A Peek at Our Android Laptop Future ⭐

Last week, Google delivered Android 16 Quarterly Platform Release (QPR3) alongside other updates to Android and supported Pixel devices. Key among the changes is a long-awaited Desktop mode that Google is promoting as a connected display capability. That connected display feature is useful, for sure, but Desktop mode is much more than that: It’s key to a coming line of Android-based laptops that will take on the iPad—and, to some degree, PCs, Macs, and Chromebooks—later this year.

The problem is figuring out a way to test this functionality to get an idea of what this future will be like. We’re in Mexico through mid-May, and though I have less technology here than I do back in Pennsylvania, I’m pretty well stocked with all the pieces I need. For example, I have at least three USB hubs here, and a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, and I now have three Pixel phones—a Pixel 10 Pro Fold, Pixel 10 Pro XL, and, now, a Pixel 10a—too.

What I found with the phones is that you can connect an external display over USB-C and the Pixel will display a prompt so you can choose between Desktop mode and display mirroring. But once the display is connected, there are no on-screen controls for a mouse pointer or whatever. So you need to have connected a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse somehow to use it effectively.

The way this should work is with a USB hub: Connect the hub to the phone and then whatever peripherals, including that display, to the hub. But this doesn’t work with any of my USB hubs, and I have no idea why. What does work is an HP Thunderbolt 4 Dock. When I connected a Pixel to that dock, the connected displays, keyboard, and mouse all worked normally.

That setup is obviously fine for light testing, but I am curious how Android—or the Android/Chrome OS mashup we call Aluminum OS—will fare on those future laptops. That I can’t test per se, not yet. But this morning I was making an espresso and I glanced over at the Pixel Tablet that we use here as a smart display on its dock. And it occurred that this device, which is enrolled in the Android betas through the Android Developer program, might provide an even better approximation of those future laptops.

Curious, I pulled the Pixel Tablet off its dock and walked back to the living room space and sat down on the couch with. I signed in and was greeted by a My Pixel (formerly Pixel Tips) pop-up notification: “Your Pixel just got better,” it said, referring to a recent software update that provides a new capability: You can now drag down from the handle in the middle of any full-screen app to cause it to display in a window. A window you can then drag around and resize as desired, as on a desktop OS.

Interesting.

This works with touch, of course, the primary—and, for most, only—way that one would interact with Pixel Tablet or some other Android tablet. And when you do display an app in a window, a new taskbar appears on the bottom of the screen to enable task switching and app launching via a Start-like all apps panel.

There’s also a transparent status bar at the top of the screen that displays a clock on the far left and status icons—Wi-Fi, battery, and so on—on the far right. If you drag down from the top of screen normally, the Notification shade appears as always.

Oddly, if you swipe up from the bottom of the screen to return to the Home screen, the taskbar disappears. If you then open a different app, it will open full-screen, which is normal, and there’s no taskbar.

But even more oddly, you can’t then switch back to a windowed app, at least not the normal way. Instead, there is a new Desktop item in the multitasking screen that contains any windowed apps.

So the Desktop is treated as a single app alongside whatever full-screen mobile apps you’re using. And if you’re a Windows user with a good memory, you will recognize this as how Windows 8 worked. The primary interface consisted of full-screen mobile apps and the Desktop was treated like one of those apps. (That said, you could Alt + Tab into individual Desktop apps in Windows 8.) Interesting.

I don’t see many use cases for windowed apps on an Android tablet besides perhaps a side-by-side view with two apps. Android supports that, too, of course, but it’s well-hidden and a bit tedious: You have to press and hold on the Maximize/Restore window button to access a pop-up panel with “Maximize” and “Resize” choices, the latter of which has two placement choices for the left and right sides of the screen. So you just tap one of those to position that app. And then you have to do it again for the next app.

Once you do, you have two apps side-by-side. Which is useful, of course, but not earth-shattering.

There are other oddities. In that side-by-side view, the taskbar and status bar are both visible and there’s no way that I can find to hide both for a full-screen side-by-side view. This is true of individual apps, too. Once you window an app, you can maximize it, but that doesn’t make it full-screen, as the taskbar and status bar are visible there, too.

To make an app full-screen again, you just drag the window from the middle top upward and it will redisplay as before.

But again, touch is one thing. What I’m most curious about is that laptop scenario. So I grabbed the smallest of my USB hubs, my Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, and a tablet stand to see whether I could emulate a laptop using the Pixel Tablet. Long story short, it works mostly as expected. I had to pair the keyboard to the tablet, while the mouse has a dongle I plugged into the dock. So I put the Pixel Tablet in the stand, connected the USB hub to passthrough power, which is likely not completely necessary, and then plugged the dock into the Pixel Tablet. Voila. A Frankenstein Android laptop of sorts is born.

When I press the Start key on the keyboard, the Android all apps panel appears as expected.

There’s a mouse cursor that works normally with the mouse, and all the touch-based interfaces noted above work with the mouse too.

It’s also much easier to resize windows with the mouse.

Interestingly, when you use Alt + Tab from a hardware keyboard, you get a normal multitasking experience where you can select any app and don’t just get a single Desktop item in that view. Good.

I don’t have much in the way of typing-based apps on the Pixel Tablet, but I opened up Google Keep and started a new note just to see what that looks like. And that does work normally, as expected.

But the trick for Android or Aluminum OS-based tablets is two-fold.

The biggest issue is apps. On phones, Android and iOS are approximately in the same place from an app quality perspective, but on tablets, Android still lags the iPad. For too many reasons to count, developers have been creating apps that take advantage of the bigger iPad display for about 15 years, but they’ve either ignored this on Android or gone kicking in screaming into future as Google slowly nudges them. In Android 17, finally, supporting bigger displays and responsive layouts will be mandatory.

The second biggest issue is also app-related: Mobile apps, by and large, just aren’t as powerful or full-featured as their desktop cousins. That’s changing, of course, thanks to iPadOS 26 on the Apple side, but there is still a quality delta. One major advantage of Chrome OS that Android does not (yet?) offer is its full desktop version of Chrome, which can then be used to run any number of web apps. But Android only has the mobile version of Chrome. You can also run Linux desktop apps in Chrome OS, another advantage. Perhaps Aluminum OS exists to close that gap.

Whether mobile apps—or, sadly, less capable Android mobile apps—are “enough” will vary by the individual. This is the same conversation we have about the iPad, Linux, and now the MacBook Neo, where whatever limitations will be showstoppers for some and a non-event for others. Our needs all vary.

But what I see here is the foundation for a solid future that will align Android, and presumably Aluminum OS, with the iPad when it comes to laptop-like configurations. That is, depending on one’s needs and wants, one could use Android/Aluminum OS as a laptop, run productivity apps full-screen or in windows, and get real work done. I believe this experience will lag a bit behind the iPad for the app quality reasons noted above. But it’s close enough already, and for those who prefer Android over an iPad for whatever reasons, that’s all it has to be.

This is an interesting setup. As with my iPad Air, I wish the screen was a bit bigger. I wish the Pixel Tablet didn’t have a 16:9 display, too. And that I had some Magic Keyboard-like solution, though I know such things exist for this and for other Android tablets. The USB hub sticking off the side of the tablet is inelegant, to say the least. But it at least works.

As I was working through all this, a notification lit up the screen on my Pixel 10 Pro Fold and I realized I had never tested Desktop mode on that device. But without enabling some developer options, it doesn’t work: As with the other Pixel phones, the USB hub is incompatible. And while I can connect a display to it directly, that’s borderline useless.

So I enabled Developer options and then enabled the Desktop mode. After a reboot, the Pixel 10 Pro Fold supported windowing, but only on a secondary display. And that USB hub still doesn’t work, even for passthrough power, which still bugs me. I can’t imagine why all the hubs and docks don’t just work.

Anyway, one could of course use the Pixel 10 Pro Fold or any other Android folding phone with a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, and that would be quite useful even without a Desktop mode, assuming you can handle the screen size. That’s another on-the-go productivity scenario I am curious about.

But to me, a real Android or Aluminum OS laptop is key. And based on this new functionality in Android 16 QPR3 and public statements made recently by Android president Sameer Samat, we won’t have long to wait.