Your Android tablet’s Chrome browser may soon default to desktop mode automatically

First spotted by XDA Developers, a new entry to the Chromium Gerrit shows that android tablet owners may soon be using the real deal while browsing the web. While not to minimize the mobile Chrome browser experience, anyone you ask will probably tell you without hesitation that loading up web pages with limited features and visual elements on 7-10″ screen sizes is just not ideal. That much real estate is just capable of so much more.

“This CL will set up the experiment for requesting desktop site for tablets.
The experiment will have two comparable groups, enabled and control.
Both groups need to set header “X-Eligible-Tablet” depends on the screen size, but only enabled group will actually request the desktop site base on the screen size.
So enabled group will receive {“RequestDesktopSiteForTablets”, {“screen_width_dp”, ***}, {“enabled”, true}}
And control group will receive {“RequestDesktopSiteForTablets”, {“screen_width_dp”, ***}, {“enabled”, false}}”

Chromium Gerrit

The CL sets up the groundwork for tablets potentially requesting “desktop site” automatically based on their screen size. It seeks to put them in “enabled group” as opposed to the control group. While no specific screen sizes were mentioned for these enabled groups, it makes the most sense to me that it should be developed for displays no smaller than 10 inches. It’s also important to note that this CL is in its early stages of development, so while it’s exciting, it’s not guaranteed to come to market.

However, should it see the light of day, this would mean that should you have a Samsung tablet or some other brand of the aforementioned hypothetical size, you would effectively never see the mobile version of websites again! Why is this so significant though? I believe that Google is taking steps to optimize larger screens to feel more like a laptop experience – like a Chromebook.

While I don’t believe that Chrome OS will ever run on traditional Android tablets since Google would most certainly want to distance themselves from the fragmented, muddied OS that Android has become, they could instead use something like Fuchsia, but that’s beside the point. I believe that making the user experience consistent on Chrome across all devices it’s available on despite the operating system – so long as they have the same screen sizes just helps users know what to expect as they put down one device and pick up another.

While some would argue that this move may make their tablet’s browsing experience less accessible due to it having smaller fonts and so on, and because a tablet is generally held more in the style of a phone than a desktop (i.e. you’re looking down at it from a distance), I still think it’s a good move. Let’s just hope there’s a way to toggle this feature on and off if it’s really pushed to users.

It’s also just never made sense to load up a mobile website on what is basically as large as a small laptop screen. Honestly, we’re past the one-size-must-to-fit-all approach to software now – If Google can create a custom experience for different devices all with one single code base, then why shouldn’t they? Let us know your feelings on this in the comments section.