Multi-User Android support framework built into Jelly Bean
ANDROIDAUGUST 7, 2012
BY: ROHIT DATTA
examiner.com
 2 photos View the full slideshow »
For many, a common complaint about the emergence of tablets replacing your typical PCs has been the lack of multi-user support. Since Honeycomb has been released, the outcry for multi-user support has been a top 20 item on the Android bug tracker. The idea of having a Nexus 7 laying around on the coffee table where one member of the family can pick it up and log in has not yet been enacted. But recent clues discovered by Ron Amadeo of Android Police suggests that soon we may be seeing just that happen.
When browsing through the Android Open Source Project (AOSP), Amadeo found that the features supporting multi-user support include "lock screens, installed applications, running applications, application data, default applications, home screen widgets, accounts, syncing, and language."
View slideshow: Multi-user support
Is multi-user support on the horizon?
Video: XDA on Multi-User Support
In addition, Android is supporting a multi-user directory system in /data/system/users. In the directory system, we find that the system is defaulting to user 0. As programmers will know, the numbers system starts at zero, not one. This directory system contained an SQLite database which contained the user's accounts, the same menu accessible from the Settings.
Programmer zandwerman112 on XDA developers has published a how-to guide on enabling multi-user support which is very limited at the moment. For those interested, he has posted steps to enable this feature, while also posting a video on YouTube.
In addition to these two programmers working on it, developer Chirayu Desai submitted a patch to the AOSP, regarding multi-user support. However, Google software engineer Amith Yamasani turned him down saying, "Multi-user feature is not ready for deployment. Bad things will happen if you use it in its current state! This UI might change based on designs from our UX team. Sorry, we cannot accept your change."
Potentially another feature Google could use would be to enable Face Unlock that switched to the correct user based upon the correct face, although we recently saw that the blinking feature of Android could be hacked.
These breadcrumbs are far to coincidental and combined with Google's tendency to leave breadcrumbs to those who look for new features, it is very likely that we'll see multi-user support in the near future. Most likely, we'll see its introduction in Android 5.0, Key Lime Pie which many expect to arrive in the fourth quarter of this year. Google's direct access to the insanely popular Nexus 7 leads us to believe that the coffee table aspect of your tablet may be closer that you thought. |
