Google has now revealed Android 12
Google just announced the new features for Android 12 and it’s going to be a massive adjustment for most users. They’ve changed the style with Material You, adapted quick settings with big, chunky buttons in the quick settings panel and completely redisgned widgets in a way that’s similar to Apple’s new design but still distinctly Android.
Let’s start with the new Material You, this is an evolution of the latest Material Design 2 that’s now able to adapt to a users specific preferences. It allows a user to choose a brand new colour palette in settings and then that colour palette will be applied across all of the apps on their device that support this new system. This is a great new feature for users but it’s a pain for developers depending on how Google decides to implement it, if it’s just a small change that Flutter and Android Studio automatically adapt to in an update then it could be seemless, however, if it requires a major rewrite of current apps then it may take developers a while to catch up if they do at all.
Widgets have also had a massive redesign with a completely new style that I never knew I wanted. The widgets are directly tied to the new Material You design scheme that launches with android 12 and it definitely gives me a more iOS like feel but it’s got a flare that’s only on android. Some of the widgets are circular whilst others are rectangular and some have an elliptical pill shape. This is good because widgets have needed an overhaul on android for a while and that wass only made more obvious by Apple’s widgets in iOS 14.
Overall, I would say that this is one of the biggest changes to Android in the last few years and shows that Google is now moving from small updates to bigger changes like we previously saw.
Android 12 should be launching at some point in September along with the brand new Pixel 6.