Lenovo Just Made Using the Yoga Book a Lot Better with a Software Update

We say it often here at MBEDDED – “All this device needs is a good software update.” “Maybe it just needs updated software?” “The hardware’s great, but the software could use an upgrade.” We said something similar during our Lenovo Yoga Book review. Why? Because the goals Lenovo was trying to achieve weren’t blossoming into the features they tried to give users. This changes today.

… Well slightly.

A new software update is rolling out to Yoga Books everywhere (the Android version, of course) that has a pretty extensive feature list. It’s still based on Marshmallow 6.0.1, but this is forgiving when you see the list of features present.

The biggest of which happens to be resizeable windows.

Now, you can dive into Settings > Display > Multi-window display and choose whether to have normal or large-sized windows on the Yoga Book. Mind you, the windows still aren’t resizeable to any shape or form you want, but this is a start and may prove pretty useful.

Another huge feature to hit the Yoga Book is one found in the new Experimental section in Settings. It’s called Force-rotate, and it’s pretty self-explanatory. Any orientation you have the Yoga Book in, the device will attempt to rotate and format every app you open fullscreen. It actually works pretty well, as a majority of the games I tested that would normally require your device to be in portrait mode worked well and formatted properly in landscape. Even Apple Music kind of worked.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t get Instagram to rotate into landscape, but it’s understandable since the feature is still in early stages. Hey, at least this way you won’t have to flip your Yoga Book around every time you wanna open an app.

Also found in the Experimental section is Double-tap to wake. It’s pretty plain, but it allows users to double tap on any part of the Create Pad while the keyboard is active to turn off or on the display. I don’t wanna pat myself on the back, but I’m pretty sure I’m responsible for this feature.

@LegendaryScoop Forwarding on to the product team!

— Lenovo United States (@lenovoUS) March 28, 2017

Finally, you can now choose to have the touchpad on the Create Pad active or turned off, use an optimized and updated version of Lenovo’s Note Saver app, and use more apps in multi-window mode. Lenovo also loaded the April security patch as an added bonus in addition to under-the-hood improvements.

 

To update your Yoga Book, visit Settings > About tablet > System Update and the new software should be ready for you to download. Give it a little time since the package is 731 MB large.