Google seems to be prepping an enhanced gesture interface featuring pie controls for the touch devices. Well, this report comes in after the firm has filed a patent application for a new user interface with radial menus with the USPTO. A radial menu could be a circular menu that is customized to include a series of menu items that correspond to options, commands and functions that are selected to be activated.
The concept of this gesture interface is quite similar to the interfaces in a variety of applications such as Samsung's Air Command, Quick Controls in AOSP browser and Paranoid Android Pie Controls.
But, Google has made a difference in this patent as the related images show off that the radial menus involve the users to employ two fingers to select, whereas in the above mentioned software only a single finger or stylus was enough. Of the two fingers, one will act as a main anchor point for the pie menu to appear and the other will stretch the menu and configure the overall size.
After defining the desired size of the radial menu, users can actually select the segment by placing the second finger over the desired option and sliding it from the center of the menu. Sometimes, a pop-up menu might appear on the screen, but will be relatively smaller than the pie menu and will possess different segments including shortcuts.
It would be great to see if this feature appears in upcoming Google products.
Post by Abhinaya Prabhu
To be updated...