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Android 12’s beautiful color-changing UI already lives up to the hype Android 12's "Material You" UI debuts in Beta 2, and we go hands-on. With Android 12 Beta 2, Google's color-changing UI is live, so we took a trip around the rainbow. First image of article image gallery. Please visit the source link to see all images. Android 12 Beta 2 came out this week, and with it, a lot of features we've only been able to see screenshots of now actually work. This includes Android's ambitious color-changing UI codenamed "Monet," and even though this is only a beta, after some hands-on time, it feels like Android 12's chameleon-like UI already lives up to the hype. Monet—or "Material You," as Google now wants us to call it—effortlessly recolors your phone UI with a matching theme based on your wallpaper. Pick a wallpaper that is primarily blue and Android 12 will change the buttons, sliders, clock, notifications, and settings background to matching shades. This arrangement sounds like something that can't possibly work outside of an onstage tech demo, but the code is out now, and it really works. I've spent the last day maliciously trying to break it, and Android 12 reliably turns in beautiful color schemes without any contrast issues. Google has been working on wallpaper-defined color schemes for some time, starting in Android 5.0 Lollipop and the "Palette" API back in 2014. Monet represents a second-generation swing at the idea, and while Android 5's Palette API was barely used, Google now feels confident enough with the idea to use it basically everywhere. Basically, every piece of the Android 12 system UI other than the permanently black Quick Settings background is subject to the systemwide color coordinator. For the system UI, a rough explanation of the way this works is that Android 12 samples a single hue from your wallpaper and then generates a few colors by tweaking the brightness and saturation. Pick a green-ish wallpaper and you'll get a bright green, a dark green, a desaturated green, and a nearly white green that will be spread around most of the UI, completely automatically. The Media player notification kind of lives on its own with regard to these color selections, and it picks a wild complimentary color that is somehow based on your wallpaper. Android 12 mostly picks a single hue from your wallpaper and changes the brightness and saturation. First image of article image gallery. Please visit the source link to see all images. If the slides at Google I/O are to be believed, Monet should be even better by the time release rolls around. One slide showed a wallpaper picker that displays multiple flavors of color selections created from your wallpaper. So by the time launch rolls around, Google sounds like it wants to let you nudge the color selection in a certain direction. As a buggy beta, sometimes Monet will pick one color scheme from a wallpaper when you first apply it. Then it will switch to a different color scheme when you reboot, indicating that there is room for variety here, just no controls yet. Right now, the worst thing you can say about Monet is that it might not pick the accent color hue you want or expect. If you had something like a mostly black-and-white image with a dramatic red highlight somewhere, you might want a red accent color to tie everything together. But Monet might not pick the color you want. Those controls, assuming they actually ship, sound like exactly what the system needs right now. In Beta 2, Monet only works on the lock screen, system UI, home screen, and settings. But at I/O, Google demoed a color-changing calculator, a phone app, and a messaging app, which will hopefully get built. (How can Google resist the messaging app!) The new widgets, which still aren't out, will also adopt your color scheme of choice on the home screen. Since we can't do a color-changing home screen yet, the new lock screen—which displays a huge clock when you don't have any notifications—is the best demo of Monet in action. If app developers want to let Monet take the wheel with their designs, Android 12 gives them several color variables to slot into their code, which will be swapped around whenever the wallpaper changes. Developers get three "Accent" colors and two "Neutral" colors chosen by the system based on the wallpaper. On top of that, they get to pick a lightness value for each color. This is what the lock screen looks like when you have notifications, by the way. First image of article image gallery. Please visit the source link to see all images. Sometimes, Monet knocks your socks off with a dramatic and beautiful color selection. That makes it downright addicting to dig through a wallpaper collection to see what Android will do for each image. "Wallpaper of the day" apps now mean you'll get a whole new OS color scheme every day! Even in beta, Android 12's new UI feels exciting and fresh, and it would not surprise me to see this color-changing UI idea copied by other OS vendors in a few years. Listing image by Android Android 12’s beautiful color-changing UI already lives up to the hype (To view the article's image galleries, please visit the above link)

Google's document for device manufacturers lists a launch day and support timelines. Android 10 was released on September 3, 2019, and Android 11 came out on September 8, 2020. So where is this year's Android 12 release? Instead of the final Android 12 release this month, Google pushed out Android 12 Beta 5 and said the final release was "weeks" away. A new report from XDA Developers' Mishaal Rahman claims to narrow things down a bit, saying that Monday, October 4, is the magic date. XDA says it has an internal Google document detailing the "tentative" release date for Android 12. The document actually only lists when the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) source code will be released, but the developer source code release and the consumer Pixel release are usually on the same day. The document looks like it's meant for third-party device manufacturers interested in licensing Google's Android apps and lists a ton of dates for the OS's support timeline. Of course, the core of Android is open source, and anyone can do whatever they want with the source code, but if you want Google's approval and the chance to license apps like the Play Store and Gmail, you'll need to follow the rules. In order to push OEMs to ship newer versions of Android on new devices, Google just stops approving GMS licenses (Google Mobile Services—aka, all the Google apps) for new devices at around the two-year mark. The document also lists when Google will stop supporting the Android 12 codebase and "ACK," or the "Android Common Kernel" (the Linux kernel with Android patches), with security patches, which is 3.5 years after release. (Keep in mind that well-supported devices will just move to a newer Android version after the first year.) The later release is understandable, since Google has a lot to take care of this year. Android 12 is one of the biggest Android releases ever, coming with a whole new "Material You" UI for Pixel phones and including a wild automatic color-theming system. Devices will finally start shipping Android's "GKI," or "Generic Kernel Image," which will help unify the Android Linux kernel across different devices and might even allow some devices to ship kernel updates through the Play Store. There's an incremental file system for Play-as-you-download games, a new privacy dashboard, performance optimizations, and a million other changes. Some of these new features won't be fully exposed to users until the launch of the Pixel 6 (whenever that is), but the first big chunk, Android 12, is just a few weeks away. Android 12 is reportedly due out on October 4

As Android 12 introduces approximate location options on your Android phone, a pretty significant change is coming for both users and developers. In the past, you were only able to allow a system-wide setting when granting access, and if you wanted to change an individual app’s location permission, it meant diving deep into your phone settings. Apps that ask you to give permission to your location access get your precise location, which is usually accurate within a couple of meters. However, the approximate location changes this to a couple of hundred meters. This ability to choose whether to set your app’s permission to precise or approximate location is another significant step towards improved privacy. Certain apps do not need to know your exact location, for example, shopping and even weather apps. These apps can still work effectively from an approximated location. However, there will still be certain apps such as Google Maps and Geocaching apps that will require a precise location to work effectively. If you are running Android 12 and download a new app, you can easily set location permission. When running the app for the first time, you will be asked to grant location access. Now you will be able to choose ‘Approximate’ from this menu. If the app requires an exact location, you will receive a prompt notifying you and asking to change to ‘Precise’ location. To change this setting for apps that are already installed and have previously been granted location access, you can still change this to approximate locations. To do this, you will need to navigate to your Android phone’s settings, and then tap on ‘Location’ and choose which app you want to change the location permission on. Once in this menu, toggle the ‘Use Precise Location’ button off, and the app will start using approximate location instead. Closing words Privacy is becoming an increasing concern to smartphone users. This new feature on Android 12 lets you use the location features of apps without revealing where you are to advertisers and other third-party companies. As an Android user, I appreciate this new approximate location feature and the added privacy that it provides. Android 12 new privacy feature lets you grant approximate location access to apps

At its event today, Google announced the release of Android 12, one of the biggest upgrades to the mobile operating system in a few years. As is typical with Android releases, owners of a Pixel 3 or above are being prioritised and will get the upgrade on their devices today. This update focuses on three main areas: personality, privacy and ease of use. In terms of making the experience personal, the entire Android 12 experience changes to match whichever wallpaper you pick. The new design language is called Material You, it updates all aspects of the phone to match the wallpaper you pick. You’ll notice alterations on your lockscreen, notifications, settings, widgets and even in apps to make the Android experience feel a lot more coherent. In order to make Android 12 more personal to those with disabilities, Google has added new accessibility settings such as a window magnifier that lets you zoom in on a part of your screen while preserving the rest of the screen context. If your minimum brightness setting is still too bright, you can turn on extra dim screen lighting and if you’re having trouble reading text, you can enable bold text or turn on grayscale to make the job a bit easier. The next big change to Android 12 is the improvements to privacy that it brings. For example, you can now see when an app is using your microphone or camera with a new indicator in the status bar, you can stop either of these sensors from being used via toggles in Quick Settings. Other options allow you to provide a fuzzy location, check your privacy permissions at a glance through the privacy dashboard and unused apps will have to ask you to approve permissions again. In terms of making things easier, Android 12 allows you to take scrolling screenshots so you can grab a whole app in one shot, you can play games while they download, Wi-Fi credentials can be shared with Nearby Share and it’s now easier to switch to Android using just a Wi-Fi connection or a cable if you’re switching from iPhone. To learn more about Android 12, head over to the Android website. Samsung Galaxy, OnePlus, Oppo, Realme, Tecno, Vivo and Xiaomi devices will start to get Android 12 later this year. Google releases Android 12 for Pixel 3 devices and above

Google today announced the official release of the latest version of Android, Android 12. Android 12 update will be coming to Pixel devices in the next few weeks and Samsung Galaxy, OnePlus, Oppo, Realme, Tecno, Vivo, and Xiaomi devices later this year. In addition to end user features like Material You design, redesigned widgets and improved Notification UI, Android 12 also comes with several improvements for developers. Find the full change log of Android 12 below. A new UI for Android Material You – Android 12 introduces a new design language called Material You, helping you to build more personalized, beautiful apps. To bring all of the latest Material Design 3 updates into your apps, try an alpha version of Material Design Components and watch for support for Jetpack Compose coming soon. Redesigned widgets – We refreshed app widgets to make them more useful, beautiful, and discoverable. Try them with new interactive controls, responsive layouts for any device, and dynamic colors to create a personalized but consistent look. More here. Notification UI updates – We also refreshed notification designs to make them more modern and useful. Android 12 also decorates custom notifications with standard affordances to make them consistent with all other notifications. More here. Stretch overscroll – To make scrolling your app’s content more smooth, Android 12 adds a new “stretch” overscroll effect to all scrolling containers. It’s a natural scroll-stop indicator that’s common across the system and apps. More here. App launch splash screens – Android 12 also introduces splash screens for all apps. Apps can customize the splash screen in a number of ways to meet their unique branding needs. More here. Performance Faster, more efficient system performance – We reduced the CPU time used by core system services by 22% and the use of big cores by 15%. We’ve also improved app startup times and optimized I/O for faster app loading, and for database queries we’ve improved CursorWindow by as much as 49x for large windows. Optimized foreground services – To provide a better experience for users, Android 12 prevents apps from starting foreground services while in the background. Apps can use a new expedited job in JobScheduler instead. More here. More responsive notifications – Android 12’s restriction on notification trampolines helps reduce latency for apps started from a notification. For example, the Google Photos app now launches 34% faster after moving away from notification trampolines. More here. Performance class – Performance Class is a set of device capabilities that together support demanding use-cases and higher quality content on Android 12 devices. Apps can check for a device’s performance class at runtime and take full advantage of the device’s performance. More here. Faster machine learning – Android 12 helps you make the most of ML accelerators and always get the best possible performance through the Neural Networks API. ML accelerator drivers are also now updatable outside of platform releases, through Google Play services, so you can take advantage of the latest drivers on any compatible device. Privacy Privacy Dashboard – A new dashboard in Settings gives users better visibility over when your app accesses microphone, camera, and location data. More here. Approximate location – Users have even more control over their location data, and they can grant your app access to approximate location even if it requests precise location. More here. Microphone and camera indicators – Indicators in the status bar let users know when your app is using the device camera or microphone. More here. Microphone and camera toggles – On supported devices, new toggles in Quick Settings make it easy for users to instantly disable app access to the microphone and camera. More here. Nearby device permissions – Your app can use new permissions to scan for and pair with nearby devices without needing location permission. More here. Better user experience tools Rich content insertion – A new unified API lets you receive rich content in your UI from any source: clipboard, keyboard, or drag-and-drop. For back-compatibility, we’ve added the unified API to AndroidX. More here. Support for rounded screen corners – Many modern devices use screens with rounded corners. To deliver a great UX on these devices, you can use new APIs to query for corner details and then manage your UI elements as needed. More here. AVIF image support – Android 12 adds platform support for AV1 Image File Format (AVIF). AVIF takes advantage of the intra-frame encoded content from video compression to dramatically improve image quality for the same file size when compared to older image formats, such as JPEG. Compatible media transcoding – For video, HEVC format offers significant improvements in quality and compression and we recommend that all apps support it. For apps that can’t, the compatible media transcoding feature lets your app request files in AVC and have the system handle the transcoding. More here. Easier blurs, color filters and other effects – new APIs make it easier to apply common graphics effects to your Views and rendering hierarchies. You can use RenderEffect to apply blurs, color filters, and more to RenderNodes or Views. You can also create a frosted glass effect for your window background using a new Window.setBackgroundBlurRadius() API, or use blurBehindRadius to blur all of the content behind a window. Enhanced haptic experiences – Android 12 expands the tools you can use to create informative haptic feedback for UI events, immersive and delightful effects for gaming, and attentional haptics for productivity. More here. New camera effects and sensor capabilities – New vendor extensions let your apps take advantage of the custom camera effects built by device manufacturers—bokeh, HDR, night mode, and others. You can also use new APIs to take full advantage of ultra high-resolution camera sensors that use Quad / Nona Bayer patterns. More here. Better debugging for native crashes – Android 12 gives you more actionable diagnostic information to make debugging NDK-related crashes easier. Apps can now access detailed crash dump files called tombstones through the App Exit Reasons API. Android 12 for Games – With Game Mode APIs, you can react to the players’ performance profile selection for your game – like better battery life for a long commute, or performance mode to get peak frame rates. Play as you download will allow game assets to be fetched in the background during install, getting your players into gameplay faster. Source: Google Google releases Android 12, check out the list of new features

Android 12 is one of the platform’s most ambitious updates in recent history, bringing a major design overhaul to every corner of the operating system. It has also been one of the rockiest Android OS launches in the past few years. Both Samsung and OnePlus paused the rollout of their stable Android 12-based updates amid reports of serious bugs. Google itself has addressed a laundry list of bug reports from Pixel 6 owners, just as it’s trying to convince them it’s finally figured out how to build a truly premium phone. What in the heck is going on? The short answer is that there are some unique complicating factors at play this year but also that Android is inherently a little bit messy — that just comes with the territory when you’re designing a delightful public park compared to Apple’s walled garden. Despite a refreshed look and some appealing new high-end handsets, Android is still Android — the good and the bad. Android 12’s release started predictably enough with a formal announcement at Google I/O in May 2021. After that, the timeline looks a little different from previous years. A full stable release came a month later than usual, on October 4th, 2021. The Pixel 6 and 6 Pro launched later that month with Android 12 pre-loaded. A handful of bugs were to be expected, but Google’s December Pixel update included dozens of fixes despite Google having that extra month. Even worse, the December patch itself proved problematic as some Pixel 6 owners complained about network connection problems worsened by the update. Google halted the update and later removed it from its archive to prevent manual downloads. When asked, the company didn’t offer an explanation for the problematic update but pointed to a statement that a fix is coming in late January that will include all of the bug fixes planned for the December patch. Pixel 6 owners are still waiting for the bug fixes initially slated for the December update. Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales Google’s not alone in having trouble with its new OS. Samsung users in South Korea reported serious problems with their Galaxy Fold 3 and Flip 3 devices after installing the One UI 4.0 (Android 12) stable release, including flickering displays and bricked phones. Samsung acknowledged the problem and responded initially by releasing a fourth beta version of the software to fix bugs introduced by the stable release. OnePlus’ stable release wasn’t so stable, either: its Android 12 skin was so buggy that the company paused its release, like Google, after it was widely criticized. In a brief statement, OnePlus explained that the fact this release marked the company’s attempt to integrate its OxygenOS and ColorOS codebases into the same build “led to the software experience not being smooth” and that its software team “collected the Community’s feedback and released a new build of OxygenOS 12 within a week to deliver a better user experience.” In each case, these “stable” releases were anything but, and none of these companies offered much detail about what went wrong. To try and figure out what the heck is going on, we talked to Mishaal Rahman, former editor-in-chief of XDA Developers, who’s well known for digging into Android codebases and discovering Google’s secrets. Speaking to the Pixel 6 bugs in particular, Rahman guesses that it has a lot to do with the unusually large size of the update. “Many people have called it, myself included, the biggest OS update to Android since Android 5.0 Lollipop, and that was many years ago. There are just so many massive changes to the interface and to the feature set.” He also suggests that Google’s commitment to issue a new Android update every year can make things worse when it’s trying to do so much, and the self-imposed one-year development cycle doesn’t leave much wiggle room in the timeline. “They started immediately after Android 11 was released to the public — and they have a hard cutoff date… After that, they just focus on fixing bugs.” Delay any longer, and they’d risk bumping into next year’s development cycle. It’s also possible that the attempt to bring timely Android updates to non-Google devices wound up backfiring. Android phone owners have been asking for faster updates for a long time — outside of Google’s Pixel phones and pricey flagships, many devices face long waits for OS updates. Sure enough, the updates have come faster this year. Case in point: Samsung users are accustomed to waiting about three months after an Android stable release to get their finished One UI update with the new version of the OS, but this year, One UI 4.0 arrived just one and a half months after Android 12. But the way things have gone this year, many users would likely have opted for a slower, stable update rather than a fast one riddled with bugs. OnePlus, by its own admission, faced unique complications as it attempted to merge Oppo’s ColorOS and OxygenOS at the same time it incorporated Android 12’s changes. That’s a recipe for bugs, Rahman explains. “Devices that are upgrading from Android 11 with OxygenOS 11 to OxygenOS 12 are having a lot of settings and features being migrated.” To illustrate the problem, he describes a bug that some Realme device owners have encountered: users who restore settings from an old Android phone when setting up a Realme device would sometimes find the Night Light setting constantly enabled on their new phone. This happened because of a mismatch between Realme and Google’s open-source implementations of Night Light. OxygenOS 12, he suspects, suffered from similar issues. “It’s those kinds of bugs that are plaguing this update.” While it’s still hard to understand how an update as buggy as OnePlus’ initial OxygenOS 12 release earned a “stable” designation, it makes a little more sense when you account for the huge challenge of merging two codebases. While all of these factors likely contributed to an unusually troubled release, the underlying problem is a familiar one. By its nature, Android is a fragmented ecosystem. There’s no straight line from Android 12 to the Galaxy S21 or OnePlus 9 — every major update sees handoffs between the manufacturer, carriers, and Google, all of which result in delays. Initiatives like Project Treble seem to have helped speed up some parts of the process, but unless Google takes some drastic actions, nobody can completely fix the problem. While OEMs and Google push to get updates out faster, they’ve also made a push to produce more attention-grabbing, premium devices. OnePlus appears to be separating its “flagships, but cheaper” ethos into two different realms: “flagships” like the 9 Pro and separate “cheaper” phones a la the Nord series. Samsung is making a serious attempt to bring foldables into the mainstream. Google has positioned the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro as true flagships, with custom processors and a design language that’s more polished and less quirky than previous generations. This buggy OS rollout risks taking some of the shine off of the polished image these device makers are hoping to cultivate — in fact, the damage may already be done. It’s a shame because they’ve succeeded with the hardware. The Pixel 6 and 6 Pro are two of the best phones Google has ever made. OnePlus’ ambition to create a true flagship competitor has resulted in a refined product that’s the genuine article. And this time around, Samsung seems to have succeeded at making a foldable phone that has captured the attention of more than just tech geeks. But behind the glossy hardware, the software experience can still be uneven at times. That’s easier to forgive on a midrange or budget phone, but it’s tough to stomach from a premium device. It’s unlikely, though, that this unusually troubled release will sway significant numbers of people to bail on Android; as painful as some of these bugs have been, they’re probably not enough to push users over the hurdles of jumping ship to Apple. Rahman thinks that in most cases, the ecosystem lock-in is too strong. “You’d lose out on so many apps and services that you pay for. If you have other devices that interact with your smartphone, you’d lose access to that, or that access would be diminished in some way. I don’t see it as a significant factor convincing people to turn away from a particular device.” Those barriers exist on Apple’s side as well, of course. Recently surfaced emails from Apple executives imply that iMessage remains exclusive to iPhones as a mechanism to keep Apple users with Apple. Apple has also had its share of software stumbles, to be sure. But it’s generally a more predictable experience — if you’re willing to live within the boundaries of that walled garden. And there’s the flipside of Android’s fragmented existence: there’s no single entity dictating the hardware and software. In Apple’s ecosystem, you get what it deems to be the right features at the right time, and that’s that. Foldables? Maybe in a few years. A rainbow of customizable system colors? Forget it. Life is a little more interesting — if, at times, unpredictable and uneven — outside of the garden walls. Google’s Android 12 update has been the rockiest in years (May require free registration to view)