Android is the most popular operating system for digital note-taking devices or e-notes. Bigme, Onyx Boox, Boyue, Dasung and others all use it. These brands have Google Play enabled to download millions of paid and free apps. Most of them were using Android 11 or 12 and skipped Android 13. The upcoming Android 14, though, is something they will all likely embrace when it comes out later this year.
Why will they use Android 14? With this upcoming release, Google is prioritizing the tablet experience. The push for big-screen optimization started with Android 12L and was then further enhanced with Android 13, and things are supposed to be the same with Android 14. The company is rehashing some of its progress and pointing developers to its best practices and new classes, allowing them to build for other form factors more easily.
Google says it updated its large-screen app quality checklists, allowing developers to gauge how well their products perform across different devices. There are also new example layouts for other apps, which are supposed to inspire developers to create similarly adaptive designs and apps that best use available screen real estate.
Google is improving the accessibility of the system. Android 14 makes it possible to scale text up to 200% rather than the old maximum of 130%. To prevent any layout issues arising from this setting, Google also introduces a non-linear font scaling curve. This will contain text that is already large enough not to get bigger than necessary.
Battery life on E INK devices running Android is always an issue. They need to pack large batteries to handle all the background processes. Most e-readers and e-notes running Android use Qualcomm or Mediatek CPU processors, which already have solid battery management. Google is making changes with Android 14 and streamlining the background processes, so there is less strain on the battery.
Most E INK brands that use e-paper displays and run Android will likely all upgrade to Android 14 when it is ready. The support for tablets and higher DPI will be a game changer.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
