Google didn’t spend enough time on Material Design during the keynote. We saw a beautiful video and learned a little bit about the intent and thought behind Google’s new cross-platform look (which we actually saw a bit earlier than anticipated), but there’s so much more to be said. Having attended as many design sessions as possible during I/O, I think it’s worth taking a somewhat closer look at Material Design. In this post we’ll attempt to scratch a little bit deeper into what Material means, why it’s awesome, and why it’s a forward-looking move for Google.
I personally really like this new design direction, but the big question is going to be whether or not third party developers will embrace it. I still see non-Holo applications today, so I’m not getting my hopes up.
Really? I swear, it seemed like they spent about half the presentation going on and on about how friggin’ snazzy the UI was, and how the widgets would now be doing jumping jacks when things were moved around. If this bullshit effects battery life or performance in any way, it’ll be the first thing that gets disabled by me, if they give users the option to do so. IMO, even Jellybean looked fine.
Instead of redesigning the UI yet again, how about going back and adding some ‘v1.0’ functionality, such as the ability to block calls and SMS messages? Even iOS has this feature. Oh, and why not do something with Google Voice, instead of leaving it to rot? At least they’re adding a do not disturb mode this time, which should’ve been there from the very beginning.
Edited 2014-07-03 18:25 UTC
If you had looked around you would have seen that boh battery life and performance are improved in the L release.
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/07/examining-project-volta-we-p…
Oh well, somebody who thinks that:
might be visually impaired anyway
I have had local SIM cards in France, Switzerland and South Africa and never had any felt any need for that supposedly “v1.0″feature. Are you, by any chance, American, and thus bugged by telemarketers and political robocalling? That’s your problem, not Android’s.
Pushing even further the status of the iPhone as the poster “galapagos phone” of the USA.
Edited 2014-07-03 20:09 UTC
That’s just you, everyone else has a valid opinion and needs too.
It’s android’s problem because Google is in fact an American company with a huge American base. Do you honestly think that Google, without the widespread support of it’s home country, would be anywhere as big and influential? It’s not like he’s asking for the moon here. I would assume blocking calls and SMS messages would be trivially easy to implement.
Well, I still think Android’s UI is pretty bad, so I welcome any improvements to it with open arms. The screenshots and animations I’ve seen of Android L sure make things seem more coherent and logical and things flow better from one state to another, and as such I definitely believe it’s worth the time and effort spent.
That’s not to say that adding the ability to block calls and SMS-messages shouldn’t be done, too. Those are, indeed, quite basic features.
Agreed. I have LG’s own implementation of do-not-disturb on my G2 and boy howdy does it suck ass.
Yep, this is a welcome move. It currently takes more effort to build nice, consistent transitions on Android than on iOS. iOS gives the developer so much of that for free.
My experience has been that it’s pretty hard to build crap iOS UI if you stick to the defaults, whereas you’d need to go above and beyond the defaults to make an Android app with the same level of polish. If you stick with the defaults on Android, you end up with an app that feels more static. It feels like you’re loading new web pages as you navigate between the different screens.
Do you mean beeing able to block a specific number?
If so, there’s a setting in every contact’s menu : “Direct all calls to asnwer machine” (may not be the correct wording : it’s my loosy translation).
Why? There’s a zillion apps for that in the Play Store.
You ever had one of those apps misbehave and start blocking everything, and then get bitched out by your boss because you missed an important call? No, this needs to be in the stock rom. Besides, none of those apps can block incoming SMS messages starting in 4.4, without being the default SMS app.
Honestly, Google should never have permitted OEM carriers to modify the Android experience. ALL phones should essentially receive updates just like Nexus devices do. The primary reason many carriers fail to release timely updates (if any updates at all) is because they find it’s too much trouble and requires too many resources to incorporate their myriad customizations into every new build of Android. That, and they hope frustrated users will simply buy new phones in order to get an updated version of Android. If Google is serious about dominating the smartphone market and developing Android into a top notch OS, then it needs to wrest control of its OS from OEM carriers and prohibit them from making changes. If a carrier wants to create its own custom launcher or deploy its own apps, that’s fine.
Not sure but this android “feature” likely helped it succeed early on when apple was sticking it to the carriers by not letting them mess with the interface. Its sad when technology and business are at odds, but it does happen.
And is till see iOS4 style applications in AppStore, so it’s not a question of Android being lower quality…. Its a question about how many of us(developers) are lazy. Even if it means just updating one field and repackaging.