| Their new redesign is pointless in the first place. OEMs will continue to produce overlays that completely disregard Google's design language. Instead, they'll put in poorly designed, tacky interfaces. While this doesn't affect the experience on stock Google devices, phones such as the Nexus line represent a crushingly small share of the market, so it doesn't matter. In addition, I don't understand the pivot towards elevation. The industry has been moving towards flat design. I like flat. It's simple. Less design is often better than more deisgn. The new Gmail design is a great example of this. The current design is simple. Information is there as soon as you open the application. The new design has increased usage of whitespace and a larger action bar, not to mention that intrusive icon in the bottom right. There hasn't been a single thing about this year's I/O that has impressed me, or pleased me for that matter. Disappointed that Google continues to pump out new features instead of perfecting the ones they already have. The way I currently see it, you have Apple putting out less features with incredible levels of polish, or Google throwing features at the wall until something sticks and then only enhancing it a little (i.e. Hangouts). |
I was absolutely relieved to see the elevation parts of the new design. Flat looks good, but it's been headed to an extreme recently. I can't stand the near total flatness of parts iOS7/8; it makes it very difficult for me to visually distinguish content.