13 ms·

Android and Wear OS are getting a redesign

61 points by whatever3 1y ago

jsheard 1y 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 1y 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 1y 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.
- ivm 1y 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 1y 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
- bsimpson 1y 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 1y ago
    They are, but I'll not be fully convinced until there's a Graphene OS equivalent for iOS.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
  - gumby271 1y 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?
- JamesSwift 1y 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.
  - frfl 1y 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 $200-300 Moto phones still and new ones every year, with decent specs for the price and fairly close to stock Android OS. No, they dont have 6 or 7 year of OS upgrades, but that was never a realistic option in the budget Android phone market anyway. It would be unfair and inaccurate to Moto "abandoned" that low end market.
    - microtonal 1y ago
      The Samsung A5x line usually goes towards 300 dollar/euro pretty quickly and e.g. the A56 get 6 years of updates. The Pixel 8a is currently 369 Euro in my country and has a long update cycle.
      - kelvinjps10 1y ago
        I bought an a25 in 200$
    - JamesSwift 1y ago
      These show as $270 new https://swappa.com/listings/apple-iphone-se-3rd-gen-2022?carrier=unlocked&color=&storage=&modeln=&condition=new&sort= https://swappa.com/listings/apple-iphone-se-3rd-gen-2022?car...
      - frfl 1y ago
        The catch being that's a phone from 2022. Sure, if that's acceptable. I was just referring to current models rather than models from multiple years ago
- mnkypete 1y 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.
- tifik 1y 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 1y 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.
    - tifik 1y ago
      Yes, in some European countries Apple doesn't have physical stores and relies on official partners for retail for physical stores. In some of these countries, you can still shop online on the official Apple store for that country. Major down side is you can't get Apple care at all. The difference is my partner didn't buy her gadgets from a retailer. It was all from physical Samsung stores and under extended warranty. It sounds like an oversight on the retailers side that they didn't 'activate' your warranty for some reason. But yeah, official stores and Apple Care not being available is a major downside, which is why I'm waiting until Im back to Canada to get an iPhone (it's also quite a bit cheaper on that side of the Atlantic). One limitation I know of with Apple Care is that if you need to replace your device under warranty, they will need to mail it to you from the country of purchase, but you will get a temporary device while you wait for that. Samsung would never...
- pjmlp 1y 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 1y 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-skyhook-lawsuit-motorola-samsung 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.
- hulitu 1y 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.
ivm 1y 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 1y ago
It looks nice visually, I just hope they don't add more gesture shortcuts I can't disable
- hulitu 1y 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
saubeidl 1y 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!
- wiseowise 1y ago
  They've been copying iOS for years, time to bring some of that Windows "consistency" into the mix.
  - saubeidl 1y ago
    To be fair, as of late, iOS has been copying Android more than the other way around - think notifications and widgets.
    - kridsdale3 1y ago
      Those were both more than 10 years ago.
      - bydo 1y ago
        And both from WebOS.
      - echoangle 1y ago
        Not really, the proper widgets people mean were introduced in iOS 14 which was 5 years ago.
  - idontcareatall 1y 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.
jsnell 1y 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 1y 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 1y 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 1y ago
  Buying a Pixel phone seems pretty easy? I rarely upgrade and stopped looking at the others.
- inquirerGeneral 1y ago
  [dead]
- Ajedi32 1y 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 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.)
  - malfist 1y ago
    What happens when one of those updates bricks your battery so it only lasts an hour or so off charger?
    - FreakyT 1y ago
      Not sure why you're getting downvoted, considering that this actually happened: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/01/google-pixel-4as-ruinous-battery-performance-update-is-a-bewildering-mess/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/01/google-pixel-4as-rui...
wiseowise 1y 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.
Ajedi32 1y 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 1y 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.
- bravoetch 1y ago
  I kinda want to know what you do for a living.
Calwestjobs 1y ago
Great job! for shipping this and Great job! for presentation.
modeless 1y 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 1y 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 https://github.com/flutter/flutter/issues/83355
- malfist 1y 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
bigstrat2003 1y 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 1y 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_____0 1y 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 1y 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)
- hulitu 1y 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 1y 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 https://archive.org/details/zen-of-palm
- bArray 1y 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.
  - hulitu 1y 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 1y 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 1y 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 1y 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.
- ErrorNoBrain 1y 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.
  - brunoqc 1y ago
    Wasn't Nova sold to some advertising company?
    - microtonal 1y ago
      Apparently LawnChair is a popular Pixel Launcher replacement now: https://lawnchair.app/ https://lawnchair.app/ Haven't tried it, because the Pixel Launcher is fine for me (but yes, I'm in camp "they should make the search bar removable.)
ErrorNoBrain 1y 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_kiszonka 1y 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_duck_syndrome https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imprinting_(psychology)#Baby...
- throwaway127482 1y ago
  Are you gonna clarify at all how this is relevant to the original article...?
  - bravoetch 1y ago
    No, because their first experience in online discussion was slashdot. They are forever bound to that now.
  - dr_kiszonka 1y 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.
brunoqc 1y ago
I wish Google would sponsor or create incentives to motivate devs to support wearos. There is very little useful apps on it.
ulfw 1y 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 1y 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 1y 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 1y 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 1y 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 1y ago
  data-full interfaces on my small ass phone screen? no thanks!
garylkz 1y ago
Whoever designed the email archive dismissable, what the heck
mvdtnz 1y 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 1y 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 1y 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_____0 1y 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.
bArray 1y 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_ 1y 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 1y 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.

61 points by whatever3 1y 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 1y 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 1y 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.

ivm 1y 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 1y 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
bsimpson 1y 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 1y ago
  They are, but I'll not be fully convinced until there's a Graphene OS equivalent for iOS.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- gumby271 1y 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?
JamesSwift 1y 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.
- frfl 1y 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 $200-300 Moto phones still and new ones every year, with decent specs for the price and fairly close to stock Android OS. No, they dont have 6 or 7 year of OS upgrades, but that was never a realistic option in the budget Android phone market anyway. It would be unfair and inaccurate to Moto "abandoned" that low end market.
  - microtonal 1y ago
    The Samsung A5x line usually goes towards 300 dollar/euro pretty quickly and e.g. the A56 get 6 years of updates. The Pixel 8a is currently 369 Euro in my country and has a long update cycle.
    - kelvinjps10 1y ago
      I bought an a25 in 200$
  - JamesSwift 1y ago
    These show as $270 new https://swappa.com/listings/apple-iphone-se-3rd-gen-2022?carrier=unlocked&color=&storage=&modeln=&condition=new&sort= https://swappa.com/listings/apple-iphone-se-3rd-gen-2022?car...
    - frfl 1y ago
      The catch being that's a phone from 2022. Sure, if that's acceptable. I was just referring to current models rather than models from multiple years ago
mnkypete 1y 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.
tifik 1y 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 1y 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.
  - tifik 1y ago
    Yes, in some European countries Apple doesn't have physical stores and relies on official partners for retail for physical stores. In some of these countries, you can still shop online on the official Apple store for that country. Major down side is you can't get Apple care at all. The difference is my partner didn't buy her gadgets from a retailer. It was all from physical Samsung stores and under extended warranty. It sounds like an oversight on the retailers side that they didn't 'activate' your warranty for some reason. But yeah, official stores and Apple Care not being available is a major downside, which is why I'm waiting until Im back to Canada to get an iPhone (it's also quite a bit cheaper on that side of the Atlantic). One limitation I know of with Apple Care is that if you need to replace your device under warranty, they will need to mail it to you from the country of purchase, but you will get a temporary device while you wait for that. Samsung would never...
pjmlp 1y 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 1y 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-skyhook-lawsuit-motorola-samsung 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.
hulitu 1y 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.

ivm 1y 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 1y ago

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

hulitu 1y 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

saubeidl 1y 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!

wiseowise 1y ago
They've been copying iOS for years, time to bring some of that Windows "consistency" into the mix.
- saubeidl 1y ago
  To be fair, as of late, iOS has been copying Android more than the other way around - think notifications and widgets.
  - kridsdale3 1y ago
    Those were both more than 10 years ago.
    - bydo 1y ago
      And both from WebOS.
    - echoangle 1y ago
      Not really, the proper widgets people mean were introduced in iOS 14 which was 5 years ago.
- idontcareatall 1y 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.

jsnell 1y 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 1y 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 1y 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 1y ago
Buying a Pixel phone seems pretty easy? I rarely upgrade and stopped looking at the others.
inquirerGeneral 1y ago
[dead]
Ajedi32 1y 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 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.)
- malfist 1y ago
  What happens when one of those updates bricks your battery so it only lasts an hour or so off charger?
  - FreakyT 1y ago
    Not sure why you're getting downvoted, considering that this actually happened: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/01/google-pixel-4as-ruinous-battery-performance-update-is-a-bewildering-mess/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/01/google-pixel-4as-rui...

wiseowise 1y 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.

Ajedi32 1y 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 1y 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.

bravoetch 1y ago
I kinda want to know what you do for a living.

Calwestjobs 1y ago

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

modeless 1y 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 1y 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 https://github.com/flutter/flutter/issues/83355

malfist 1y 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

bigstrat2003 1y 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 1y 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_____0 1y 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 1y 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)
hulitu 1y 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 1y 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 https://archive.org/details/zen-of-palm

bArray 1y 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.
- hulitu 1y 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 1y 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 1y 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 1y 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.

ErrorNoBrain 1y 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.
- brunoqc 1y ago
  Wasn't Nova sold to some advertising company?
  - microtonal 1y ago
    Apparently LawnChair is a popular Pixel Launcher replacement now: https://lawnchair.app/ https://lawnchair.app/ Haven't tried it, because the Pixel Launcher is fine for me (but yes, I'm in camp "they should make the search bar removable.)

ErrorNoBrain 1y 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_kiszonka 1y 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_duck_syndrome https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imprinting_(psychology)#Baby...

throwaway127482 1y ago
Are you gonna clarify at all how this is relevant to the original article...?
- bravoetch 1y ago
  No, because their first experience in online discussion was slashdot. They are forever bound to that now.
- dr_kiszonka 1y 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.

brunoqc 1y ago

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

ulfw 1y 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 1y 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 1y 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 1y 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 1y 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 1y ago
data-full interfaces on my small ass phone screen? no thanks!

garylkz 1y ago

Whoever designed the email archive dismissable, what the heck

mvdtnz 1y 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 1y 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 1y 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_____0 1y 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.

bArray 1y 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_ 1y 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 1y 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.