Android and Wear OS are getting a redesign

https://blog.google/products/android/material-3-expressive-android-wearos-launch/

by whatever3 • 1 year ago

61 139 1 year ago

jsheard2• 1 year ago

An article that's not even 600 words long immediately offering to use AI to make itself even shorter has to be up there on the useless-AI-shit-for-the-sake-of-it leaderboard.

orthecreedence• 1 year ago

"This article describes yet another infuriating redesign by the Android design team who cannot seem to stick with a paradigm and improve it for more than a year before trashing it and doing something entirely new for no reason other than boredom."

awill• 1 year ago

So many people I work with (in tech) were on Android for years, and all eventually switched to iOS.

My biggest issue with Google is they aren't convicted in anything they do. They just guess, or try 5 different things, and see what sticks. That makes it a mess for users, as the UX constantly changes.

I also can't understand why Google decided a circular face made sense for Wear. It's good for analogue watches, and garbage for everything else. Try reading a message where words are either cut off, or you're stuck basically using a square inside the circle. It makes no sense other than because Google didn't want to 'copy' Apple with the rectangular shape.

bsimpson• 1 year ago

Google gave out the HTC Evo at I/O in 2010, which was what got me to switch to Android.

At the time, it had a much bigger screen than an iPhone and gave you more control over the device. It could play Flash games/apps, and let you use the apps/keyboards/etc you wanted without a company's blessing.

Apple is a lot more open now than they used to be, in ways that might have driven power users to Android before.

spencerflem• 1 year ago

They are, but I'll not be fully convinced until there's a Graphene OS equivalent for iOS.

gumby271• 1 year ago

I'm curious, how would you say they're more open these days? I've always resisted iOS since I can't do the most basic thing on it which is install software independent of the manufacturer saying I can. If that changes I'd be interested, but do you think Apple is moving in that direction?

ivm2• 1 year ago

I like circular face on my Garmin Venu. Almost all their watches are round and circle'ish UI flow is used a lot in their OS.

apocalyptic0n3• 1 year ago

Yeah, I agree. I have a Pixel Watch 3 and generally like the circular form factor. I wish they did more with it at times, but I feel like that's kinda what I'm seeing from the previews in the OP blog post

JamesSwift3• 1 year ago

The thing that made me switch, funny enough, is the 'budget phone' category. The Moto G line and low-end Pixel line completely abandoned the "small, 200-300 dollar phone" segment. And so I got a brand new iphone SE for $200. Havent gone back, and probably wont at this point now that I've moved over and use the family plan for apple one etc.

frfl2• 1 year ago

Your comment seems out of date. There's no $200-300 iPhone anymore. iPhone 16e is the cheapest model I think? That's $600usd? But there are in fact $200-300 Moto phones still and new ones every year, with decent specs for the price and fairly close to stock Android OS. No, they dont have 6 or 7 year of OS upgrades, but that was never a realistic option in the budget Android phone market anyway. It would be unfair and inaccurate to Moto "abandoned" that low end market.

mnkypete• 1 year ago

Funnily enough the first smartwatch that was interesting to me was a round watch, so I got the Pixel watch. I don't mind having the UI not being as usable (debatable), but I much rather have a nice looking watch, more like a classic watch. That's like, your and my opinion, everyone has their preferences.

tifik2• 1 year ago

Storytime: my partner used to be a long time Samsung fan. She had the phone, tablet, headphones and watch and probably more gear that I don't even know about. Then she moved to Canada with me. Because of how poor the QA in their ecosystem is, after an update her latest-model Samsung watch couldn't pair with her one-year-old model Samsung phone, which severely diminished its usefulness (this was a heavily reported issue at the time). So we went to a mall and entered a store with big SAMSUNG logos everywhere, and were told to go skip rocks. They would not even touch the devices with the same logos they had on their shirts, because both the phone and the watch were bought in a different country.

There was an Apple store in that mall as well, so we walked in and asked "if we buy an apple product here, and there is an issue with it while we are in a different country, would they help us in an Apple store there". The answer was "well yeah of course why wouldn't they" with a "what's the catch" tone and raised eyebrow.

Needless to say she is now fully switched over. Even after two years, she gets delighted every now and then by how smooth the experience is. I recall many "LOL Samsung could never" events.

My current Pixel 6 is my last android phone due to the UX issues that keep piling up with every single update. Last one I noticed: Turning on bedtime mode is now double (2) the clicks it used to be.

Padlock4543• 1 year ago

I purchased a phone in a European country without an official Apple Store, so I bought it from a "Premium Authorized Apple Retailer." After one year, the phone broke. While in a different country, I visited an Apple Store to have it repaired under warranty. However, they informed me that I needed to return to the original store where I purchased it to activate the warranty.

My experience with Apple doesn't sound so different from yours.

bravoetch3• 1 year ago

My fave issue is Android as the moment is when I try the Gemini app is automatically changes the default assistant app to Gemini. And since Gemini isn't an assistant app, it doesn't work for that :/

But on your topic, my partner has an iPhone and they disable all kinds of features and then wonder why nothing works smoothly. They have a Mac, and airpods, and still don't have anything working together effectively. Just through simple self sabotage

homebrewer2• 1 year ago

Here's a counterpoint: Apple has no official presence in my country and if you have any problems with their products, you will be told to go pound sand. This is in spite of them being significantly more expensive than in countries like the US (where they already cost at a premium).

On the other hand, a guy I know well bought a mid-tier consumer Samsung SSD in China a few years ago (970 Evo IIRC), run it into the ground doing video encoding pretty much non-stop, contacted the official Samsung retailer in our country asking for a replacement, and they seemed happy to accommodate him.

YMMV. From my point of view, Korean companies seem much more customer-oriented overall.

pjmlp• 1 year ago

Still on Android.

All the Apple gear I use belongs to my employer.

You should listen to some Apple development podcasts, grass is not so green on the other side.

There are also plenty of unfinished things, some of them have turned into memes by now.

fidotron• 1 year ago

So many people I work with (in tech) were on Android for years, and all eventually switched to iOS.

There is a curious demographic of people that worked closely on/with Android in the early years that have a particularly extreme allergy to it today.

Sundar gets a lot of deserved stick, but Andy Rubin was no saint when it came to guiding development either, as demonstrated by the memory holed Skyhook fiasco. ( https://www.theverge.com/2011/05/12/536913/google-android-sk... ) JBQ resigning from the AOSP really was the sign that true believers in the Android ecosystem are simply suckers.

It is such a missed opportunity it's unbelievable. iOS shouldn't be in contention at all.

hulitu5• 1 year ago

and all eventually switched to iOS

Maybe because the bugs were known from Android.

Yesterday i had to search, why the photos i took 1 minute ago are only visible on the (i)phone but not on the folder shared with the PC.

ivm2• 1 year ago

Android Kiki to Android Bouba evolution:

From square icons and sharp Roboto to blobby amoeba-shaped designs and rounded fonts.

Also, Chile mentioned!

eternityforest• 1 year ago

It looks nice visually, I just hope they don't add more gesture shortcuts I can't disable

hulitu5• 1 year ago

It looks nice visually, I just hope they don't add more gesture shortcuts I can't disable

"Thank you for your feedback. We see that you don't like disabling features so disabling will be disabled in the next version" Cheers, Google (torture) UI Team

saubeidl3• 1 year ago

I wish Google would stick with a design paradigm for a bit for once.

It's not just their own apps that need updating, it's everyone else's, too. Most of which will never happen, so users are stuck in a hodgepodge of several generations of different design paradigms.

Material was fine. So was Material 2. So was Material 3. So is Material 3 Expressive, I guess. Just stick with something!

wiseowise2• 1 year ago

They've been copying iOS for years, time to bring some of that Windows "consistency" into the mix.

saubeidl3• 1 year ago

To be fair, as of late, iOS has been copying Android more than the other way around - think notifications and widgets.

idontcareatall• 1 year ago

It's astonishing that anyone can say this with a straight face. Just unbelievable the effect Apple has on some people. Gruber finally getting disenfranchised. Eeven my most annoying/obsessive iOS-fan friends have admitted that they are jealous of my camera, my ability to do real multi-tasking, upload photos with the screen off, have the audio and BT audio work reliably. It's just stunning what some iOS users don't know.

krackers• 1 year ago

Current "material design" is the anthesis of what "material design" was originally supposed to be.

no_wizard• 1 year ago

Which was what exactly? I always felt they had a nebulous definition

jsnell• 1 year ago

You can now customize Quick Settings to squeeze in more of your favorite actions like Flashlight and Do Not Disturb.

I feel I'm missing something. Hasn't customizing the quick settings been possible forever?

In fact the only thing preventing me from having the single tap Do Not Disturb in the quick settings is that these same UX people removed the option in the latest version of Android, and buried it in a "Modes" menu for no reason at all.

Super happy to have that back, but good grief, trying to pitch a rollback as an innovative new feature is pretty audacious.

skiman10• 1 year ago

You can expand or shrink every tile now instead of only being able to swap position of the tiles. So more tiles per page.

ndneighbor• 1 year ago

The number one issue I have with Android is that while this looks cool, because of the fragmentation of the OS delivery between vendors- I have no idea which phone or timeframe when I could see the rollout of Material 3 Expressive.

More than 10 years later, shopping for an Android phone with the latest OS is a nightmare. Android leadership keeps on getting shuffled around, Google changes priorities every 6 months it seems. Despite Apple flubbing the ball on AI, at least I know that the phone will be supported for at least 4 years.

They will need to improve on their ecosystem commitments if they'd like people like me to switch back.

skybrian• 1 year ago

Buying a Pixel phone seems pretty easy? I rarely upgrade and stopped looking at the others.

Ajedi322• 1 year ago

If you care about always having the latest software with the latest Google features just get a Pixel. 7 years of OS and security updates: https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/4457705?hl=en

Google doesn't control what other vendors do; that's the beauty of open source. (You can argue how open Android really is these days but it's still more open than iOS.)

malfist3• 1 year ago

What happens when one of those updates bricks your battery so it only lasts an hour or so off charger?

aucisson_masque2• 1 year ago

Pixel have other issue, quality control and run on Samsung exynos hardware with bad performance and connectivity.

I'd argue that Android is technically more open than iOS but in practice it isn't. Google have dark pattern and elaborated ways to get Android user to stay in the 'walled Google play service garden'.

Like when you install a third party store and Google play protect warns you it may be insecure.

Or having to press install for every app installed outside of the store, over and over.

The fact you can't get push notification without enabling the Google play services, which is the core framework of the Google data collection happening on every Android.

ranger_danger4• 1 year ago

that's the beauty of open source

Many would argue that that kind of fragmentation is also its biggest downfall.

mvdtnz2• 1 year ago

It's also not offered in my country, so your advice is worthless to me.

karlgkk2• 1 year ago

I have no idea which phone or timeframe when I could see the rollout of Material 3 Expressive.

Not a problem with a pixel

More than 10 years later, shopping for an Android phone with the latest OS is a nightmare

Not a problem with a pixel

They will need to improve on their ecosystem commitments

Not a problem with a pixel

jsheard2• 1 year ago

The problem with a Pixel is the hardware is always a step or two behind what other vendors are doing at the same price point, and they tend to be weirdly buggy for a first-party device. For example the bug where Pixel phones are randomly unable to call emergency services has been happening for years and keeps regressing again and again.

2021 https://www.vice.com/en/article/google-pixel-bug-prevented-u...

2022 https://old.reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/comments/y039zn/i_compi...

2023 https://www.androidauthority.com/psa-google-pixel-911-emerge...

2024 https://old.reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/comments/1ano09x/pixel_...

bigstrat20032• 1 year ago

A headphone jack is unfortunately a problem with a pixel. Otherwise I would still own one. I had a Pixel 1, then a pixel 3a, then Google decided to get rid of a basic feature that every phone should have. So I stopped buying them.

mattlondon• 1 year ago

Just get the Google Pixel phones?

If you buy something from some other random manufacturer that is using the open source android code then yes you are going to have a different experience since they want to add their "special touch" which invariably is shite.

_old_dude_• 1 year ago

at least I know that the phone will be supported for at least 4 years

It's 4 (mid) to 7 years (flagship) for Samsung.

https://www.androidauthority.com/samsung-android-updates-114...

theandrewbailey• 1 year ago

Buy a phone with an unlocked/unlockable bootloader, and use custom ROMs to stay up to date long after the manufacturer has stopped caring about support. Unlocked phones seem few and far between nowadays, but there's still some. Here's another not-so-subtle recommendation for the Google Pixel line.

I've been using a Moto X4 (8 years old!) with LineageOS for 6-7 years. I'll probably get an open box (for a discount) Pixel soon, and probably put GrapheneOS on it.

Grimblewald• 1 year ago

My problem was that all the modern Samsung watches have a battery life that wont get you through the day without removing half it's features, and charging solutions that are unreliable. If half the time you want to use the watch it's dead, it stops being a product you place value on or even rely on. I found myself checking time on my phone, despite the watch being on the same hand I'd grab the phone with, because I could rely on my phone to show my something other than a dark mirror.

I used to have a gear sport, it was fine, held charge for 2-3 days, had more sensors, and was all around a good device, but all watches after were a massive step down, even if they moved from tizen to wear os.

I'll give wearables one more try if someone has a good device to recommend, but as it stands I'd prefer to just spend the extra second to pull out my phone, and for health metrics, wear a more discrete and longer battery life device.

Kivern7• 1 year ago

That's odd. I have a Watch 6 Classic (I think?), it's my first smart watch, I have just about everything enabled, and on the rare occasion that I forget to charge it overnight it still just about gets through the next day too. In that situation, if I know I'll be sitting for a little while I can always top it up using my phone too (which, admittedly, is extremely fussy with charging placement). Initially I had a lot of frustration getting it to wake up to show me the time (rather than that "dark mirror") but I suppose I must have learned how to twist my wrist more recognisably for it now because it's very rare that I have that issue any more. I really like it.

_mlbt• 1 year ago

Garmin has the best smartwatches if you’re looking for battery life.

wiseowise2• 1 year ago

Man, I wish my Android had 'better' UI

Is what I have never, ever heard. I don't what to shit on designers, who also need to justify their job, but it would be cool to see some ACTUAL improvements to important things. Like battery life.

Ajedi322• 1 year ago

"Big refresh" seems like an exaggeration compared to the overhauls Android has gotten in the past. These are pretty subtle design tweaks. Which is fine; I don't think Android particularly needs a huge overhaul at this point.

surgical_fire• 1 year ago

Looks like shit. It seems that on every UI/UX update, Google products become shittier.

I'll keep using Android anyway because I find Apple UI/UX even more disgusting.

Smartphones don't matter anyway. What most people do in high end devices can be done in mid-tier or even shit-tier devices too.

bravoetch3• 1 year ago

I kinda want to know what you do for a living.

Calwestjobs• 1 year ago

Great job! for shipping this and Great job! for presentation.

modeless• 1 year ago

Differently-shaped buttons and more swoopy animations are not what Wear OS needs. Wear OS needs better information density and more attention to detail in interaction design and implementation rather than appearance. The whole thing feels like it was designed in After Effects and implemented to spec with no user feedback in the process at all.

I continue to strongly prefer the Pebble UI after all these years. It just does a much better job with the basics like notifications and alarms. it's not even close.

jcalx• 1 year ago

Another "big refresh". I've already disabled animations because of the faintly ridiculous system-wide overscroll effect [0] which makes every menu and webpage bounce like the viewport is made of gelatin, so I'm a little bemused to see them doubling down on "natural, springy animations". I know this is "old man yelling at cloud" of me, but I don't care for my notifications to "subtly respond" to adjacent ones being dragged.

[0] https://github.com/flutter/flutter/issues/83355

malfist3• 1 year ago

That's one of the first things I do with a new phone. Want to make a phone feel sluggish? Wait on all the stupid transition animations designers made

bigstrat20032• 1 year ago

Given how much of a downgrade the last visual refresh was (Android 12 I think?), this is news I do not welcome. Anyone else remember the lock screen being a giant two line clock with no way to customize it, or the way the settings buttons got way bigger for no good reason? It was awful. I don't look forward to seeing what they will screw up this time.

eitally• 1 year ago

Related to that lock screen "quirk", the latest UI/UX "feature" that bugs me no end is the fact that on Pixel phones you can't remove the Google search bar on the home screen... yet there is now a Gemini widget available that does much more useful things, so in order to use it, you'd have two full width horizontal bars on your home screen. I assume this is going to evolve with Android 16 releases, but it's a really dumb feature.

0_____03• 1 year ago

Use a custom launcher. I run Nova, and have for my last three phones, which means my interface stays consistent, and I never have to see the search bar.

My home page is a calendar that takes up 75% of the screen, and two rows of icons below.

codethief• 1 year ago

Agreed. I'm still incredibly annoyed by the fact that in airplane mode I can no longer change my SIM settings (in particular: disable roaming before I disable airplane mode again and potentially get charged :rage.jpg:) and they subsumed all network-related settings under "Internet". (Because clearly WiFi networks are pointless if they don't offer internet. /s)

hulitu5• 1 year ago

Anyone else remember the lock screen being a giant two line clock with no way to customize it,

"We presume you don't like clocks but, we asked Gemini and the majority loves it". Sincerely, your Google Design Team

kotaKat• 1 year ago

We keep making the screens bigger to make the interfaces even more dumbed down and stupid.

Are we in Idiocracy at this point or what, Google?

Some of you fuckers need to go pick back up The Zen of Palm and re-read it because y'all have no idea what you're shipping these days in comparison.

https://archive.org/details/zen-of-palm

bArray2• 1 year ago

(I would suggest to review the fruitful language of your comment...)

I always owned an older smart phone, and looking at that new UI I have no idea what some of that stuff does, because it doesn't tell me and the icons have been smoothed and abstracted so much that I can barely tell what they are for.

I think the reason why the UI's are dumbing down is because they people using them are changing. We're talking about people doom scrolling for hours watching less than 60 second clips of ADHD cocaine. We're talking about people who use an LLM and TTS to explain a paragraph of text they didn't want to read.

It feels like there needs to be a split somehow, an Android front-end for those people and a boring consistent front-end for others. Failing that, I would accept a serious Linux smart phone, but it would need decent development to actually get somewhere.

hulitu5• 1 year ago

I think the reason why the UI's are dumbing down is because they people using them are changing.

No. We are not changing. But it seems that there are people paid to make changes. Not to improve, just to change. Why does the Messages app needs a new, much worse UI, every couple of months ?

brap• 1 year ago

Looks good. I’m happy. Now if they can please change their apps icons to not all look the same, that would be really nice.

bhouston• 1 year ago

As an iOS user so many of the headline effects this Android update mentions seem to be already part of my iOS experience. Thus this seems to be catch ups to iOS.

thecrumb• 1 year ago

This will be my last Pixel phone. I had the original and it was perfect. No fluff. Simple. Each version gets worse and worse. 7 is horrible. Still can't remove the stupid date from the home screen.

ErrorNoBrain2• 1 year ago

that annoyed me as well (pixel 8a)

but i just switched to my go-to launcher, Nova. I've used it quite a bit over the last years.

brunoqc2• 1 year ago

Wasn't Nova sold to some advertising company?

ErrorNoBrain2• 1 year ago

i like the changes are coming but i wish they didn't remove the old look

I mean... what if i prefer the older version of the UI? my only option is a different launcher or not updating

dr_kiszonka2• 1 year ago

In human–computer interaction, baby duck syndrome denotes the tendency for computer users to "imprint" on the first system they learn, then judge other systems by their similarity to that first system. The result is that "users generally prefer systems similar to those they learned on and dislike unfamiliar systems". The issue may present itself relatively early in a computer user's experience, and it has been observed to impede education of students in new software systems or user interfaces.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imprinting_(psychology)#Baby...

throwaway127482• 1 year ago

Are you gonna clarify at all how this is relevant to the original article...?

bravoetch3• 1 year ago

No, because their first experience in online discussion was slashdot. They are forever bound to that now.

dr_kiszonka2• 1 year ago

When I posted it, a lot of replies were from people disliking the changes. I thought my reply would be interesting for those who noticed it too.

brunoqc2• 1 year ago

I wish Google would sponsor or create incentives to motivate devs to support wearos. There is very little useful apps on it.

ulfw• 1 year ago

Looks seriously ugly but beauty is in the eye of the beholder and that's only my personal opinion. Thankfully I won't ever get to see it anyway as majority Android vendors aren't using any of Google's UI stuff (my Oppo Find N5 basically looks iPhoney with ColorOS). So really this should be titled "Google Pixel phones will be getting..."

jadbox• 1 year ago

The Wear OS looks the most exciting here. I'm looking forward to a Pixel 4 Watch with a better battery life, having google maps and android app support.

nullpoint420• 1 year ago

I actually thinks this looks great as a current iOS user. Apple's latest software quality (or lack of it) has made me want to try out Android again.

brailsafe• 1 year ago

Wew, this is great and all, but when am I going to be able to disable the list of trending topics or search history in my search bar, or at least hide it entirely? Never? I have to learn about the spirit airlines emergency landing and some bs about the NFL even though I'm not even in that country? Idk that customization feels paramount if I can't control what I see as I'm using the device.

footlose_3815• 1 year ago

Google is allergic to normal interfaces nowadays. Everything about Material when it rolled out rubbed me the wrong way, Rounded edges? Extra real estate? Everything is bubbles.

I'll take cold, basic, and data-full interfaces instead of the wasted real estate in the era of CSS-ifying every user interaction to death.

2OEH8eoCRo0• 1 year ago

data-full interfaces on my small ass phone screen? no thanks!

garylkz• 1 year ago

Whoever designed the email archive dismissable, what the heck

mvdtnz2• 1 year ago

Good lord I do not need my phone to be "expressive". I need the camera to open without janking out my podcasts, I need my browser to not have to reload pages if I switch to another app, I need my password manager to be able to reliably autofill apps. I do not need "expressive".

dns_snek• 1 year ago

Wear OS needs core development and an army of QA testers, not another redesign. The design is fine, but overall the functionality of the product feels like a beta test (and I think that's being generous), even on their own hardware.

I answer a call on my phone and the audio is routed to my watch, or vice versa, the official weather app claims it can't get my location even though it has access to the GPS (and it's actively being used by Fitbit to track exercise) and wifi positioning. Google Maps on the watch doesn't load results half the time, the other half the time it'll get stuck on "starting navigation" - sometimes unstuck by launching Maps on the phone (despite having offline maps downloaded to the watch) and other times it's just stuck forever. Fitbit will display some static/mock/fake exercise values until the display is woken up when OS-level always on display is disabled but AOD is enabled in Fitbit during exercise. I could go on.

zecg• 1 year ago

This is just shit, a horrible redesign. I'd much rather "truly express" myself by keeping high information density in the user interface instead of picking color palettes for this trendy "bouba" bullshit. It's as bad a redesign as the recent Bluetooth option, which went from a single click to turn it off (and respecting airplane mode) to multiple clicks and staying on between Android 14 and 15. Of course Google wants BT scanning to work even if you're in airplane mode, they didn't do it for my convenience. I've had enough and am not updating anymore, outside of security updates. Now I use Rethink as on-device VPN and every app, system or not, has no access to the network unless I explicitly enable it, no more nagging to update.

0_____03• 1 year ago

The shenanigans Google pull in order to harvest location data (and prevent you from easily opting out!) really piss me off. I have a second phone that's got Graphene on it as a result, it's pretty much just the location service spycrap I can't stand.

bArray2• 1 year ago

I would like to hear how that fluid UI works on that circular display, that looks like an absolute pain to get right. I think I could boil my brain just thinking about how they might have begun to tackle that and all the challenges they had. Just dealing with Unicode and nothing else for dynamically resizing shapes is a headache in the making.

the_sleaze_• 1 year ago

Am I the only one who -hates- these springy animations? I feel it introduces an artificial lag. When I tap I want instant response, I don't want to have to wait a half second for the boxes to complete their scale transforms.

My canonical example is deleting message threads out of iOS Messages app. For every row in the list you need to swipe allll the way over to the left, wait for the stupid animation, click delete, wait for the stupid animation, click the confirm. Maybe it would improve if the component was responsive during its animation cycle. But ugh.

pirates• 1 year ago

You can use the three dots menu in the top right corner to Select Messages, drag or tap the buttons that appear, then Delete in the bottom right. That said you are definitely correct that in general this is a thing in the OS and sometimes there’s nothing you can do but wait.

Android and Wear OS are getting a redesign

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