As our handhelds get bigger, they make it impossible to access certain parts of the screen such as the Notification Shade and Android Q wants to fix this on system level instead of users relying on custom launchers or if you’re lucky, smartphone companies UI skins that pack this feature already.
The new navigation joins the improved gesture navigation that will feature a customizable back sensitivity setting. You’ll now be able to swipe down the notification shade from anywhere on the screen, a feature reserved for launchers like Nova Prime and other smartphones such as Samsung, some Chinese brands except for Huawei.
Android Q Beta 5 rocks this feature and it’s on a system-wide level so and since this is the final build before Android Q goes live, smartphones that will ship with Android Q will be the first to play around with this feature.
With the screens of our devices going to over 6″, this feature will come in handy as you won’t have to stretch your second finger to reach the notification shade to toggle a setting or check notifications and its much smoother unlike the one from custom launchers – it tracks the pull down with your finger and doesn’t wait until the swipe down gesture is complete to begin the animation.
watch the video here:
It has taken Android a while before they figured this out and but now that it’s already here, we can’t complain. But we can complain about one feature that Android Q – using a custom launcher like Nova has Android Q kill gesture navigation – what’s up with that Google? Hopefully, a fix comes quickly from either the tech giant or the launchers work out a way around.
