Published in Mobiles

Google material design is their iOS 7 design revamp

by on06 November 2014

One app at a time

Google has been avoiding radical changes of the Android operating system for years, especially when it comes to the design. The company did tweak a thing of two, but usually it was hard to spot the difference between 4.x versions of its operating system, such as Android 4.2.2 or Android 4.4.2.

Android 5.0 is finally changing that, and a white background, different kind of snappier animations do take over the look and feel of Android 5.0 on the Nexus 9 tablet. Google is now letting people who don’t have Nexus devices to get a feel of what might come to their devices. It has released or it is in process of releasing a few applications that will get an Android 5.0 material design look and feel. The first one we saw that Inbox by Google but this one is invitation-only program and it wasn’t that easy to get one. A few days later Gmail app got the same flat design.

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One of the important things that changed in Android 5.0 material design is that swiping from left to right will get you the menu. Pressing the menu button will do the same thing, but swiping looks better and reminds us of Windows. There is also a pen in the middle of the email list, and once you press it you can start writing a new mail.

Now Google Maps and Calendar got the update with the same functions. The left to right swipe will get you the menu, it looks all white, just as it will look with the full Android 5.0 update. Have in mind that our tablet got the updated application while the phone still didn’t. Google is not rolling out these updates at once.

These application updates and radical change remind us very much on the last year’s iOS 7.0 update. This was the first major change for Apple’s mobile UI in years. Both Android and iOS tend to use a safe approach - if it's not broken, don’t fix it. End users reacted positively to the iOS 7.0 revamp and Google followed up with its change a year later with Android 5.0.

Still, getting an Android 5.0 update will remain a dream for most end users. People with expensive phones including Samsung Galaxy S5, HTC One M8 / M7, LG G3 might hope to get this one within next three months. It will take a while until any mainstream phone gets Android 5.0 and most phones will never get the update. This was always Google's main flaw and it is the one that is rather hard to fix.

We talked to hardware manufacturers and the answer why don’t they do the update for all their phones and tablets is rather simple - it cost them a lot of money and they cannot afford to continue supporting old phones with new updates.

Unless you have a Nexus phone, you will have to settle for material design in Google apps, one app at the time.

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