Android’s Much Needed UI Update

Android is quickly becoming the go-to mobile operating system for smartphones and tablets. Its growth is undeniable, as new NPD reports show it passing up the iPhone by seven percent in terms of  sales in Q1 of 2010. With the many phones on many carriers model, Android may soon beat out Apple’s iPhone as the king of the smartphone world. Here are the top five things Android needs to upset Apple in terms of the phone’s user experience and interface:

One of Android’s biggest problems has always been its lacking user interface. But, now that Google’s acquired Matias Duarte, the design guru from Palm’s WebOS, Android can finally take a leadership role in the user interface area. Early on, Android brought some interesting design aspects to the smartphone screen: the semi-constant wallpaper scroll, the app tray, and the classic Android pull down notifications bar. But, the UI has always lacked prettiness. Android needs a few things to really push the prettiness of the OS further: uniformity, class, and animation.

1. Uniformity

Android’s primary UI problem is its lack of a uniform user experience across the device. With the iPhone, users can expect a constant user experience that spans across the device’s browser, gallery, and applications. This same consistency is nowhere to be found on Android. Take a look at these screenshots (see right). Notice the three distinctly different design concepts in the beautiful Android 2.1 Gallery, Nexus One Home Screen, and 3rd Party App.

Of course, Google has a very limited control over the apps in the Market, but perhaps a unified look across the device will promote consistency from app developers, too. With Google’s recent acquisition of Matias Duarte from HP-Palm, Android is poised to make a big comeback in the user interface department. Duarte’s leadership has led to the Sidekick OS design and the much-heralded Palm WebOS. His work at Palm is universally appreciated by most mobile reviewers.

Joshua Topolsky from Engadget -

“Simply put, webOS is absolutely gorgeous. As far as phones go, it’s not just the only device we’ve seen which competes with the iPhone for looks, but we’d go as far to say that it bests the iPhone in some categories. The selection of fonts and font styling, use of transparencies, unified look of all of the elements, smooth transitions, and detailed application icons tie together in a really elegant way. It’s clear that Palm’s designers took a page from the Apple playbook here, but when something looks this good, you can hardly fault them.”

Jason Chen of Gizmodo -

“Impressive start to an OS that should form the base of some quality phones in the future.”

Needless to say, Duarte’s experience at Palm is well needed at Mountain View. We’re excited to see what kind of UI improvements come out of Duarte’s positioning as Head of User Experience for the Android team. Since WebOS displays wonderful consistency of design throughout the OS, we can expect the same principles to be present on future versions of Android.

2. Class

With HTC’s Sense iteration of Android, we can see that a truly classy version of Android is not out of the question. Android needs some more work on the overall “classiness” of its user experience. With added shine, transparencies, and some new beautiful widgets, Android could make leaps and bounds towards having the classiest OS on the market.

3. Animation

Don’t get me wrong, Android’s got just as much animation as the iPhone. But, Google has the opportunity to take this to the next level. They’ve already started to do this with Live Wallpapers, but the Android team should go further. HTC’s Sense Weather Widget is a wonderful example of how animation can enhance the user experience of a phone.

Android has a chance, with the help of Matias Duarte to animate the OS in new and exciting ways. With WebOS, Palm created the “cards” concept in which a user flips through applications like cards on the screen and flicks them away to throw them out. Animation to this extent would improve Android significantly in terms of looks. Although, animation tends to adversely affect battery life and performance, so it’s up to the Mountain View geniuses to come up with a way to liven up Android in a way that conserves performance and battery life.

Thanks to Zandog for images used with the post.