The Android 12 leak seems to show a major redesign with the color-changing UI

The final version of Android 12 is due for release in September, but the developer’s first preview is expected any day now. Our first tip of what the new Google launch may have in store comes from Mishaal Rahman of XDA Developers, who has some pictures of what appears to be a major overhaul of the Android 12 interface. According to the report, these images represent mockups, no screenshots, from Android 12. The models appear in a document describing the new features in Android 12, and the document is being passed on to partners as an alert before the public launch.

The first thing that occurs to me is the strange color scheme in sepia tones, as if someone left night mode on permanently. This color scheme looks like a big change compared to Android 11’s all-white color scheme, but it probably depends entirely on the user. A recent 9to5Google report stated that Google would launch an in-depth theme system on Android 12 that would allow the third-party system and applications to recolor based on user preferences. A line in the report says, “Interestingly, the colors of your Android 12’s theme should also be chosen automatically based on your current wallpaper. When you change your wallpaper, Android should be able to switch seamlessly to new ones. colors similar to the color of your palette wallpaper. “

It seems that this is what is happening here. The colors of the UI blend very well with the wallpaper because they are probably from the wallpaper. A beige wallpaper leads to a beige notification panel, icons, settings, widgets and more. Even the camera app is beige. Android had unused code for a theme engine for a long time. Automatic UI color selection was launched on Android 5 with the Palette API, when Google started thinking about using it for a music app. It seems that these things are finally being put to use.

Even if we ignore the colors, the notification panel is still quite different, which is entirely branded for Android, since the notification panel is renewed with each release. Starting at the top, the strange black status bar is gone, replaced by a single sheet that serves as a notification background. It is not transparent here, but this may just be an inaccuracy of the model. The time and date have switched places, with the date at the top now. The quick settings are no longer in a box and have been reduced to four instead of six (booo!). The Quick Settings shapes were configurable in the past, but now it looks like there is a mix of shapes, with the settings disabled having a square background and the enabled settings having a circle.

The rest of the notification panel doesn’t look much different, except for the rounded corners. An oddity in this model is the visible rounded corners. This was briefly real during the Android 10 developer preview, but it never came to a final version. I think it’s just a model inaccuracy. Other models even show a round cutout of the front camera in the user interface, which normally does not appear in screenshots.

Many of the models detail the return of the privacy chip notification in the upper right corner of the status bar, which alerts you when an application is pinging the camera, microphone or location permissions. We saw this feature for the first time in pre-release builds of Android 10 in 2019, but it never reached a final version. The idea at the time was for these alerts to appear when an application was actively using confidential permissions, and to touch the chip to identify the application. A mockup shows the appearance of the pop-up UI; it identifies not only the applications that are using the camera, microphone or location, but also the applications that have used the permission “recently”. Each line in the privacy pop-up has a settings gear next to it, which would likely allow you to block the settings for that individual application.

There is also a new “Privacy” settings screen, which offers what appear to be system-wide elimination switches for the camera, microphone and location. None of these options are new, but you have easy and more obvious access to them now. This privacy screen also appears to show a new design for the settings. In addition to the new color scheme, it appears that Google is following Samsung and some other Android OEMs by designing configuration screens with accessibility in mind. There’s a huge “Privacy” banner at the top, with lots of white space above it, pushing the top of the list down from the top of the phone. Most good implementations of this feature reduce the top banner when you start to roll.

The new final item in the mockups is a “conversations” widget. It appears to show a person or group chat and recent messages or calls from that person. It appears to combine messages from multiple applications into a single widget, which would be possible through existing notification APIs. Inbound notifications are already associated with a contact for priority message purposes, so putting all of these messages together in a single person widget would work well. It is strange that the mockups show the conversation widget in different ways.

They appear to be in different states of the conversation widget, but some are rounded rectangles and others are pill-shaped. Why? More love for widgets on Android 12 is a good bet after the feature was finally copied by Apple on iOS 14. Android was released with widgets in version 1, but they have been neglected over the years. If Google wants to copy Apple back, iOS now allows you to stack widgets and scroll through them, which would be nice to see on Android. Apple widgets are also generally more modern and cohesive, as they have just been released. Android widgets really need an overhaul.

The first Android 11 Developer Preview was released last year, on February 19th, so we’ll probably see Android 12 builds up and running this month.