It's wiggly, it's jiggly and it's "expressive" -- if you're willing to use Google's preferred terminology. I'm talking about Android 16's new look, which comes courtesy of an overhaul to the company's Material Design language and was unveiled during the livestreamed Android Show on Tuesday.
Whether it's a reimagined logo (which, as it happens, Google also unveiled this week) or a radical redesign of a classic (I'm thinking back to Jaguar's Barbie-pink EV reveal), every design update to a popular brand or product is going to have its haters. I've been there too -- but not today.
Today, I'm feeling giddy over the dynamism of Material 3 Expressive, in large part due to the springiness and bounciness of this new design. The UI overhaul is coming to the Android 16, Wear OS and Google's apps, bringing fresh colors, fonts and animations so your phone screen won't look like anyone else's.
Android 16 is filled with nuanced animations like this one for the volume control.
Jesse Orrall/CNETThe personalization aspect of Android isn't anything new though. Unlike Apple's iOS operating system, which only embraced aesthetic variations back in 2020, Android has long been highly customizable. But this is the "biggest evolution of our design language in years," according to Google's vice president of product management and user experiences for Android, Mindy Brooks.
Speaking during the Android Show, Brooks described how the "motion physics system" that powers Material 3 Expressive will provide a "soft haptic rumble" when you dismiss a notification. "When you start dismissing an app, the others huddle a bit closer, and if you let go, there's a nice cascading droplet effect," said Brooks.
I think of this extra added movement as the jellification of Android, and one of the reasons I like it is that it shows just how far we've come. Ten years ago, when Google first introduced Material Design, phones weren't fast enough to react so smoothly and responsively to every tiny movement our fingers made as they danced across the screen. Even when the underlying technology could keep up, it wasn't capable of generating such silky graphics as a real-time response.
Not everyone will appreciate Google's fresh take on UI design, but to me it's fun, fresh, fluid and -- dare I say it -- a little flirty. As well as breathing fresh life into phones old and new, it's also a reflection of how technology has evolved to keep up with us and the way we move through our digital worlds.
Watch this: Preview: We Got Early Access to New Android 16 Features
06:25
English (US) ·