There’s another important thing to note about the Android 12 rollout. The dynamic color experience powered by the Material You design language is only available on Pixel devices for the time being. The color scheme will match the wallpaper you choose across the system and apps, and that look will be mirrored across other Google products, including smart displays, wearables, Chrome OS and the web. Google says other Android devices will get access to the experience later.
Kris Holt
I got a taste of Material You in recent weeks, as some Google apps on Android have started adopting this new design language, from Gmail to Messages to Clock, and I have to say… I really dislike it! The most prominent changes are in the Clock app, where I hate the large font and huge buttons in the ‘Timers’ section, the clashing pastel colors, and the pill-shaped accents on the bottom row. ‘Alarms’ looks somewhat decent, but the huge + button right in the middle of the screen is annoying and covers a lot of the content. The changes in other apps are subtler, from button shapes to more pastel colors, but I don’t like any of them overall. The chosen colors in particular diminish contrast and make apps look washed out and uninspiring.
Tech journalists love to point fingers at the Android ecosystem because of the slow rollout of updates by manufacturers, but in this case, I consider this a genuine upside. I own a Samsung Galaxy S8, which still runs Android 9 and will likely never be upgraded to a higher Android version. On top of that, Samsung ships its own Android UI, so even if I buy a new device with Android 12 at some point, odds are that the UI will not look anything remotely like the default Material You on the Google Pixel. And for me that is a very good thing; based on what I’ve seen so far, I could not stand to use this interface daily.
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