The Bubbles system never seemed especially well-suited to the Phone app purpose, if you ask me. I don't necessarily know that either approach is inherently better. The Bubbles-free active call indicator in Android 12 - in the status bar, at left, and when expanded in the notification panel, at right. With Android 12, that latter system seems to be leaving Bubbles behind and moving instead to a new status-bar-based chip system that serves the same basic purpose. A small handful of messaging apps allow you to use the interface - and that's about it.Īs far as I'm aware, precisely two Google-made apps have tapped into the Bubbles option: Messages, for obvious reasons, and then also the stock Google Phone app, which has been using Bubbles to indicate the presence of an ongoing call and allow you to adjust the call settings or end the call via an automatically appearing bubble. So far, Bubbles has amounted to, well, bupkis. Android has a bit of a history of introducing promising-seeming concepts that fail to catch on because developers don't bother embracing them - so intriguing as Bubbles may sound, only time will tell if and how it comes to life.Īnd that brings us to today. Of course, there's the usual asterisk that applies to any new app-oriented Android system: How useful and successful Bubbles ends up being lies entirely in the hands of developers - both the independent creators and the big-company departments responsible for creating and maintaining all of the non-Google software we use on our devices. Of note, that same stunning specimen followed that remark with this now-prophetic-feeling observation: In the right sort of scenario, Android's Bubbles system could lay the groundwork for a form of multitasking that actually makes sense from a smartphone perspective - a way to interact with multiple apps simultaneously without having to commit to the desktop-like (and often awkward-on-mobile) idea of splitting your screen in half in order to focus on multiple things. From notes to translation tools, task lists, recipes, directions, documents, or emails (both ones you're actively composing and ones you've received and want to keep referencing), there's practically no limit to the ways this system could be put to smart use.Īs an extraordinarily sharp and fresh-smelling writer put it many moons ago: Imagine if an app like Google Keep had a way to break a specific note out into a persistent bubble so you could quickly pull it up and jot down thoughts while simultaneously doing other things on your phone - or periodically reference a list while you're out and about or handling other work. That'd make it delightfully easy to pull up and reference the page as you worked on an email related to it, for instance, or typed out a document describing it.Īnd that's just the start of how a system like Bubbles could be beneficial. Messaging is the most obvious implementation, of course, but beyond that, we could've seen the option to follow in Link Bubble's footsteps and give us a way to blast a web page down into a floating bubble when needed. At the time of Bubbles' debut in 2020, I was cautiously hopeful we'd see Google lead by example and show all of Android's developers the many ways an interface like this could be beneficial. That way, in theory, even more apps could tap into that same sort of bubble-based interface without having to come up with their own code, and Google could provide a consistent, privacy-conscious standard that'd feel immediately familiar, no matter what app was involved. With Bubbles, Google sought to standardize that concept. It aimed to offer an easier way to interact with different apps and processes at the same time - something that could arguably be better suited for phone use than the software's nice-in-theory but rarely-used-in-reality split-screen option. It's a system called Bubbles, and I'm growing increasingly concerned that Google's ready to give up on it before it ever got the chance to shine.īubbles, if you don't recall, was a promising-sounding new multitasking system we first heard about in 2019. After all, from privacy enhancements to the surface-level interface progressions and the numerous small but significant touches, there's certainly no shortage of shiny new things to focus on with this latest Android effort.Īmidst all of that, though, one factor that's gone mostly unnoticed is a seemingly subtle shift in the way Google's handling a core Android concept introduced just one year ago. When it comes to Google's Android 12 update, most of our attention has revolved around the interesting improvements the software's set to deliver.
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