Google is launching a proposal within the Chrome open source development platform: use desktop mode on large tablets.
Google is thinking about those who own a large tablet with a modern high-resolution screen: the latest idea is to run Chrome in desktop mode on these devices. All automatically, without the user choosing it but leaving him the option to switch back to smartphone/tablet mode if he prefers.
The novelty has been discovered by XDA Developers within Chromium Gerrit, the Web platform that collects changes and proposed changes to the code of Chromium. That is, the open source version of Chrome, from which then derives the backbone of all Chromium-based browsers (and official Chrome, of course). Within Chromium Gerrit, therefore, has appeared a function to determine automatically if the screen is large enough and defined to activate the desktop mode.
Why use desktop Chrome on a tablet
The desktop mode of any app has a more feature-rich and often more powerful interface, but it needs a large display size otherwise the icons are too compressed and the user experience gets much worse.
In the case of a tablet with a large and well-defined screen, however, the user experience can improve a lot especially if you use an input device like a stylus. In this case, in fact, the stylus can act as a mouse and together with the high resolution and the generous size allows you to use Chrome just like on a desktop.
When desktop mode comes to tablets
The fact that Google has proposed this change to Chrome's open source code doesn't mean that it's going to come, and it doesn't mean that it's going to come soon: very often proposals are launched by open source app developers just to get feedback.
Furthermore, even if desktop mode does come to tablets, it won't be for everyone: only devices with a large screen size (probably 10 inches and up) and high resolution (i.e. top of the range products) would make sense to use Chrome in desktop mode.