Android and Me

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iOS 7 gets a UI refresh – proves Android was on the right track Posted: 11 Jun 2013 10:51 AM PDT If you’ve been hiding out in a cave for the past 24 hours, you probably haven’t heard that Apple unveiled iOS 7 with a brand new UI. For months, rumors have suggested that Jony Ive and his design team were working to flatten iOS and remove every last trace of skeuomorphism. Jony Ive delivered! While the core of iOS 7 functions like previous iterations, the UI has been completely transformed, removing all the unnecessary chrome, fake wood tones, torn paper edges and felt backgrounds. While I personally feel the new design and features included in iOS 7 will make the platform a lot more compelling, there are some who can’t get over the fact that the new look borrows from Android, Windows Phone, WebOS and even Blackberry. There are a lot of new elements which feel like a complete ripoff of Android, but can we really blame Apple for being inspired by some of the best Android UI elements? In this day and age, new and unique design is nearly impossible. There are only so many ways you can manipulate pixels and come up with a design which is clean, usable and intuitive. Lets also keep in mind that Android is open. If Apple wanted, they could simply pull out all the graphic elements from Android and incorporate them into iOS. We don’t think that will ever happen, but there’s nothing anyone could do about it if they did. What’s your take on the newly redesigned iOS 7 and how do you think the Android team will react with its next UI overhaul?

Paranoid Android’s HALO multi-tasking feature open sourced Posted: 11 Jun 2013 07:06 AM PDT Multi-tasking on custom Android ROMs is about to get a lot more interesting. The Paranoid Android team has announced that they will open source their new Halo multitasking feature. HALO was originally inspired by Facebook’s Chat Heads, but rather than simply overlaying messages on top of running applications, the HALO multitasking system is fully integrated into the operating system, giving you direct access to all of your notifications without having to close out of the app that you are currently running. Like Chat heads, HALO is a circle which can be re-positioned and pinned to the edge of your phone’s screen. Accessing notifications through HALO will open its corresponding application in a smaller frame on top of your running app. You can read or compose an email, send a text message or even do a Google search without worrying about losing your place in the game that you are playing. The included HALO application even allows users to pin specific apps so that they can easily be accessed even if the app does not have any pending notifications for you to check. HALO is still in Beta and lacks proper support for Android’s tablet UI , but the Paranoid Android team believes that the code is solid enough to be released. We’re excited to see how other ROM developers will use HALO.

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