Android 12 received the biggest design change since 2014. According to Samir Samat, Google's vice president who is responsible for the development of Android and Google Play, this will be the largest design change in the history of this operating system. The new concept was named Material You and will soon be integrated into all the company's products - Android, Google Chrome, search engine, branded applications, etc.


Material You and the new Android 12 design

The Material You design concept replaces the "material design" that Google has been using in Android since 2014. As the name hints, this is not so much a revolution and a paradigm shift, but rather a new stage of development. Like its predecessor Material Design, the new concept also uses the idea of cards from Google Now, dominated by minimalistic two-dimensional objects with advanced animation and restrained colour palettes.

Desktop that adapts to wallpaper


Android 12 learned how to generate a colour palette based on the user's wallpaper, and then apply these colours to objects on the desktop, settings menu, lock screen. Google promises that even the icons of third-party applications will change in the future to make the desktop look neater. At the same time, the system is not fully automatic and allows the user to independently change and adjust the colour palette.

Gigantomania controls


Judging by the presentation, the interface elements of Android 12 have become larger and brighter, which is why fewer objects fit on the desktop. Notifications on the notification screen have especially increased, so they are combined into groups. Google, on the contrary, sees this as a plus - they say the user is free to add several additional work screens with the necessary elements, and all of them will look solid and organic, as if a real concept designer worked on them.

Widgets look more organic on the desktop


The widget system has been completely redesigned. With new dynamic controls, the user can interact with the application through the widget without launching the application itself. Plus, now the widgets on the desktop will visually adjust to the part of the wallpaper that they cover. Judging by the short clip, this is somewhat similar to the adaptive backlighting in monitors and TVs, which also adjusts the colour gamut of the RGB tape to match what is happening on the screen.

Improved animation when interacting with the screen


The designers also reworked the animation system. The video showed how, while scrolling across the screen, its contents are visually stretched, as if you are pulling a real physical object with your finger. When the charger is connected, light ripples and waves of light run across the screen. And the screen is now slightly backlit when the user presses the power or volume buttons.

What else has fundamentally changed in Android 12?

Security


Scandals with recording microphones, turned on webcams and total surveillance by IT corporations of all the inhabitants of the planet suggest that fans of conspiracy theories turned out to be right for once. Because of these events, a new trend has emerged in the IT industry aimed at protecting user data. Things like laptop webcam shutters, anti-spyware screens or Face ID systems in smartphones have gradually become a necessity from the category of curiosities. Android 12 keeps up with the times and gives users more control over their own data flow.

Moreover, these are not just cosmetic improvements, but a whole security complex called Private Compute Core, which will locally store data for machine learning algorithms, and not send them to the company's servers. For example, when using the "Smart Replies" function in Gmail, information processing will take place directly on the smartphone, and not on the company's servers.


If we talk about things more visible and understandable, then from now on mobile applications will have much less freedom. For example, instead of exact geolocation, you can now select an approximate one. Several indicator icons will appear in the main menu, which signal that the camera or microphone is turned on. If you are currently reading a book or scrolling through the messenger feed and see that the camera has suddenly turned on, you can now quickly go to the application menu and block access to communication tools at the system level.


You can go further and in a few clicks set total bans on the use of the camera, geolocation and microphone for all installed applications. In this case, they will work as usual, but at the same time they will receive empty data from the system - a black screen and silence from the microphone. It's like the screen and microphone are off. In addition to this, a separate menu appeared in the settings with statistics on how many times over the past day certain applications accessed the camera, microphone, or geotags.

Voice assistant call button


We don’t know if this idea was spied on in Nokia smartphones, or users asked for it, but now the Google voice assistant can be turned on by holding the power button for a few seconds.

Car Key: digital car key


An NFC in a smartphone becomes even more useful, now it is not only a digital wallet with virtual money, but also a full-fledged car key. So far, Google itself, Samsung and BWM have announced their participation in the programme. Given that Apple has already implemented a similar thing in iOS, it can be predicted that in the future smartphones will become a ubiquitous alternative to keys that are constantly lost. The main thing is not to lose the smartphone itself.

Optimization


This is a standard item on every presentation, but it would be wrong not to say a few words about it. According to techies at Google, Android 12 saw an almost quarter increase in CPU efficiency when launching apps and overall system performance. However, no one began to pour honey into our ears, they simply said that all this optimization made it possible to increase the smoothness of animation on weak smartphones, as well as slightly increase the battery life of smartphones.

When can we expect an official release?


Logically, the official release will take place as usual in the fall. There is no exact date yet, but the experience of previous releases suggests that it will be September. At least Android 11 was released on September 8, 2020 and Android 10 was released on September 3, 2019. By tradition, between the announcement and the official release, there will be several stages of beta tests, for which you can sign up as a volunteer (https://www.google.com/android/beta), if you can't wait to feel everything ahead of time.