Android 12 will have the feature everyone's been waiting for in Android 11

Last year, in the first builds of Android 11 Developer Preview, a very interesting feature was discovered, which ended up being

and were not implemented. But now Google looks set to bring it back in Android 12.

How it works

We are talking about double tapping on the back panel of the smartphone. This gesture was codenamed Columbus, a reference to the character from the film Zombieland and his famous "double tap" rule.

By design, double tapping should launch Google Assistant, but the actions can be customized: turn off the timer, snooze the alarm, turn on the camera, etc.

But when Android 11 was fully released.Columbus functions were not found in it. According to 9to5Google, Google is working on reviving the feature in the new version of the Android 12 operating system. Double tapping will do one of several actions:

Activating Google Assistant

• Screenshot
• Pause / resume media playback
• Opening the notification panel
• Opening the Recent Applications window

If desired, double tap can be disabled.

It is not yet clear whether the new feature will work on all smartphones running Android 12 or only on Pixel.

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