Android 12 Re-designed Interface
Surprisingly, not long after the release of Android 11, information about the parameters of the next-generation smartphone operating system Android 12 has been exposed one after another. Recently, according to a media XDA report, an early draft document summarizing the changes of Android 12 was exposed online.
According to the XDA-Developers report, an allegedly early draft of a document produced by Google to summarize the changes to Android 12 leaked online, and from the document was extracted to show the new Android 12 UI and functional changes in screenshots.
The new Android 12 interface features a new flat surface that appears to use less transparency, more white space, and more rounded corners, with some of the layers, designed a bit like iOS. One of the alleged Android 12 screenshots shows the new notification panel UI, which features an opaque light beige background, although the color may depend on whether the current theme has dark mode enabled.
The separation between the conversations section and other notifications remains, and the rounded corners of each notification are now more visible. The number of Quick Settings tiles displayed when the notifications panel section is expanded has been reduced from 6 to 4, causing each icon to become larger. The position of the date and clock have been switched, while a privacy indicator has been added to the top right corner.
It seems that Google may include new privacy features in Android 12. In the new version of Android, you may receive a warning in the form of a status bar indicator whenever an app uses the camera or microphone. Tapping on these status bar icons may bring up a window at the top of the screen telling you exactly which apps are using the camera or microphone. I believe that users who use the new version of Apple iOS and Xiaomi MIUI system are not unfamiliar with this feature.
Related to this change is a purported improvement to the privacy settings in Android 12. The new privacy settings could include a toggle to disable the camera and completely mute the microphone, plus the ability to toggle location access. You can already disable all sensors on your device by using the sensors of the quick settings component, but this component will only show up if you enable the developer options. Android 12 may put these sensor toggles in the privacy settings, making these sensors more accessible to users.
Finally, there’s what appears to be a new addition to Android’s widget selection. When Apple recently added widgets to iOS, though they were in some ways better than Android’s implementation. While it’s not clear if Google is planning a major overhaul of widgets, it looks like they are at least planning to make some changes. In a couple of screenshots, you can see what is purported to be a new conversations widget in Android 12 that may highlight recent messages, missed calls, or activity status. The widget shown is small and appears to be only large enough to fit one message/phone/status at a time at its smallest size.
The document shows that Google plans to make the conversations widget a must-have feature for all Android 12 devices. These widgets will provide access to “person shortcuts” containing avatars, names, notification content, and status information, all set in the People Manager class.
Google also plans to force the inclusion of camera and microphone indicators in Android 12. These indicators must be prominently displayed at the top of the screen, always visible whenever the camera or microphone is accessed and must have the same color throughout the ecosystem. Until we get the full Compatibility Definition Document (CDD) for Android 12, we don’t know what other changes will be mandated.
The new version of the system will be unveiled in the first half of this year, and the Google Pixel series will be the first models that support Android 12. Besides, there are many Android models such as Samsung Galaxy S21, Motorola Edge, Edge+, Xiaomi 11, and OnePlus 9/9 Pro, Poco F2, etc.
However, as there is still some distance from the official release of Android 12, whether the above models will be supported when it is finally released is not known yet, we will continue to track the follow-up information, so please look forward to it.
