7 ms·

A new modern look for the Android brand

42 points by uptown 3y ago

kbelder 3y ago
I don't mind making the android 3d-ish, but I sure hope that those animated versions never show up anywhere.
bruceb 3y ago
The biggest thing Google could do is simply change the color. Its not an appealing shade of green.
- wccrawford 3y ago
  The color isn't great, but I'm more annoyed by how he arms and legs attach differently... Especially since the arms barely connect at all. (And at one point in the animation, I think they don't connect.) It looks very amateur-ish to me, like someone's first Blender project.
  - moffkalast 3y ago
    I don't see how it's "modern" either, it looks very dated as if it's from the 3D logo craze era that we're long past. If they're gonna try to revive something maybe go for something that was actually you know... good.
  - p1mrx 3y ago
    That's intentional. Bugdroid is usually depicted with stump legs and floating arms: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Android_robot_(2014-2019).svg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Android_robot_(2014-...
zoklet-enjoyer 3y ago
As an Android user for 10ish years, I don't care about what it's called or what their logo and mascot look like. I just want it to work.
- londons_explore 3y ago
  So do Google... Unfortunately the 10,000+ people who work on Android and related projects at Google so far haven't managed to make it much more bug-free than it was back in 2012... The camera still crashes if you take too many photos too quickly... The backup service still does a shitty job and doesn't backup some apps... The phone still occasionally randomly gets hot and drains the battery by midday... Sharing a file with another android user over bluetooth/wifi/nearby share still fails more often than not. A VoIP/video call still stutters and glitches when you switch from wifi to cell or vice versa. The fact I can list 5 bugs from memory that have existed for 10 years is a sign that perhaps those 10,000 minds may be misplaced.
  - yellow_lead 3y ago
    > VoIP/video call still stutters and glitches when you switch from wifi to cell or vice versa. I'd be curious if you or anyone else has any ideas on preventing that, because I think it's impossible? A voip or video call uses one or more network sockets. If I'm using wifi, that socket goes over my network, which the server communicates with. If I suddenly switch to cellular, there will always need to be a reconnection over the cellular network, because the server was previously communicating over a completely different network route.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - londons_explore 3y ago
      The hardware is totally capable of having both network connections up at once. It could have a transition period where the data is sent over both networks for a few seconds until the transfer could be completed seamlessly. Sure, it would require app support, and server support, but if the OS supported it I'm pretty sure app and server support would happen. Alas - sadly it's currently impossible for an app to talk over both wifi and cellular at the same time on android - although it is possible for two different apps to each be talking over different networks at the same time. This functionality is used for the captive portal signin screen so you can be signing in to one network while still connected to another.
londons_explore 3y ago
Not a good look for the blog post revealing the new brand to have horrible aliasing on the animation...
- ChrisClark 3y ago
  That would be your own browser resizing the video incorrectly. Open up the mp4 directly to see the full size and anti-aliased video.
  - jjcm 3y ago
    The full size is even worse. This is a direct screenshot from the full res video, red markup is my own: https://image.non.io/9cf685b1-bbbb-4dac-a6cd-5c698fb62dc3.webp https://image.non.io/9cf685b1-bbbb-4dac-a6cd-5c698fb62dc3.we... Full res video: https://storage.googleapis.com/gweb-uniblog-publish-prod/original_videos/KeyImage-Animatedv2.mp4 https://storage.googleapis.com/gweb-uniblog-publish-prod/ori... The full res clearly has an existing vid imported in where the color space was incorrect. The bottom right droid looks like it was exported as a gif in a reduced color space. This is extremely sloppy for a rebrand announcement. Edit: It gets even better, the bottom gif doesn't loop for the entire duration of the video. It stops 13s into the 16s video.
    - EspadaV9 3y ago
      > It gets even better, the bottom gif doesn't loop for the entire duration of the video. It stops 13s into the 16s video. The rest is bad enough, but I could not believe that until I saw it for myself. It is honestly like some highschool level presentation video or something. One thing that bugs me a bit too, is when the left hand bugdroid jumps up, the legs have some kind of glossy shine, when then just pops away. Not sure if that intentional, but it is very jarring to me.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - londons_explore 3y ago
    Indeed it is... But it's Chrome on wayland - so I'm chalking that up to a google bug too... Interestingly I can't seem to find anyone else complaining that Chrome on wayland only does nearest-neighbour resizes of videos. I wonder if it's crappiness in the hardware video decoder or a deliberate performance decision because my hardware is slow at texture resizing?
pbhjpbhj 3y ago
All I see is annoying moving images dragging attention away from any content. Oh, and what appears to be a failure to comply with cookie laws (UK).
bdcravens 3y ago
I thought maybe they were finally abandoning Material Design
- jckahn 3y ago
  What don’t you like about Material design?
  - nipperkinfeet 3y ago
    The roundness of everything is excessive. Hopefully this trend dies soon.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    Most of it is tolerable to me, but I particularly dislike that it can be hard to tell what elements you can interact with and what elements you can't. That, and the animations.
  - jdmg94 3y ago
    Every app/website made with Material Design looks generic, and/or low effort
- franga2000 3y ago
  They abandoned Material Design with Android 13, but for some reason decided to call the brand new and completely different design system Material Design too - and it's even worse than the original, at least when it comes to wasted space and gross animations.
neogodless 3y ago
Discussed at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37412331 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37412331 (September 6, 2023 - 12 comments)
jatins 3y ago
Someone at Google needed a promotion
flkiwi 3y ago
The branding problem here isn't going to be fixed by making a 3d robot. The problem is that it's not entirely clear there is such a thing as "Android." Even in this announcement, they refer to it as the world's biggest operating system and as a platform, which do not have to mean the same thing. It's almost like they need to clarify that Android the OS framework is massively successful and open, while the purest implementation of it is Android the OS on Pixel devices (for example). A lot of folks think of Android as adware and bloatware-infested devices that get next to no support after sale, and that's really unfortunate given how good it can be. Or, shorter, making it too open and not distinguishing between the platform and vendor-specific implementations of it is allowing others to dilute the meaning of "Android" in a way that is detrimental to the brand.
boberoni 3y ago
The rebranding looks like a move from flat to 3D, from a single green standard to customizable skins. Probably in preparation for Android to compete in the consumer VR space
g232089 3y ago
[flagged]
drcongo 3y ago
Still looks like Fisher Price My First Robot.
ChrisArchitect 3y ago
FYI news from September 5th (why the post OP?)
- ChrisArchitect 3y ago
  Some previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37412331 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37412331
camdenlock 3y ago
This is some of the most soul-dampening marketing pablum I’ve ever seen. Perfectly inoffensive and adhering strictly to all Acceptable Mainstream Concepts. Well done, Google. An achievement of a kind, for sure.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
sourabhv 3y ago
Last 3 android releases have seriously been in terms of new features, especially when you compare it with iOS. It used to be a completely opposite case 7-8 years ago. Is android team working on something big, running out of ideas or just under-staffed? I don't know who cares about a new android logo. I switched to iOS this year because I gave up on android adding anything new that's worth looking forward to.
- Zecc 3y ago
  I think the word "missing" is.. missing.. in your post.
oniony 3y ago
They changed the logo to regular English capitalisation, away from stylised lowercase. Such fun.
- kyleee 3y ago
  That’s why they make the big bucks
aftbit 3y ago
Wow the new one looks dumb.
akmarinov 3y ago
So are we moving away from flat logos and going back to 3D logos?

42 points by uptown 3y ago

kbelder 3y ago

I don't mind making the android 3d-ish, but I sure hope that those animated versions never show up anywhere.

bruceb 3y ago

The biggest thing Google could do is simply change the color. Its not an appealing shade of green.

wccrawford 3y ago
The color isn't great, but I'm more annoyed by how he arms and legs attach differently... Especially since the arms barely connect at all. (And at one point in the animation, I think they don't connect.) It looks very amateur-ish to me, like someone's first Blender project.
- moffkalast 3y ago
  I don't see how it's "modern" either, it looks very dated as if it's from the 3D logo craze era that we're long past. If they're gonna try to revive something maybe go for something that was actually you know... good.
- p1mrx 3y ago
  That's intentional. Bugdroid is usually depicted with stump legs and floating arms: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Android_robot_(2014-2019).svg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Android_robot_(2014-...

zoklet-enjoyer 3y ago

As an Android user for 10ish years, I don't care about what it's called or what their logo and mascot look like. I just want it to work.

londons_explore 3y ago
So do Google... Unfortunately the 10,000+ people who work on Android and related projects at Google so far haven't managed to make it much more bug-free than it was back in 2012... The camera still crashes if you take too many photos too quickly... The backup service still does a shitty job and doesn't backup some apps... The phone still occasionally randomly gets hot and drains the battery by midday... Sharing a file with another android user over bluetooth/wifi/nearby share still fails more often than not. A VoIP/video call still stutters and glitches when you switch from wifi to cell or vice versa. The fact I can list 5 bugs from memory that have existed for 10 years is a sign that perhaps those 10,000 minds may be misplaced.
- yellow_lead 3y ago
  > VoIP/video call still stutters and glitches when you switch from wifi to cell or vice versa. I'd be curious if you or anyone else has any ideas on preventing that, because I think it's impossible? A voip or video call uses one or more network sockets. If I'm using wifi, that socket goes over my network, which the server communicates with. If I suddenly switch to cellular, there will always need to be a reconnection over the cellular network, because the server was previously communicating over a completely different network route.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - londons_explore 3y ago
    The hardware is totally capable of having both network connections up at once. It could have a transition period where the data is sent over both networks for a few seconds until the transfer could be completed seamlessly. Sure, it would require app support, and server support, but if the OS supported it I'm pretty sure app and server support would happen. Alas - sadly it's currently impossible for an app to talk over both wifi and cellular at the same time on android - although it is possible for two different apps to each be talking over different networks at the same time. This functionality is used for the captive portal signin screen so you can be signing in to one network while still connected to another.

londons_explore 3y ago

Not a good look for the blog post revealing the new brand to have horrible aliasing on the animation...

ChrisClark 3y ago
That would be your own browser resizing the video incorrectly. Open up the mp4 directly to see the full size and anti-aliased video.
- jjcm 3y ago
  The full size is even worse. This is a direct screenshot from the full res video, red markup is my own: https://image.non.io/9cf685b1-bbbb-4dac-a6cd-5c698fb62dc3.webp https://image.non.io/9cf685b1-bbbb-4dac-a6cd-5c698fb62dc3.we... Full res video: https://storage.googleapis.com/gweb-uniblog-publish-prod/original_videos/KeyImage-Animatedv2.mp4 https://storage.googleapis.com/gweb-uniblog-publish-prod/ori... The full res clearly has an existing vid imported in where the color space was incorrect. The bottom right droid looks like it was exported as a gif in a reduced color space. This is extremely sloppy for a rebrand announcement. Edit: It gets even better, the bottom gif doesn't loop for the entire duration of the video. It stops 13s into the 16s video.
  - EspadaV9 3y ago
    > It gets even better, the bottom gif doesn't loop for the entire duration of the video. It stops 13s into the 16s video. The rest is bad enough, but I could not believe that until I saw it for myself. It is honestly like some highschool level presentation video or something. One thing that bugs me a bit too, is when the left hand bugdroid jumps up, the legs have some kind of glossy shine, when then just pops away. Not sure if that intentional, but it is very jarring to me.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- londons_explore 3y ago
  Indeed it is... But it's Chrome on wayland - so I'm chalking that up to a google bug too... Interestingly I can't seem to find anyone else complaining that Chrome on wayland only does nearest-neighbour resizes of videos. I wonder if it's crappiness in the hardware video decoder or a deliberate performance decision because my hardware is slow at texture resizing?

pbhjpbhj 3y ago

All I see is annoying moving images dragging attention away from any content. Oh, and what appears to be a failure to comply with cookie laws (UK).

bdcravens 3y ago

I thought maybe they were finally abandoning Material Design

jckahn 3y ago
What don’t you like about Material design?
- nipperkinfeet 3y ago
  The roundness of everything is excessive. Hopefully this trend dies soon.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  Most of it is tolerable to me, but I particularly dislike that it can be hard to tell what elements you can interact with and what elements you can't. That, and the animations.
- jdmg94 3y ago
  Every app/website made with Material Design looks generic, and/or low effort
franga2000 3y ago
They abandoned Material Design with Android 13, but for some reason decided to call the brand new and completely different design system Material Design too - and it's even worse than the original, at least when it comes to wasted space and gross animations.

neogodless 3y ago

Discussed at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37412331 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37412331 (September 6, 2023 - 12 comments)

jatins 3y ago

Someone at Google needed a promotion

flkiwi 3y ago

The branding problem here isn't going to be fixed by making a 3d robot. The problem is that it's not entirely clear there is such a thing as "Android." Even in this announcement, they refer to it as the world's biggest operating system and as a platform, which do not have to mean the same thing. It's almost like they need to clarify that Android the OS framework is massively successful and open, while the purest implementation of it is Android the OS on Pixel devices (for example). A lot of folks think of Android as adware and bloatware-infested devices that get next to no support after sale, and that's really unfortunate given how good it can be. Or, shorter, making it too open and not distinguishing between the platform and vendor-specific implementations of it is allowing others to dilute the meaning of "Android" in a way that is detrimental to the brand.

boberoni 3y ago

The rebranding looks like a move from flat to 3D, from a single green standard to customizable skins. Probably in preparation for Android to compete in the consumer VR space

g232089 3y ago

[flagged]

drcongo 3y ago

Still looks like Fisher Price My First Robot.

ChrisArchitect 3y ago

FYI news from September 5th (why the post OP?)

ChrisArchitect 3y ago
Some previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37412331 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37412331

camdenlock 3y ago

This is some of the most soul-dampening marketing pablum I’ve ever seen. Perfectly inoffensive and adhering strictly to all Acceptable Mainstream Concepts. Well done, Google. An achievement of a kind, for sure.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

sourabhv 3y ago

Last 3 android releases have seriously been in terms of new features, especially when you compare it with iOS. It used to be a completely opposite case 7-8 years ago. Is android team working on something big, running out of ideas or just under-staffed? I don't know who cares about a new android logo. I switched to iOS this year because I gave up on android adding anything new that's worth looking forward to.

Zecc 3y ago
I think the word "missing" is.. missing.. in your post.

oniony 3y ago

They changed the logo to regular English capitalisation, away from stylised lowercase. Such fun.

kyleee 3y ago
That’s why they make the big bucks

aftbit 3y ago

Wow the new one looks dumb.

akmarinov 3y ago

So are we moving away from flat logos and going back to 3D logos?