Foldable gaming mode is coming with Android 17 | Infinium-tech

Frankly, we don’t see gaming-specific features coming to Android Core very often. Recently, former journalist and now Google employee Mishaal Rahman offered a surprisingly detailed preview of a cool new feature coming to Android 17. It’s called Folded Gaming Mode, and it basically spawns a highly customizable virtual controller on the bottom half of your unfolded foldable device, with the actual game running on the top half.

For now, it’s just a 50/50 split that you can’t adjust, but that may come in the future. The Virtual Joystick emulates controller input at the system level, meaning any game that already has controller support should work automatically. The only real requirement for the game is for it to be adaptive, so it can scale down to half the display at first.

The Virtual GamePad currently supports the usual controller inputs: D-pad, left and right thumbsticks, A, B, X, Y, L1, L2, L3, R1, R2, R3, and Start. Despite the lack of split percentage adjustments, even in its current pre-release state, the feature already has a lot of customization. For one, you can opt for a sequential control layout, which some people prefer and find more ergonomic. You can also adjust the size of the buttons with three settings: small, medium, and large. The joystick supports dark mode, and there’s a toggle to enable or disable haptic feedback.

Google engineers also made sure that displaying and hiding the virtual gamepad was as intuitive and easy as possible. You can do this on demand during or before you start gaming, and if Android detects a USB or Bluetooth physical gamepad is connected, it will automatically hide it.

It’s definitely a solid base, and the best part is that it will become part of AOSP in the coming months, which means every Android manufacturer can customize it in any way they want and make it perfect for their particular foldable.

Source