Google recently announced the newest version of company’s Android operating system, 5.0 Lollipop. This OS version brings tons of improvements along with it, most of which are of course under the hood, but Google is also bringing a completely redesigned UI along with that update. “Material Design” is its name and this UI will show you a ton of animations throughout the system, you’ll basically see every object on the screen move somewhere once you interact with the screen itself. Google is still pushing the flat-looking UI though, despite the skeuomorphic approach with tons of animations, the looks of the UI is still incredibly flat. You can get more details by clicking the link above.
That being said, Samsung is always one of the first OEMs to bring a new version of Android to their UI and therefore their handsets. Earlier this month we’ve seen an alpha preview of Samsung’s 5.0 Lollipop update on Samsung Galaxy S5 and SamMobile now brings us yet another preview on the very same device, this time in a much later state of development. This new preview looks a lot better than the first one and you can actually get the idea how will it look once Samsung launches it. We’re now looking at an LRX02E version of the source code, though its still missing a Lollipop branding, which basically means they still don’t have the most recent source code from Google. There are still tons of improvements through the UI as you can see in the video preview down below. TouchWiz looks much better than it used to (at least in some areas) but it’s still pretty much TouchWiz, it’s easy to tell.
Anyhow, here’s a full changelog in this build (compared to the old one):
- New Note 4 fingerprint lock screen
- New system-wide font – similar to the original one, but a tad thinner.
- New animations, much smoother than before – there’s a screen off animation present as well.
- Google Search bar in recents menu
- Brightness slider in notification centre has a new yellow colour – while changing the brightness, the notification centre disappears and allows the user to view the content beneath it.
- Removed “Interruptions” from Sound settings
- Gallery: Media can be sorted using new filters including Pets, Events, Scenery, Documents, Food, Vehicles and Flowers.
- Music: Improved UI
- Clock: Navigation bar icons are now accompanied by text
- Calculator: Removed square grids which surrounded the numbers and symbols
- Contacts: New search box
- Stock Material Design inspired applications receive colored status bar
- Android Lollipop theme’s core green elements replaced with Samsung’s blue colour
- Settings: Improved UI, new icon colours
- New UI for setting wallpaper from home screen
- Better spacing between options in power off dialog
If you’d like to see this new build version in action, take a look at the video clip below this article. Further down you’ll find a bunch of screenshots as well, so take a look at that as well. I like where this is going, it’s an improvement no matter which way you look at it. I just hope Samsung will tone it down on the bloat a bit, I doubt it, but I hope so. Anyhow, thoughts?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AU3H1t0kIrQ
