The cool new UI

The user interface introduced in the m5 version of Android (sdk_m5-rc14) is pretty spiffy. Generally speaking, the buttons are bigger, the images are nicer and sharper, and there is a general 3-D look everywhere. The fonts are nicer to look at as well.

Starup Screen

The Figure 1 below shows the main startup screen of Android. Not only the background is crisper and nicer, but also the buttons are bigger with images that have the ‘Android-ish’ look.

Figure 1. The Startup (main) screen of Android

Startup Screen with all the applications

Clicking on the ‘All’ button (at the bottom of the left-most row) shows the application groups onto the left. In that way, this ‘All’ button is like the ‘Start’ button on Windows. By default, it won’t show the ‘Snake’ game (I placed it there).

Figure 2. All the programs on the screen

The Growing ‘All’ menu

As you keep using the applications, you will see the ‘All’ menu growing. You can see the last four applications used on this menu: API Demos, Snake, Dev Tools, and Maps.

Figure 3. The Growing ‘All’ menu

The Application Menu

The Application Menus (the menu attached to the individual application – comes up when you press the Menu button on the phone) have also been reworked. Instead of simple textual single line, now the menus are transparent with nice big icons.

Figure 4. Nice and transparent application menus

The Dialer

The Dialer has big buttons with a faint 3-D look. Nice.

Figure 5. The Dialer

The Contacts Application

The UI of Contacts application (perhaps, the most important application on a phone after the Dialer, of course) is also pretty nice. You can see pretty inviting and friendly UI on all these contact screens below.

Figure 6. The empty Contacts application

Figure 7. Adding a new contact

The contacts below are sorted in alphabetical order (no preference, really :-).

Figure 8. A list of contacts

Google Maps

Needless to say, the Google Maps application looks just as cool as it does on the iPhone (or on the Windows Mobile phones).

Figure 9. Google Maps first screen

Figure 10. Google Maps closeup

The Browser

And, finally, the browser. It also got a nice new look (with new menu, etc.)

Figure 11. The Browser

Articles showing Android

The cool new user interface of Android

This article contains the screenshots of various general interest applications in the ‘Google Phone’ emulator (the emulator from the Android) in version m5-rc14.

The cool new user interface of Android for developers

This article contains the screenshots of various applications of interest to developers in the ‘Google Phone’ emulator (the emulator from the Android OS) in version m5-rc14.

Old User Interface

These articles show how the previous version of Android looked like.

Pictures of Games on Google Phone / Android

This article contains the screenshots of sample games in the Google Phone emulator (the emulator from the Android OS).

Pictures of Main User Interface and Web on Google Phone / Android

This article has screenshots of the main interface of a Google Phone (or the basic set of Android features). Also has various screenshots of the web browser built into Android.

Pictures of basic functionality on a Google Phone / Android

This article shows the pictures of interest to the developers of applications on Google Phone / Android. These are the pictures of API Demos and built-in Developer Tools.