Android 12 PREVIEW : ABSOLUTE VISUAL OVERHAUL.
Google has recently announced Android 12 at the Google I/O and its probably for the first time in a very long time, the concerned audience is seriously thrilled about what all it has to offer. It will take some time to roll out in India and even more for brands that are not Google, but hold tight because it’ll be worth waiting for.
The Android 12 has a completely new design which shall be based and materialized upon your usage pattern and style which is why I guess they’ve chosen to call this system, MATERIAL YOU. It comes with big and bubble-type buttons (which is a first when it comes to Android) and buttery smooth animations. According to Google, it is the biggest design upgrade since 2014 i.e. since Android 4.4 KitKat or 5.0 Lollipop. Now, considering the fact that Android comes with an update every year and having said that, much of those versions are nothing but some revamped iterations of what they’ve done in the past, a serious design change was seriously overdue. The conventional notification panel now comes with not only those big buttons I stated about, but also a lot of color customizations and the same goes for the overall system themes.
What more does the Material You brings:
Apart from the design customizations that I stated earlier, Material You also brings new widgets to the table (or should I say, screen) which I think is nice and considering the fact that iOS is also into bringing widgets customizations lately, it only makes sense for the Android to retain its supremacy in the respective territory. Now as much as I like the Material You being implemented as shown above in the Pixel, I am really curious to know the hows and whats of the implementation process in Samsung’s ONE UI , OnePlus’ Oxygen OS and the likes (which asks for a lot of patience, I might add)as they always like theirs’ to be different and this is especially the case with Samsung who is always non-appreciative of the “Everything Google’s” idea for some reason. Don’t get me wrong here, I love ONE UI and why wouldn’t I, afterall I use it. I don’t like Bixby however, as a matter of fact its nowhere near the Google Assistant.
UNCONVENTIONAL INITIATIVE :
Android phones, in general have a reputation that to add more power to the device, the brand must thrown in some more powerful hardware or else, the animations and the performance shall all be jittery after you indulge in some heavy, processor intensive tasks. Well, now the things shall be different as Google is promising that they’re going to make animations smoother for everybody through software improvements which I believe is remarkable.
We’ve done a few things to make the system smooth. We’ve reduced lock contention and key services, activity window and package manager. What that really means is, there are multiple different parts of the system trying to talk to the operating system at the same time and that’s when you see things jitter or genic, by smoothing a lot of that out by reducing, for example, the amount of time that android system server uses by 22%, actually, we’ve been able to make all the animation feel super smooth — SAMEER SAMAT(VP OF PRODUCT MANAGEMENT FOR ANDROID AND GOOGLE PLAY)
MAJOR PRIVACY UPDATES :
Privacy these days have become a major issue in all parts of the world and with the ever so huge and yet increasing data that we keep in our smartphones these days, it becomes all the more essential. This year Google has stepped up its game in the respective area by introducing some major privacy boosters. What Google did is that it focused on 3 major sensors that act as a critical point of concern for most of the users, viz — Camera, Microphone & Location. So, the camera and the microphone will indicate whenever they’re in use through a tiny green dot in the upper-right of the screen which you’ll have the option to turn off through an optional toggle in the Quick Settings at a system level. Say, for example, an app uses your camera and you’ve chosen not to permit it, the app won’t know that it has been denied access, instead it will be proffered with a dark screen, a literal dark humor thrown by the hands of Google towards the requirements of the app, XD.
But here comes a small “but”. We all know that the primary source of revenue for Google is its personalized Ads, so isn’t that a threat to privacy ? Well, I guess that patience will be its only answer.
