Last year at Google I/O, we shared some big changes coming to the Play Store for large screen devices. Since then, we’ve seen even more people using large screens for work and play, across millions of active Android devices. Apps and games play a critical role in shaping the on-device experience, so we’ve redesigned the Play Store to help users get the most from their tablets, Chromebooks, and foldables.
Today, we’re introducing four major updates to help users find high-quality large screen apps on Play: refreshed app listing pages, ranking and quality improvements, streamlined store navigation, and a split-screen search experience.
I’m glad Google seems to be finally doing the things it need to do to make Android applications feel more at home on larger displays. While I believe the problem has been somewhat overblown by tech media, there’s no denying iPadOS has a wider and more optimised tablet application offering, and Google’s got a lot of work to do to catch up.
My memory is a bit hazy on this, but didn’t they have dedicated layouts etc for tablets/large screens in their apps and in the OS back in the Honeycomb/Ice Cream Sandwich/Kitkat days? This seems like just putting back in what they took out a few years ago.