That actually got some decent cheers at Google I/O iirc, it's bigger than it sounds at first. It's scaling the font size of the text to fit the available space, which is a fairly unique twist and is great for localization efforts (looking at you, German...)
Don't get me wrong, the feature itself is indeed useful.
It's just that its so.. minor. If you ever wanted to implement this in your app then there are multiple ready-made solutions for this or you could write your own in a short amount of time. Presenting this as one of the key new features in a major new OS versions seems just strange.. like there wasn't anything else substantial.
They develop for a certain size and resolution, maybe what is currently on the Samsung flagship, and if it also work outside of that box they are happy. And if not they simply flag it as not supported in the Play store.
Android has had from day one all manner of capabilities for fitting a UI to different devices. But still i run into UIs that seems fixed in some manner because of some Photoshop designer with a chip on their shoulder.
> Photoshop designer with a chip on their shoulder.
I think you are attributing malice to something where laziness would be an easier explanation. As an occasional Android dev, I know the laziness problem all too well when trying to get UI to fit multiple devices.
