oh, maybe we should spend some time on this?

Andrea Zvinakis (09:08): Definitely. Yeah, users wanted to leverage a new type of posture. They liked that it allowed you to focus just on the content of the media that you were consuming rather than having to see any UI in the lower half of the screen. So they appreciated using different types of postures and different types of use cases. So that was really an interesting finding that came out of internal testing.

Rachid Finge (09:31): Cool. It's awesome to see how seamless the screen orientations unfolding really are here. And another important element, of course, of the large form factor you mentioned was layout. So how do you help developers design their apps to be more helpful on bigger screens?

Andrea Zvinakis (09:50): Yeah, definitely. Great question. I mean, obviously, you know, the main type of activity that you're doing on these devices is consuming apps. So it's really important that apps are optimized for these large form factors. So we really wanted to make it easy for developers to build for large screens with improved guidelines, tooling, and libraries.

So for developer guidelines, the most common question we were getting from developers is, you know, what should we do? Apps have traditionally been designed for the 16:9 aspect ratio and so what are the next steps to adapt to this new form factor? And so we created large green quality guidelines that are published on developer.android.com and app gallery to see best in class examples to inspire these developers. And material UX guidelines that really talk about how apps should support landscape multitasking and moving beyond just stretching out a phone app just like we did with the OS for developer tooling.

What's next is just seeing how your apps look and work on the larger screens. So we've added Pixel Fold and Pixel Tablet configurations to the Android studio emulator and more tools like layout inspectors and studio to help developers update their UX to be fully responsive.

Lastly, for libraries we've added APIs to make it easier for developers to update their apps for the foldable and the tablet. So for example, window size classes to determine the right layouts activity, embedding for multi-activity apps to provide great large screen layouts, drag and drop support and posture detection foldables. This really helps with things like tabletop mode for Pixel Fold, which enables apps to respond to the hinge sensor and allows things like the camera automatically redistributing the controls as a camera tripod.

Rachid Finge (11:39): And then, so at Google, we eat our own dog food, and I think Allen, we have like dozens of our first party apps, as we call it, our own apps that take advantage of all of these new technologies. But then I guess you need to sort of convince other developers who make many more apps, you know, in aggregate to also use these new technologies and take advantage of large screens. So how do you go about talking to developers and making sure that they take advantage of these things as well?

Allen Huang (12:06): Yeah, I mean, I think ultimately the biggest thing here is showcasing the opportunity, really presenting why this is worth their time, their effort, their energy.

And so I mean, I think the first thing is that people are spending a lot of time on tablets these days. One interesting bit of information is that the way people use tablets ends up being these much longer sessions.

If you think about your phone, you check it, you put it down, check it, you put it down hundreds of times a day. A tablet you sit with, you sit with for hours at a time even. And then when you use it as a consumption device, the monetization is actually very good on the device. You know, people are very engaged because of the bigger screen and then lastly, the premium pro segment sort of, you know, professional segment. When people are using these tablets as more sort of productivity devices, that segment is actually growing really fast.

So what Android is committed to is really making this opportunity available, making it great for developers, and then just having that great experience for users. This starts with Google leading by example, as you mentioned. We have more than 50 of Google's own apps being optimized for large screens around this launch - including key ones including Gmail, Photos, Meet. And we've also used these apps as a sort of a tested dogfooding to help refine our own design guidance.

It's easy to come up with design guidance sort of in a vacuum, but then once you put it through a paces, you realize lots of things about like, oh, actually, you know, having a larger or having resizable columns for example, is a really important thing for users.

Allen Huang (13:44): And so by sort of working through that feedback, we're better able to support our developers and app ecosystem. As Andrea mentioned, we have great resources, templates, solution breakdowns, and case studies around how optimizing for tablets has, you know, been helpful for developers.

We have the app gallery on developer.android.com where they can see more about what specific examples look like on the play side. We're doing a better job of highlighting great large screen apps in the play store, really surfacing them. This is great for users because they're able to find just apps that they should be using here. And then also great for developers as well to help with discovery.

We've also just worked hand in hand with several outside partners like Spotify, Minecraft, Disney+. We know these are important apps for users, and also just like I said, it sort of helps us refine our own sort of thoughts and guidelines on how to best have really great tablet apps

Rachid Finge (14:45): And, Andrea maybe, are there any, any challenges you've seen developers struggling with while building for the larger screen?

Andrea Zvinakis (14:53): Yeah, so I just wanted to mention that a couple of our most interesting app challenges have been around app compatibility for the camera aspect ratio and orientation. It's a complex problem, but basically because of some unique aspects of the foldable and what apps are used to when it comes to the camera, a lot of camera viewfinders in apps would be squished just because apps were assuming a portrait camera feed, but getting a landscape camera feed.

So we really wanna make sure that users have a good default experience when using apps on these devices. So we built some fixes into the platform to automatically correct this for apps. We really wanna alleviate the work needed by apps in order to fix some of the nuances for this type of device.

And then I guess another point to mention is with the new multitasking capabilities on both devices, we're also helping developers build out multi-activity apps, activity embedding for side by side experiences that are easy for the developer and lets the users use the app more,

Rachid Finge (15:58): Right? So maybe on the left side I have one app, and on the right side if I actually have the same app, but a different part of it, and I can use it side by side.

Andrea Zvinakis (16:06): Exactly. So like a good use case there is like, oh, being able to use Chrome in two windows if you're comparing shopping across two windows.

Rachid Finge (16:16): Amazing. Now you two are two of the few people in the world that already have experience with Pixel Tablet, and Pixel Fold. So just wondering, Allen, on the Pixel Tablet I know, you mentioned you are willing to give it to your dad very soon. What have been your favourite apps and app experiences so far from what you've seen and felt?

Allen Huang (16:36): Yeah, with the Pixel Tablet and dock you know,I have one set up in multiple rooms actually.

I have one set up in the kitchen so I'm able to cook with it. I set lots of timers, alarms you know, things that you would normally use that sort of smart speaker for.

And then at the same time, my two year old loves climbing up in a little toddler tower and watching Bluey on Disney+. I take meetings on it sometimes just if I wanna do a standing meeting because it just has a really nice sound. The dock speakers have a nice rich sound. And we end up doing a lot of video music.

The other one Andrea mentioned just around Fold, like my shoulders are so grateful for tabletop mode because my two-year-old is often wanting to watch different TV and stuff and being able to sit it down and have her be able to watch it without me holding the phone for, you know, 30 minutes, an hour. Just my shoulders are ultimately very grateful for that.

Rachid Finge (17:37): Oh, that's amazing. I have a two year old myself, so now I know why to get the Fold. So Andrea, how about you?

Andrea Zvinakis (17:44): Yeah, definitely. So on the Fold, I really love watching my favourite podcast on YouTube and bingeing on my favourite shows on Netflix on the large inner screen. So I'm super excited for the device to be public so I could,do this in public while travelling or on my commute to work.

I'm also planning my wedding at the moment, so I use Pinterest a lot to, you know, collect my favourite design ideas. So it's really awesome to be able to cast it to the TV when reviewing, you know, design decisions with my fiance.

Rachid Finge (18:14): Amazing. Oh that's a great use case as well. So I wanted to thank you both for joining the Made by Google podcast, but before we go we always like to ask our guests their top tip on how to use the products for our listeners, the products you've been working on.

So at one point our listeners hopefully will pick up their own Pixel Tablet or their own Pixel Fold. What will be, and maybe I'll start with you Allen before going to Andrea, what will be your top tip for a listener? What's the first thing they should try when they get the device?

Allen Huang (18:47): The first thing that is a good question. Probably the nicest thing that makes it different from all the other tablets out there is that sort of dock, you know, photo frame experience. And I think one thing, you know, I've really just been delighted by having, you know, I have lots of Google photos, I have a two-year-old, so I have lots and lots of photos these days. And having things like that cycle through pictures of family, honestly, my daughter learned the names of my grandparents, all of that because she kept seeing pictures sort of cycling through and sitting.

And you compare that to tablets that are sitting in drawers because they don't have that doc, that charging dock stock experience. And so getting that set up and running just has brought my family a ton of delight.

Rachid Finge (19:31): That's a great one. So put your pictures in Google photos and I'll watch them on the tablet from the charging dock. Great idea. What about you, Andrea?

Andrea Zvinakis (19:38): Yeah, definitely. So I mean, what I find most useful about my Fold is really just all the different postures that it enables you to do and the new use cases that it unlocks. So, tabletop mode for watching video content, hands free or for taking a group photo hands free, there's also rear camera selfie to get really high quality selfies using that powerful rear camera.

And there's also a new feature coming out in Android 14 called Dual Screen Interpreter mode. Which basically allows you to have a live conversation with someone that speaks another language. And both of you will get your own personalised translations on, on each of the screens, which is super powerful. Just cause I have a lot of trips coming up, I'm really excited to be able to converse with people in a different language, which is awesome.

And then lastly, I mean, definitely a taskbar to get into split screening really easily. The largest screen really unlocks super powerful multitasking. So really encourage people to try that out.

Rachid Finge (20:45): Allen, Andrea, thank you so much for joining me on Google Podcast and I really hope we get to get you back one day in a future episode. Thank you so much.

Allen Huang (20:53): Thanks so much, Rachid.

Andrea Zvinakis (20:54): Thank you.

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