Samsung becomes first smartphone to ship with Android 12L

Samsung's new release, the Galaxy Z Fold4, which arrived yesterday, has now become the first smartphone to officially ship with Android 12L.

According to GSM Arena, the new foldable flagship comes with One UI 4.1.1 out of the box and has plenty of new features for optimal multitasking that was developed "with partners", Samsung said.

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold4 is 3.1mm shorter than its predecessor, but not wider, when closed it measures the exact same 67.1mm.

However, thinner bezels allowed Samsung to make the cover display 2.7mm wider. This changes its aspect ratio from a lanky 24.5:9 to a more reasonable (if still tall) 23:9.

This phone features a powerful and efficient Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chipset, paired with 12GB of RAM. Storage capacity is 256GB or 512GB, a 1TB option is available in some regions exclusively from Samsung.

The L version of the Android OS was announced by Google in October 2021 and then users were reminded about it six months later.

L stands for Large screens, which means foldable, tablets, and Chrome OS devices. It can be installed on any device, but it is optimized for multitasking and apps are redone to adapt to big screens.

Google apps come in two columns, which is easier to navigate on a square-ish display, and select productivity and social media apps are also aware when the device is folded so they switch to their regular orientation.

The Android 12L now comes only on the Fold4, the clamshell Flip4 is better suited to running the regular flavour of Android, despite the folding panel, as per GSM Arena.