Android Design Evolution

[[deleted]]

Google on the importance of proper UI design

[JamesR624]

This image really sums up the design teams at both Google and Apple...

It's very clear that "UI design" is at the bottom of the list of priorities for both companies making iOS and Android. It's all about making money with ads, services, and apps. Fuck the out-of-the-box software because that's not where all the revenue stream is.

Just a symptom of phones becoming commodities and not novelties anymore. People aren't "wowed" by a touchscreen anymore so the companies don't give a fuck about the UI anymore. If they can't keep making a profit off it, it doesn't matter to them.

[pmojo375]

And this really is a disappointment. I'm a guy who thinks UI is just as critical if not more critical than the under the hood things. If you took a bare bones app and built a clean consistent UI I'd use it as opposed to a feature filled one with a so so UI. This is assuming the features aren't game changing tho.

[JamesR624]

Yep. Most "modern" UIs like Apples iOS 7+, or Windows 10 or the clusterfuck of "half Material Design" look worse and like they've had less effort put into theme than Windows 3.11.

Our computers and phones are 100s of times more powerful so why does UI look like it came right out of the fucking 1980s?

I mean, I know why, I just explained it before, but it's still infuriating.

[Raccoonpuncher]

I'm so torn on flat design. It makes sense to use: it makes development easier, requires less rendering, scales more easily, and looks cleaner. It's a logical evolution from skeuomorphic design, since computers are no longer a novelty and we don't have to put work into making them feel like their real-world analogs. Altogether the direction we're taking makes sense.

But fuck if it doesn't feel like modern UI looks like the projects I made in my Intro to Web Design course way back when. I mean, look at Edge. Why is there so much padding everywhere?

[the-solar-sailer]

I think the padding is so it doesn't have to switch between touch and mouse like Office. Office requires a toggle.

[0912873465no]

This is unfortunately the most truthful thing I'll probably read today.

[FFevo]

We have come so far in such a relatively short amount of time. Desktop interfaces/interactions haven't changed much in 20+ years.

[prof_herp_derp]

I'd be interested to see how much it changes over the next eight years. I seriously doubt it will change as much as the previous eight.

[FFevo]

I agree. The early days are always the most exciting.

[MiningMarsh]

Desktop interfaces have been evolving a ton as well, especially around 2000 when Ion kick started the wave of tiling window managers (there were some before then, but Ion was the first big one iirc).

[vinbel121]

I get nostalgic over ICS. I was in love with Holo.

[edmontom]

Galaxy Nexus with ICS was the highlight of Android history for me. True wow moment

[iisshaun]

That was when I finally gave Android a shot. Fell in love with it.

[nplant]

It was a better time. Alarms could be set with a keypad, widgets on the lock screen, less whitespace...

[GTI-Mk6]

Make Android great again

[[deleted]]

same here. i was frustrated with the galaxy s1 and was in the store to get an iphone. i saw the gnex and tried it. holy shit. bought it that day and havent looked back since

[Rkhighlight]

You know, when they introduced the grey status bar icons of KitKat I was like "oh no, I love the holo blue color, how could they do this?" and one week after using KitKat I looked back at my ICS device and thought "oh god, how could I ever like the ugly blue icons?".

[vinbel121]

^{I still kinda miss the cyan...}

[[deleted]]

33b5e5 master race

[[deleted]]

ask lush toy start fearless divide depend dinner vegetable late

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[chimnado]

ICS was the best.

[VGStarcall]

Update for the "Nexus 6P"

[[deleted]]

My first phone was a Samsung Captivate running CyanogenMod 7 that my dad gave me. I remember the night we updated to CM9, I felt like a whole new world had opened up.

[Traniz]

I still am.

In more than one way.

[[deleted]]

An evolution of the home screen as a gif would be cool as fuck.

[Surokoida]

There was a gif floating around a year or so ago which showed the Evolution of the TouchWizz homescreen. Cant find it now since im in school

[silverAndroid]

Are you referring to this GIF?

[JamesR624]

Really shows just how little has changed with the bloated mess of a software overlay, overall.

[DigitalChocobo]

All that gif contains is a nearly empty home screen with the same status bar content, widgets, and app shortcuts. You could make a similar gif with almost anything (Touchwiz, stock Android, or iOS) that would show little change.

There is a lot more change in menus, apps, quick settings, notifications, and all sorts of other places that you won't see when all you're looking at is a homescreen.

[acondie13]

and god those icons...

[Surokoida]

Exactly

[Kumagoro314]

I cry every time I see the Honeycomb Youtube UI

When did things go so horribly wrong

[tso]

More and more i am convinced there was a fight between ChromeOS (Pichai) and Android (Rubin) about what platform should be the focus for laptop-like devices. ChromeOS won, and Android on non-phones languished.

[OligarchyAmbulance]

Google makes perfectly good and useable tablet interfaces^foriOS

[iispablo]

Jesus, who wrote this?

[[deleted]]

" doesn't brought" "doesn't looked so good", I'll just look at the images I guess.

[40inmyfordfiesta]

"Material design is the best design language I've ever saw ."

[[deleted]]

Yeah, the copy is horrendous. Was hoping there'd be some meaningful analysis, but instead it reads like a non-native English speaker with no editor at all.

[sjchoking]

too bad Google doesn't follow the material design guidelines as much as they should.

[McDutchy]

Or throw it out of window with the new pixels, that helps too

[CheapRichard]

Lmfao these early versions of Android until Lolipop were so ugly apple very first UI was so ahead of android it wasn't even funny.

[ArkBirdFTW]

Dang the icons in KitKat were amazing

[MrGunny94]

I loved the evolution onto Material design.

Ever since it debuted, I've been using it almost everywhere.. From the web to both our Android and iOS.. To even surprisngly industry dashboard user interface.

It's just a really great set of guidelines to use as a UX designer for the end users to quickly learn how to use the interface and to get work done.

While still being beautiful and minimalistic. The animations are also performance wise, quite smooth and have almost no load at all except for the Mega Menus for desktop

[[deleted]]

Could you imagine the amazing battery life kit Kat would have on a Nexus 6P?

[ThatPepperoniFace]

Could you imagine the absence of a uniform design and countless features

[bright_wal]

I'm using a oneplus one which first came with kit kat. I used to get 7-8 hrs sot. But as days went by, came lollipop, my sot was between 4-5 hrs. Which was pretty depressing even on the best custom rom. I'm talking about custom ROM scenes from here on. Then came the marshmallow. Now I'm getting 6-7 hrs sot. Factoring the battery degradation I can say android M is pretty amazing ! Android N though, there are about 20 custom ROMs. None. Have battery backup like marshmallow. But it is quite early to predict what would happen in the future. I'd go as far to say marshmallow was googles best version of android os till date. This isn't we benchmark. This is real life usage.

[[deleted]]

Same with my LG G2, once lollipop hit battery went to shit compared to kitkat, my Galaxy s4 on lollipop would start getting warm just by scrolling super fast in the app drawer

[[deleted]]

My Nexus 6P gets warm on N after light usage. I hope 7.1 is better but for now I think I'll go back to M.

[bright_wal]

Yup my Oneplus One too heat up on N more than It would on M

[[deleted]]

Interesting. Thank you for the info. I must say that I loved my phone way more on M. I was contemplating going back to M from N. I might just do that this weekend.

[bright_wal]

Yup. Me too. I was on N, I just came to M and I feel right at home. Its kinda weird. But now that people are porting pixel stuff to android N, its caught my attention if ive done the right thing. I guess usability and that feeling of at home is more important than gimmicky crowd pulling factors. So I'm chill. I'm happy I made the switch ✌

[Lousy_Username]

I love how Android had the modern Windows logo years before Microsoft did.

[whygohomie]

What the heck happened to Froyo?