I remember a day and age when android was great. Gingerbread to Jellybean, KitKat before LMN, O & P, 10-15: Apps could be forced to any rotation orientation and there was just one calling that had to take place: rescaling.
Today, large letterboxing black bars overtake our wide displays and we are living in an Android world that I know is unheard of and nobody on the internet even seems to care. Google AI and Gemini just justify this stasis as mandatory app optimizing for various device aspect ratios (foldables and such).
When I first got my hands on my 21:9 Motorola Edge 2024 it didn't take long for me to hold the device in landscape orientation and what really got me into it was splitting my Gboard like a tablet and I really got excited to immerse myself in a way that I had never preferred to before on such a device configuration as a smartphone. I am coming from a 19:9 LG G8 ThinQ and Moto E 2020 which I rocked on Android 10 as I let early adopters beta test the new generation of Android (11-14).
Anyways, one day Google released a core OS update including a new mandatory Edge-to-Edge API or system level requirement for apps and all of my favourite apps to use in landscape (which became most of them; including AliExpress, System UI Tuner & TIDAL), as well as many of my legacy 4.4 apps like HiMusic from the KitKat era were now being letterboxed when rotated into landscape. A horrible unusable portrait UI letterboxed in landscape on wide displays with enormous black bars on either side.
I have never for the life of me been able to figure out a hack or workaround to allow me to run apps rescaled for landscape and it upsets me immensley. Especially when my phone accidently rotates into landscape and an app like TIDAL is open - it's offensive.
Android was famous for having so many different screen sizes, resolutions and aspect ratio possibilities; even running any android app on a round 1:1 wearable display is still possible (today).
Why does it seem like nobody but me is talking about and complaining about this? It's such a nuisance.
What are your thoughts?
Do you remember an era of Android from say, three months ago (June 2026) that included the freedom to use any app in landscape and never ever having even fathomed big black letterboxing of a portrait UI in landscape orientation like ~ 'That's unheard of'?
Thanks for listening and observing my frustration.
- KitKat Nexus 4 Xposed Module Archiver and Rocket Player 3.4.1.416 debugger for AOSP KitKat 4.4.3. What It Looks Like (Example: TIDAL)
What It's supposed to look like (Now playing screen + back button gesture glitch; lasts a fraction of a second)
submitted by /u/Life_Letter3720[link] [comments]