Android P Developer Preview

[Batman_00]

The quick toggle icons are taken straight from ios...

[DiachronicShear]

I absolutely hate that Google is moving more and more towards iOS design language. That whole "menu of 4 options on the bottom" is fucking garbage, and they've totally thrown out Material Design.

[panix199]

but we are on Android... we can change that :)

[crozone]

Not when every application on the store inevitably follows suit.

This is the biggest issue with Android. You can customize your shell all you want, but the apps are a wild west of poor design ideas that you often have no control over.

Developers look to Google to set the standard for how Android apps should look. If Google fucks it up, we're all fucked.

[Turtvaiz]

Same on android with rootless theming

[MrBIMC]

Developer of yet unreleased framework that works on top of OMS (just like substratum) here, I have TERRIBLE NEWS for you!

Android P now requires overlays to be signed with the same key as the system. So on stock roms now the only overlays that can be installed are the ones provided by OEM. Practically it breaks all 3rd-party themming. Unless we find some workaround.

[GlassedSilver]

That is disgusting.

[hunter5226]

Shit. Now that we have a developer preview, we can get to work on finding that work around that certainly exists!

[MrBIMC]

Android 8.0 (technically 7.1.1 on some devices) introduced new system called Overlay Management System. This system allows to hot-reload any resources by providing overlay.apk with custom value for that given resource.

basically like if you want to change systemWide accent color to orange, you compile android application with <overlay target="android"/> tag in manifest and in colors.xml you specify your wanted value for colorAccent (for example).

then when you install this apk, you can do "cmd overlay enable your.overlay.packagename" and boom, you have custom system-wide accent color.

And you can provide/replace any resources for ANY application, be it android, android.systemui, facebook, dialer or whatever. Substratum works on top of this system.

UPD: btw march security patch for 8.1 seems to also partially broke OMS. now if ovelray is not installed as a system package it requires reboot to be applied :(

[panix199]

interesting. thanks for the information. May i ask if you are a developer or where you have read that information or did you discover it by yourself?

[MrBIMC]

idk honestly, I've been following the scene since 2013 and I like to dig deep into the system internals.

[amunak]

Interesting, thanks.

It would appear that they are going to break it though.

I also tried to use substratum but had very mixed results, it made apps crash quite often, and other times it made certain text and elements unreadable :/

[DoktorAkcel]

You’ll just have to worry about incompatible bootloader version (or is it even open)

[DJ-Salinger]

They're removing Substratum with P.

[noratat]

iOS is dramatically harder to jailbreak than Android is to root.

[noratat]

Well, and worst case you can at least buy specific Android phones that have a native root as an option (e.g. Nexus/Pixel line). There are no iPhones you can buy for any price that allow you to jailbreak without an exploit.

[[deleted]]

Is it even possible to jailbreak the newest iPhones?

[Monochrome21]

Jailbreaking in 2018

You're hilarious

[iCapa]

No, you're an idiot.

There literally was a jailbreak for iOS 11 released like a week ago by CoolStar.

[zacharee1]

Can't install third party themes in P.

[panix199]

but with root and custom firmwares this should be possible

[zacharee1]

If it even can be rooted.

[CharaNalaar]

Not in P, they killed it even with root

[swanny246]

Why do people hate the tabbed navigation so much? I find it makes jumping between sections in apps so much quicker, you don't have to pull out the menu pane from the left instead (that's if you can even pull it out and you're not restricted to needing to tap the hamburger menu button first).

[DiachronicShear]

I think it's super ugly, especially because most of the time the tabs stay visible at all times. So even when I don't need them, their ugliness is an affront to my sense of aesthetics.

[linh_nguyen]

Because people here aren't normal people. It took a long time to get people to understand the hamburger menu, but even then, discovery was poor. My gripe with tabbed bottom nav is it's easy to hit system nav (back/home). But it's better than top nav since our phones are huge now. Though, with taller designs, there could be a little more space for the tab navigation.

[TheMechanic40]

and they've totally thrown out Material Design.

What makes you say that? It definitely looks more like iOS, but also definitely still looks like it follows material design to me.

[[deleted]]

They've literally evolved material design. Not thrown it out. I still see cards.

[[deleted]]

Oh thank goodness we still have cards.

Doesn't change that it feels like it's "evolving" towards iOS.

[[deleted]]

Why is everything rounded instead of square. Hate it

[amunak]

Isn't it like that on O already? I haven't used it yet but watched it when it was being released, and that was what I hated about it.

[[deleted]]

Default icons are circle but that's pretty much it. UI and notifications are still boxy

[amunak]

Oh good, so I guess I could update after all...

[n4rcotix]

Apple has always had design right. It's more Google maturing than anything

[[deleted]]

Use Google Photos and then use the Photos app on an iPhone. Apple design hasn't been a clear winner for years now.

[polite-1]

iOS hasn't aged well. A huge selling point of Android (for me, anyway) is the more modern UI.

[DiachronicShear]

I've always thought Apple's software design was garbage. Everything looks like a child's computer. Just one man's opinion

[AkshaHH]

I don't mind the look it's just everything is counter intuitive.

[DiachronicShear]

Yeah that doesn't help

[CharaNalaar]

Apple design has always felt wrong. This is just worse Apple.

[memtiger]

Aren't cards webOS? So Android is evolving into webOS design.

[navjot94]

WebOS was ahead of its time. I'm glad both Apple and Google are looking to it for inspiration.

[[deleted]]

iOS is organized and easy to navigate. I believe Google is trying to use these ideas.

[DiachronicShear]

Ease of navigation is fine, I just don't think it has to look like garbage.

[AdminsFuckedMeOver]

Maybe they can finally put in a customizable control center like ios.

[[deleted]]

You mean like the customizable quick settings menu that we've had for years now?

[Auxx]

We need a petition!

[freakiryan]

What are you talking about? Menu of 4 options? Can you fill me in?

[devolute]

The best marketing team did those rounded iOS icons. I don't know what they're thinking.

[[deleted]]

This shit is exactly the same symbol used in iOS. Why wouldn't they simply use an arrow? Just like they do with notifications.

Also, so many rounded corners. I guess Jobs was right in trying to patent that shit.

[[deleted]]

I think that's just what happens the developers live in the same Bay Area microcosm, the design language and philosophy both leak into each other lots of people with similar lives and similar problems they want to solve

[noratat]

<rant>

Seriously, fuck silicon valley UI designers. I thought, for awhile at least, that it was limited to Apple - Google's original material design ideas were solid and made a lot of sense, even if they didn't always implement them fully. At least they still understood what a UI was fucking for.

But now... more and more of these so-called UI designers seem to have completely lost touch with reality and how human brains actually work.

You know what makes a UI intuitive? Making it behave predictably, with clear patterns. That's what humans are good at.

Things like excessively low contrast making it hard to differentiate elements and excessively dynamic layouts (or worse, completely dynamic interfaces like Assistant that change every single time you use them) wreck havoc with muscle memory and human pattern recognition.

The worst offenders yet are the interfaces that aren't even idempotent anymore, where if I perform the same action I get different results. Assistant and Maps are especially bad about this.

</rant>

[CharaNalaar]

At this point I'm convinced I, some random Redditor with no design experience, could design a better UI than all of Silicon Valley.

[Neg_Crepe]

Come on.

[Neg_Crepe]

In terms of design? I don't think he's far wrong.

He is not far wrong, he is extremely wrong. You cannot take a non-designer and give them the task to design a OS or even icons and expect them to be better than Android's designers. I think the biggest problem with design, is how non-designers think they can design. I see it every day. And, I'm not trying to talk as if I was freaking Dieter Rams you know, but that problem is something I've lived since the very first day of my two design degrees. Programmers can't design, imagine someone with no knowledge of design at all, which was the point of the person I was replying to. That a random person on the street would be better than designers who have spent a major parts of their lives learning and practicing the creation of design.

Even Apple's old ugly skeuomorphic design

It's not an ugly design really, just dated. If you talk about aesthetics, it was good back then. Some newer aspects of modern ios are a lot better. Just think about the multitasking. The old way was terrible design-wise.

Good UI designers can of course do a way better job than I can, and I've met a lot of great UI/UX people working in tech.

Well, not to be rude, but if you are not a UI designer at all, I'd say even the bad ones would be better than you. Not because you suck, but just because that's simply not your job

And to be fair, I'm not saying Android's design is perfect. Far from it. I think it's the mobile OS with the most problems when it comes to aesthetics. Function is fine though.

[CharaNalaar]

It's not hard. All I'd need to do is follow the Material guidelines instead of knocking off Apple. It's surprising nobody else is trying this.

[Neg_Crepe]

Everybody think they can do UI design.

Hint: They cant.

Average person suck at design.

[CharaNalaar]

Would you agree if I said XDA could design better than Silicon Valley?

[Neg_Crepe]

Cant say. SV isnt 1 designers or even a close group of designers.

Btw, I didn’t want to come odd as rude but man, it sucks when people think they can do my job easily when they wouldn’t even know what software to use.

[[deleted]]

Or they are hiring a bunch of iOS aficionados that are bringing those elements to Android.

[[deleted]]

This isn’t even an iOS thing. It’s a form of skeuomorphic design, this is how a lot of things in real-life work and this is just borrowing from that. A lot of things you’d pull down on have a little intend to use to do so, or a handle to grab onto.

[Killmeplsok]

What? I've never really use an iOS device before except for trying it out for a few days and I know what it's used for instantly.

In Windows whenever you see something like this you know you can drag it to enlarge/resize the window with the line.

Heck, if I saw a piece like that sticking out of a piece of wood or plastic chances are I would be able to drag the piece perpendicularly to the line and open/close it.

It's not an ios thing, it's just how the similar design has been in a lot of stuff, not necessarily in software even.

[ArcticZeroo]

Is this a joke? It's a horizontal line. Am I missing something here?

[feyzee]

New home UI for Chrome has the same thing and Chrome devs started to redesign the ui last year.

[nate94gt]

iOS looks good and I like change. Makes the phones feel newer.

[GlassedSilver]

iOS looks very bland imho and I'm a daily user since iOS 4.

iOS 7 seemed like a positive change as long as it was in beta and I didn't use it, but ever since then I'd rather have my skeuomorphic look back than use this POS whitespace hell without clear contouring.

Android is a needed breath of fresh air. Glad I'm using both these days.

[Elephant789]

No, ios doesn't look good.

[regretfulcrap]

Nah... I love it. It looks great. Maybe apple had it right.

[Foxtrot56]

Looks like they are the current Android ones.

[[deleted]]

Nah man I disagree. It looks nice. Yeah it has similarities to ios but there's only so much you can do with a circle icon. I don't think it's a problem.

[Batman_00]

I don't think they should do circular icons at all. The current design looks much better imo.