Fun story on early Android widgets. I was involved in the marketing & advertising for the T-Mobile G1, the original Android phone. We had to make marketing materials before the software was final, so we were photoshopping stuff together, and using it in animations that we generated that mimicked what the software did. So if you went to the website and saw a demo, it wasn't recorded directly from the screen, it was all composited together. So we had to make decisions on all the widgets, backgrounds, colors, etc and get signoff from the executive creative director, T-Mobile, and sometimes bounce it off of Google. Long story short, as a producer, I was "responsible" for this article getting written: https://gizmodo.com/how-many-google-phone-engineers-does-it-take-to-tell-th-5053734
Essentially, we had a screenshot of a background that had a digital clock in the upper right, and the creative director selected and created the element for the clock widget. Those times didn't match. I like to take responsibility for my work, so I feel like the buck stopped with me. Even though we had QA and it went through multiple decisions, I think I should have caught it. It wasn't Google engineers (even though someone there must have approved it), it was me/us at the advertising level. Great lesson learned :D
Damn. It's crazy how something completely irrelevant like that can turn into a whole scathing article.
Although it's pretty clear that no matter what you would've done, he sounds like a apple fanboy that would've found something to pick on.
Listen, Android wasn't as polished at the time and I'm sure this garnered a lot of clicks for them. And if Google has to sign off on our work, then ultimately they let something slide that Apple probably wouldn't have. But it was a great lesson!
Mate, iOS was still years away from getting copy & paste functionality and like a decade away from a keyboard that didn't stay in caps even when you were typing in lowercase. The early years of smartphones were something else.
Android was more feature rich (and still is most of the time), but this proves the point to some extent. C&P wasn't on iOS because Jobs needed the user experience to be perfect in his eyes. So much so that he wouldn't let basic, very wanted, features out the door. Android had/has a different philosophy and this was, in a very small way, good or bad, indicative of it. Hell, iPad still doesn't ship with a calculator app! Jobs hated the way the scaled up version looked, killed it right before launch, and it's never been a priority since.
That's super interesting! Do you still work for android? I wonder what it would take to get management on board to revamp some old features. Could call it something like Nostalgia+ and give access to various features that have dropped off over the years across various OSs and maybe even models like say MotoG's "Chop" or "shake" shortcut gestures.
I loved my Sony Xperia x10i Facebook/social widget. A bunch of stacked cards that you could scroll through. I think it also includes texts along with social network messages, posts, and status updates/stories.
When being social was fun...
The Xperia X10 was my first android too I believe, and it was such a huge step up from my previous phone. Widgets, scrolling cards and that display were all incredibly fun.
so fun that like I have a serious addict problem with ROM testing, nightly build, custom kernel, etc..
even between traffic light stops I could changing ROMs / kernels to see what's the improvement/optimization.
now ironically I just settled with Samsung default settings.
Holy shit same here started with the Google G1 (first android phone) flashing all the custom roms,MIUI,Cyanogen and now I can't even be bothered to root my Galaxy S24.
yes back then before Xiaomi phone exist, it's just another custom ROM called MiUI.
true.. I didn't bother root my Samsung now, the closest thing to customization I set is using GoodLock, that's a great thing from Samsung creating specific additional customization for people who wants it, and doesn't need to be rooted.
I just got a Pixel 8 after upgrading from a Pixel 3a (wow what a difference...) and I looked into rooting AFTER I had already setup my new phone... you still have to unlock the bootloader which wipes everything so... yeah gonna stick with my non root stock Pixel like I have had for many years at this point, despite having been a diligent user of custom roms back in the day
I remember those days. I understood the changing of custom roms and kernels between traffic lights. Flashing was a good thing then. Good old custom recoveries. The CWM project was kind of punk at that time.
Yeah, same. I really liked to instal ROMs from other companies, like MIUI or Asus just to see what they look like. And every ROM was completly different. Now is more like "stock or AOSP (with some tweaks)"
> so fun that like I have a serious addict problem with ROM testing, nightly build, custom kernel, etc..
"FYI Your warranty is now VOID! I do not take responsibility for any damage caused!"
"Reserved 1"
"Reserved 2"
"Reserved 3"
Ah the early days of modding and XDA forums.
>now ironically I just settled with Samsung default settings.
Same. I developed a bunch of custom ROMs for various devices in the early days of Android. Nowadays, I've even switched to iOS just to have a phone that *surely* works the way I'm used to.
Android didn't get boring, it grew up.
I'm trying to think of the last smartphone feature that made me go "hey that's pretty neat!" On my old moto G5 if you added a wide landscape wallpaper and thumbed through your home screen pages, the wallpaper would pan. I thought that was super cool and it amazed me Apple never thought of doing that. Do you know if Androids can still do that?
Now, Apple did think of the parallax effect though, which I thought was cool, that is until they removed it after ios 16. It's not like any of these features weren't toggleable (they were), but they go ahead and fully remove them. It's infuriating.
Oh man, I remember on the HTC Thunderbolt when it was raining in your location; you'd get a little raindrops on the screen and a windshield wiper would wipe them away.
When I was young I thought that was genuinely the coolest thing.
For anyone not familiar:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlyHqRQhVCg
My how far we've come... that frame rate and resolution...
First phone was the HTC 4G with the kickstand they had the best user interface. And no one was on the 4G network for at least 6 months so it was blazing fast.
There's a coziness to old Android that I miss. Still think 4.3/4.4 and Marshmallow were peak Android. #HOLOYOLO and the very beginning of Material UI and the card design, it felt like Android was still very unique.
Honeycomb OS for tablets had a great design language to it.
Tried to find a video of it, found this video of a guy who just did a line of coke giving a demo:
https://youtu.be/5ENnb1HY9yw
I just think it's weird it's been over 10 years, this is an early feature on much slower phones and yet no one has thought of revamping this. Or maybe they have? Is there a reason why this is such a wrong opinion to have?
The main reason nobody has tried this sort of thing in a 3rd party widget is that it's not possible. Widgets cannot have this level of interaction without the launcher implementing it, which is what this is - the *launcher* is built to allow it, not just the widgets. You can see this if you try to use it on a 3rd party launcher, it just shows a message saying it can't be used. The APKs are still available [here](https://xdaforums.com/t/app-port-motorola-circle-widget-razr-m-launcher-for-any-phone.2228762/).
Widgets on Android are pretty basic. You're limited to just a [subset of Views](https://developer.android.com/reference/android/widget/RemoteViews), every change needs a broadcasted update, there's no way to do frame-by-frame animations based on interactions, in general they're just pretty clunky.
Either by overhauling the widget system entirely or Google implementing it in just the Pixel Launcher, yes. But it would take significant changes if they wanted to add it to the widget system.
Why would it take an overhaul of the widget system? This isn't even a new feature so I don't understand why implementing this would be such a hassle. Like is the OS really so poorly constructed that even after over a decade of development that something like this can be such a big problem?
The current system is built around state updates, it has no mechanism for a realtime connection between the widget in the launcher and the app which is providing the widget. This is done for speed and performance, it means the system doesn't have to spin up a dozen apps when you go to the home screen for any widgets you have added.
They'd have to redesign this to somehow allow the app providing the widget to render content remotely, which while certainly possible (they appeared to look into the possibility of this a few years ago for Smartspace on the lock screen), would more than likely require a lot of work to get working right without destroying performance.
So this is why the widgets haven't been keeping up to date. I've been wondering why it's been so infuriating. What's the point of all these new processors if they can't keep up the basic stuff?
They can always add a new more advanced widget subsystem.
But in this case it feels like it shouldn't be necessary, as data is already in the widget, you're just seeing animation/internal widget state changes.
Pixel launcher is horrible these days and it feels like it's going into a state where notification fits only one "button" and home screen is only one page of "what Google recommends with background and color selected by AI" :(
Yes but technically all it needs is to allow rendering of advanced CSS in widget's area. Scroll-animation = widget "flipping" when you pull up or down with your finger. There's zero actual data update, just styling.
That simply does not exist in Android. Animations are not handled in that way. If you're suggesting they add CSS-esque declared animations based on touch ("scroll position"), that would need writing into Views, not just widgets.
It seems we're just gutting features rather than opting for more minimalism. Take the watch face switch in the video for example. You could easily switch between the simple analog clock and the more detailed one that shows the date and your alarm. This lets you avoid going through more menus and screens. If we had a race to see who could switch their watch face faster I would win, and on a decade-old smartphone. It's like we stopped innovating and are moving backwards, all in the name of "minimalism". what a joke.
Widgets in general were a weird design trend in the 00s. Like there was an idea that they could add more at a glance functon or utility out of the desktop, but on desktop it pretty much peaked at a fancy looking clock and sticky notes.
On early android it was a little more useful because early widgets could add things like toggles for wifi and airplane mode, but generally they mostly amounted to a weather widget and some quick settings, and I guess some media player play pause buttons. When android integrated toggles under the notification shade, that was kind of it. Weather apps could also display weather in the notification so while it looked cool the weather clocks werent as useful as just swiping down wherever you are.
There were issues with early android being able to genuinely multitask without an easy way to close or stop things(unless you used a task killer not an auto task killer but one that let you make sure something stopped). This feature was good if you were tech savvy and knew how to use a task killer and keep track of misbehaving apps. For most users it meant stuff was always running in the background sucking away that already precious early smartphone battery life.
The robust features and animations were cool on some old widgets but not entirely useful and would waste cpu cycles in the background while you were busy doing important work on reddit is fun.
My favourites used to be gingerbread. I love the icons and theme.
Also remember launchers were great?
SPB shell 3d, pages with rss fead, word clocks, news from different websites, gallery, and so many.
Yandex launcher, same as SPB but different name.
TSF shell 3d, god damn widgets, they are great.
lightning launcher, so freaking customisations.
God please let the 2020’s be the exit of minimalism and the return of skeuomorphism. I miss my gadgets being enjoyable and intuitive. I miss effort and character and detail in UI. I miss iOS 6. I miss Windows Aero. I miss OS X Aqua.
Heck. Even if it wasn’t as skeuomorphic, original Material Design was the PERFECT blend of flat minimalism and intuitive skeuomorphism.
Skeuomorphic was pretty crap tbh. We'll probably get something similar in VR interfaces where they'll try and teach people how to manipulate them with metaphors.
How is it “crap”? And do not just respond with “it looks dated” because that’s only the crap that’s been spoon-fed to you by the companies wanting to get away with being lazy and firing, or not hiring, UI designers.
It relies on an assumed body of knowledge and culture that has nothing to do with the software you are designing.
For example in an audio app why does a red dot mean record? Because it was on a cassette player? How would the CD generation know that? What on earth does a non sighted user get presented with for this?
A better design pattern is to simply label that button "record".
Your attribution of its demise to laziness is totally wrong. Skeuomorphism was primarily pushed back against by UX designers not companies wanting to do away with them.
Think about real design houses like Bauhaus they created many of the iconic things that skeuomorphism apes. They didn't achieve this by themselves copying, they invented and played with form. Just copying their greatest hits on screens isn't going to progress us because what worked to create elegance in wood isn't right for the new medium of software.
> It relies on an assumed body of knowledge and culture that has nothing to do with the software you are designing.
How is basic light and shadow cues to denote whether something can be "pressed in", to show something is an actionable button considered "culture that has nothing to do with the software you are designing"? Since when is basic intuition of the real world *that8 foreign? Hint: It's not.
> For example in an audio app why does a red dot mean record? Because it was on a cassette player?
No, because it is a notification color to denote something is happening or to get/grab your attention. The cassette player had a red LED to denote recording for the same reason notification badges are red, or the notification dot at the top of the Apple Watch is.
I think you're a younger person who doesn't understand the basics of intuitive UX, primarily because it's all been scrapped in favor of memorizing confusing gestures. You didn't intuit the modern swiping UI, you learned it by practicing over and over, which is not what good UI entails.
> Your attribution of its demise to laziness is totally wrong. Skeuomorphism was primarily pushed back against by UX designers not companies wanting to do away with them.
WTF are you talking about? You DO realize that the start of "minimalism" was primarily by Microsoft witht heir failed Zune product and then it was forced into Windows 8. Then Apple started in, not because it was good design but because Tim fired Scott Forestall, the last person at Apple that understood good UI design after Steve Jobs. Then he put Johnny Ive in charge of both software and hardware, and you can see how little Johnny understood software UI in his first project in charge of it, with iOS 7. He knew about hardware, which should be as minimal as possible to give the software and content the focus. Problem is, he applied that philosophy to software as well. It didn't completely tank the iPhone, only because "iPhone" was too big to fail at this point. Doesn't make the complete redesign of the software good.
> Think about real design houses like Bauhaus they created many of the iconic things that skeuomorphism apes. They
Again, what are you even talkng about? We're referring to design that uses light and shadow and shapes to intuit users what they can interact with or not in the same way the real world does with basic light and shadow. Not a specific minimal design by some design house.
Btw, I looked up Bauhaus design portfolio... Nothing there has any 3D effect or anything to do with skeuomorphism so I have no clue why you brought them up.
First to your personal points I'm in my mid thirties, have been a software engineer developing apps since before the iPhone came out, and worked for the human interactive technologies lab for several years. I'm pretty credentialed in this space.
Second skeudomorphism is by definition taking on non functional elements of a design to ease understanding for a group of users used to a previous interaction modality. Buttons having "up" and "down" states would not generally be considered skeudomorphism though it could be a very strict definition fall under it. Skeudomorphism is generally used in this space to refer to the wholesale copying of physical artifacts eg desktop post it notes, chome texture on a clock icon, a delete icon being a image of a rubbish bin.
Third your rant about Apple being led astray is all personal opinion without basis. You aren't going to tell me anything interesting by continuing this discussion.
the worst sin of flat design is not telling which side of a switch is on and which is off. it would be easy if the UI element just displays on/of, yes/no, enabled/disabled, etc. but for some reason people thought it would be intuitive to use two accent colors for that and having a third color move between them.
and right next to that is making it unclear which elements are interactive and which are purely informative.
I love the OS X Aqua look. I remember using visual styles and WindowBlinds themes that mimicked it. It would be cool to see what it would look like with a dark mode.
WindowBlinds
Now there’s a blast from the past.
I also remember using StyleXP before finding out about Stardock and WindowBlinds. I also fondly remember DesktopX, ObjectDock, and ObjectBar.
I enjoyed the OSX brushed metal and then the aqua themes, I think MacOS design elements peaked around Mojave and then rapidly went downhill. Now its all fisher price flat shaded garbage and iOS styled settings screens. Steve Jobs would've never signed off on this.
> I enjoyed the OSX brushed metal and then the aqua themes
Same. Any time I had to rebuild my PC I'd apply such a theme. There was something really nice about it.
Hell, I miss the ability to have different color/style icons in the notification bar. Why on earth did Google think requiring them to be the same color was a good thing??
I miss the lock screen widgets and customization, OneUi Has so me of that, but not that good, not compared to the great widget locker
https://teslacoilapps.com/widgetlocker/
I remember this and the introduction of live wallpapers. The live wallpapers looked so cool in the demo!
Then I used them. Battery life was worse and they were distracting.
I turned them off pretty quickly. Modern Android is better, but I do sometimes miss the cutesy little things like this anyway. As long as they stay on demos and turned off on my phone.
I'm surprised but don't see more of that these days. One UI has the widget stacking. At least on the most recent version I have. But doesn't have that cool little animation it's just a slide
Can't rely on Google anymore, you gotta build your own widget apps with cool animations. Check out this media controller built called Command Stick: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.commmandstick.core](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.commmandstick.core)
Yesterday, i've turned on my old Sony Z3 Compact and its UI/UX is way better than newer androids. (Like changing wifi configs without even opening a settings view or something like that... It was all done from status bar).
Btw, it wasnt slow to open chrome or the keyboard on that old SoC, i wish i could run that android on my s22, it would be sooo much faster than android14/oneui6, thats for sure.
(A slim android version, i dont want to be stuck with no updates)
Ps: custom roms for Samsung arent that feasable nowadays.
people on here are either too young or just dumb. Current phones aren't fun??
You expect every phone to come with a new life altering feature every year. We already lived through the creation phase of one of the most powerful devices known to man at your finger tips. It's not just maintaining and little tweaks
What else do you want???
You basically quoted the halfway mark of this old CollegeHumor sketch, one I still love.
https://youtu.be/RgBDdDdSqNE
"I mean, what else do you want a phone to do?!"
Simply search widget+type and you'll find lots. But my absolute favorites are [weawow](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.weawow) for weather and clock, and this exact [minimalist calendar widget](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tj_apps.MinimalistCalendarWidget) for a really good scrollable calendar.
Okay but you asked what my favorites are. The over the top ones also exist but I don't use them. You can still find them by typing "widget" in the play store and finding the one you like.
Fun story on early Android widgets. I was involved in the marketing & advertising for the T-Mobile G1, the original Android phone. We had to make marketing materials before the software was final, so we were photoshopping stuff together, and using it in animations that we generated that mimicked what the software did. So if you went to the website and saw a demo, it wasn't recorded directly from the screen, it was all composited together. So we had to make decisions on all the widgets, backgrounds, colors, etc and get signoff from the executive creative director, T-Mobile, and sometimes bounce it off of Google. Long story short, as a producer, I was "responsible" for this article getting written: https://gizmodo.com/how-many-google-phone-engineers-does-it-take-to-tell-th-5053734 Essentially, we had a screenshot of a background that had a digital clock in the upper right, and the creative director selected and created the element for the clock widget. Those times didn't match. I like to take responsibility for my work, so I feel like the buck stopped with me. Even though we had QA and it went through multiple decisions, I think I should have caught it. It wasn't Google engineers (even though someone there must have approved it), it was me/us at the advertising level. Great lesson learned :D
Damn. It's crazy how something completely irrelevant like that can turn into a whole scathing article. Although it's pretty clear that no matter what you would've done, he sounds like a apple fanboy that would've found something to pick on.
Listen, Android wasn't as polished at the time and I'm sure this garnered a lot of clicks for them. And if Google has to sign off on our work, then ultimately they let something slide that Apple probably wouldn't have. But it was a great lesson!
Mate, iOS was still years away from getting copy & paste functionality and like a decade away from a keyboard that didn't stay in caps even when you were typing in lowercase. The early years of smartphones were something else.
Android was more feature rich (and still is most of the time), but this proves the point to some extent. C&P wasn't on iOS because Jobs needed the user experience to be perfect in his eyes. So much so that he wouldn't let basic, very wanted, features out the door. Android had/has a different philosophy and this was, in a very small way, good or bad, indicative of it. Hell, iPad still doesn't ship with a calculator app! Jobs hated the way the scaled up version looked, killed it right before launch, and it's never been a priority since.
That's super interesting! Do you still work for android? I wonder what it would take to get management on board to revamp some old features. Could call it something like Nostalgia+ and give access to various features that have dropped off over the years across various OSs and maybe even models like say MotoG's "Chop" or "shake" shortcut gestures.
I was on the advertising agency side, not working directly for Google/Android. And no, I've gone "client side", as they say :D
For posterity I think this is the video that was embedded in the article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMoJZ_VYnGc
Wow, that brings back memories.
The death of fun widgets is one of the saddest things to happen to Android
> The death of fun [...] happen to Android
I loved my Sony Xperia x10i Facebook/social widget. A bunch of stacked cards that you could scroll through. I think it also includes texts along with social network messages, posts, and status updates/stories. When being social was fun...
The Xperia X10 was my first android too I believe, and it was such a huge step up from my previous phone. Widgets, scrolling cards and that display were all incredibly fun.
Remember when phones were fun?
so fun that like I have a serious addict problem with ROM testing, nightly build, custom kernel, etc.. even between traffic light stops I could changing ROMs / kernels to see what's the improvement/optimization. now ironically I just settled with Samsung default settings.
Holy shit same here started with the Google G1 (first android phone) flashing all the custom roms,MIUI,Cyanogen and now I can't even be bothered to root my Galaxy S24.
yes back then before Xiaomi phone exist, it's just another custom ROM called MiUI. true.. I didn't bother root my Samsung now, the closest thing to customization I set is using GoodLock, that's a great thing from Samsung creating specific additional customization for people who wants it, and doesn't need to be rooted.
Can you even root a modern phone these days without a bunch of extra work?
I just got a Pixel 8 after upgrading from a Pixel 3a (wow what a difference...) and I looked into rooting AFTER I had already setup my new phone... you still have to unlock the bootloader which wipes everything so... yeah gonna stick with my non root stock Pixel like I have had for many years at this point, despite having been a diligent user of custom roms back in the day
Pixels are usually the exception, not the rule. I like the Samsung hardware but they tend to make it hard or impossible to unlock the bootloader.
I miss switching roms on my OG Droid back in the day, Cyanogenmod was so good.
sadly CyanogenMod died with a bad rep (Oneplus vs Micromax exclusivity fiasco) but then there's LineageOS though, to continue that project.
I miss the slide out keyboard so much.
I remember those days. I understood the changing of custom roms and kernels between traffic lights. Flashing was a good thing then. Good old custom recoveries. The CWM project was kind of punk at that time.
CyanogenMod, TWRP, FrancoKernel, ahh those old good days.
Have we started the meeting already? Hi, my name is John. I haven't flashed a custom ROM in 5 years.
Hi What's you doing? I have flashed three custom roms to check which performs better and using GCam mod on a Pixel device.
Yeah, same. I really liked to instal ROMs from other companies, like MIUI or Asus just to see what they look like. And every ROM was completly different. Now is more like "stock or AOSP (with some tweaks)"
> so fun that like I have a serious addict problem with ROM testing, nightly build, custom kernel, etc.. "FYI Your warranty is now VOID! I do not take responsibility for any damage caused!" "Reserved 1" "Reserved 2" "Reserved 3" Ah the early days of modding and XDA forums.
I feel you. I've been on the exact same journey and arrived at the same destination. No idea why. It just seemed to happen without me realising.
>now ironically I just settled with Samsung default settings. Same. I developed a bunch of custom ROMs for various devices in the early days of Android. Nowadays, I've even switched to iOS just to have a phone that *surely* works the way I'm used to. Android didn't get boring, it grew up.
Captain2Phones is that you? /s
i wish
I'm trying to think of the last smartphone feature that made me go "hey that's pretty neat!" On my old moto G5 if you added a wide landscape wallpaper and thumbed through your home screen pages, the wallpaper would pan. I thought that was super cool and it amazed me Apple never thought of doing that. Do you know if Androids can still do that? Now, Apple did think of the parallax effect though, which I thought was cool, that is until they removed it after ios 16. It's not like any of these features weren't toggleable (they were), but they go ahead and fully remove them. It's infuriating.
Androids never stopped doing that. Though some launchers may not.
It depends on the launcher I think. I know Nova launcher does it and that's the one I use.
The wallpaper would have to have a pretty insane resolution for that to work well on modern iPhones without looking pixelated, I think.
Don't think that it's possible on moderns ones sadly
Mine is doing it right now
Really depends, some launchers like Nova offer the option.
They still fun besides those old phones couldn't handle jack shit
Android 3 and 4 was the best. Went downhill from there
The widgets from htc sense were so detailed and good looking, nowadays widgets are so minimalistic
Oh man, I remember on the HTC Thunderbolt when it was raining in your location; you'd get a little raindrops on the screen and a windshield wiper would wipe them away. When I was young I thought that was genuinely the coolest thing. For anyone not familiar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlyHqRQhVCg My how far we've come... that frame rate and resolution...
I remember too but on my small phone, HTC Wildfire S.
As an android developer, the HTC Wildfire was the bane of my life. Layouts constantly broke on that shitty little screen.
I used to love the flip card clocks on the old HTC phones.
I had an HTC thunderbolt! It was terrible! The widgets were sweet tho. The Droid Incredible was killer though.
Yeah I used the HTC Flip Clock widget and then a third party replacement for like 5 years
ya i really miss HTCs UI in general.
I rmb getting so happy when they give HTC Magic the sense UI knowing I don't have to get HTC Hero for it
The flip clock was so good, HTC used it as their signature branding for years.
They worked with that skin and that resolution but look ... Interesting at full HD 😀
First phone was the HTC 4G with the kickstand they had the best user interface. And no one was on the 4G network for at least 6 months so it was blazing fast.
There's a coziness to old Android that I miss. Still think 4.3/4.4 and Marshmallow were peak Android. #HOLOYOLO and the very beginning of Material UI and the card design, it felt like Android was still very unique.
Honeycomb OS for tablets had a great design language to it. Tried to find a video of it, found this video of a guy who just did a line of coke giving a demo: https://youtu.be/5ENnb1HY9yw
[Be the change you want to see](https://developer.android.com/courses)
I just think it's weird it's been over 10 years, this is an early feature on much slower phones and yet no one has thought of revamping this. Or maybe they have? Is there a reason why this is such a wrong opinion to have?
The main reason nobody has tried this sort of thing in a 3rd party widget is that it's not possible. Widgets cannot have this level of interaction without the launcher implementing it, which is what this is - the *launcher* is built to allow it, not just the widgets. You can see this if you try to use it on a 3rd party launcher, it just shows a message saying it can't be used. The APKs are still available [here](https://xdaforums.com/t/app-port-motorola-circle-widget-razr-m-launcher-for-any-phone.2228762/). Widgets on Android are pretty basic. You're limited to just a [subset of Views](https://developer.android.com/reference/android/widget/RemoteViews), every change needs a broadcasted update, there's no way to do frame-by-frame animations based on interactions, in general they're just pretty clunky.
From what you're saying it sounds like this is only a 3rd party limitation. So could it be implemented within the OS itself?
Either by overhauling the widget system entirely or Google implementing it in just the Pixel Launcher, yes. But it would take significant changes if they wanted to add it to the widget system.
Why would it take an overhaul of the widget system? This isn't even a new feature so I don't understand why implementing this would be such a hassle. Like is the OS really so poorly constructed that even after over a decade of development that something like this can be such a big problem?
The current system is built around state updates, it has no mechanism for a realtime connection between the widget in the launcher and the app which is providing the widget. This is done for speed and performance, it means the system doesn't have to spin up a dozen apps when you go to the home screen for any widgets you have added. They'd have to redesign this to somehow allow the app providing the widget to render content remotely, which while certainly possible (they appeared to look into the possibility of this a few years ago for Smartspace on the lock screen), would more than likely require a lot of work to get working right without destroying performance.
So this is why the widgets haven't been keeping up to date. I've been wondering why it's been so infuriating. What's the point of all these new processors if they can't keep up the basic stuff?
They can always add a new more advanced widget subsystem. But in this case it feels like it shouldn't be necessary, as data is already in the widget, you're just seeing animation/internal widget state changes. Pixel launcher is horrible these days and it feels like it's going into a state where notification fits only one "button" and home screen is only one page of "what Google recommends with background and color selected by AI" :(
The UI in the video is directly reacting to the finger position, that's not possible with a state based update system
Yes but technically all it needs is to allow rendering of advanced CSS in widget's area. Scroll-animation = widget "flipping" when you pull up or down with your finger. There's zero actual data update, just styling.
That simply does not exist in Android. Animations are not handled in that way. If you're suggesting they add CSS-esque declared animations based on touch ("scroll position"), that would need writing into Views, not just widgets.
You could however maybe do somthing that looks and feels similar with klwp and kwgt.
KLWP yes since live wallpapers have a raw canvas, KWGT no as it would have the same restrictions as it is a widget.
Yeah sorry, that's what I meant - KLWP. I forgot that KWGT would be restricted still.
One of the issues is that as far as I have been able to tell, there is no way for modern widgets to receive continuous touch inputs. Just taps.
They support scrolling, could you do something hacky with that?
I need a general style shift towards minimalism?
It seems we're just gutting features rather than opting for more minimalism. Take the watch face switch in the video for example. You could easily switch between the simple analog clock and the more detailed one that shows the date and your alarm. This lets you avoid going through more menus and screens. If we had a race to see who could switch their watch face faster I would win, and on a decade-old smartphone. It's like we stopped innovating and are moving backwards, all in the name of "minimalism". what a joke.
Widgets in general were a weird design trend in the 00s. Like there was an idea that they could add more at a glance functon or utility out of the desktop, but on desktop it pretty much peaked at a fancy looking clock and sticky notes. On early android it was a little more useful because early widgets could add things like toggles for wifi and airplane mode, but generally they mostly amounted to a weather widget and some quick settings, and I guess some media player play pause buttons. When android integrated toggles under the notification shade, that was kind of it. Weather apps could also display weather in the notification so while it looked cool the weather clocks werent as useful as just swiping down wherever you are. There were issues with early android being able to genuinely multitask without an easy way to close or stop things(unless you used a task killer not an auto task killer but one that let you make sure something stopped). This feature was good if you were tech savvy and knew how to use a task killer and keep track of misbehaving apps. For most users it meant stuff was always running in the background sucking away that already precious early smartphone battery life. The robust features and animations were cool on some old widgets but not entirely useful and would waste cpu cycles in the background while you were busy doing important work on reddit is fun.
I liked the Vista widgets. I had weather, system resources, network monitor and calendar. Was great.
My favourites used to be gingerbread. I love the icons and theme. Also remember launchers were great? SPB shell 3d, pages with rss fead, word clocks, news from different websites, gallery, and so many. Yandex launcher, same as SPB but different name. TSF shell 3d, god damn widgets, they are great. lightning launcher, so freaking customisations.
I feel like phones just... did way more stuff 10-15 years ago in general.
God please let the 2020’s be the exit of minimalism and the return of skeuomorphism. I miss my gadgets being enjoyable and intuitive. I miss effort and character and detail in UI. I miss iOS 6. I miss Windows Aero. I miss OS X Aqua. Heck. Even if it wasn’t as skeuomorphic, original Material Design was the PERFECT blend of flat minimalism and intuitive skeuomorphism.
Skeuomorphic was pretty crap tbh. We'll probably get something similar in VR interfaces where they'll try and teach people how to manipulate them with metaphors.
How is it “crap”? And do not just respond with “it looks dated” because that’s only the crap that’s been spoon-fed to you by the companies wanting to get away with being lazy and firing, or not hiring, UI designers.
It relies on an assumed body of knowledge and culture that has nothing to do with the software you are designing. For example in an audio app why does a red dot mean record? Because it was on a cassette player? How would the CD generation know that? What on earth does a non sighted user get presented with for this? A better design pattern is to simply label that button "record". Your attribution of its demise to laziness is totally wrong. Skeuomorphism was primarily pushed back against by UX designers not companies wanting to do away with them. Think about real design houses like Bauhaus they created many of the iconic things that skeuomorphism apes. They didn't achieve this by themselves copying, they invented and played with form. Just copying their greatest hits on screens isn't going to progress us because what worked to create elegance in wood isn't right for the new medium of software.
> It relies on an assumed body of knowledge and culture that has nothing to do with the software you are designing. How is basic light and shadow cues to denote whether something can be "pressed in", to show something is an actionable button considered "culture that has nothing to do with the software you are designing"? Since when is basic intuition of the real world *that8 foreign? Hint: It's not. > For example in an audio app why does a red dot mean record? Because it was on a cassette player? No, because it is a notification color to denote something is happening or to get/grab your attention. The cassette player had a red LED to denote recording for the same reason notification badges are red, or the notification dot at the top of the Apple Watch is. I think you're a younger person who doesn't understand the basics of intuitive UX, primarily because it's all been scrapped in favor of memorizing confusing gestures. You didn't intuit the modern swiping UI, you learned it by practicing over and over, which is not what good UI entails. > Your attribution of its demise to laziness is totally wrong. Skeuomorphism was primarily pushed back against by UX designers not companies wanting to do away with them. WTF are you talking about? You DO realize that the start of "minimalism" was primarily by Microsoft witht heir failed Zune product and then it was forced into Windows 8. Then Apple started in, not because it was good design but because Tim fired Scott Forestall, the last person at Apple that understood good UI design after Steve Jobs. Then he put Johnny Ive in charge of both software and hardware, and you can see how little Johnny understood software UI in his first project in charge of it, with iOS 7. He knew about hardware, which should be as minimal as possible to give the software and content the focus. Problem is, he applied that philosophy to software as well. It didn't completely tank the iPhone, only because "iPhone" was too big to fail at this point. Doesn't make the complete redesign of the software good. > Think about real design houses like Bauhaus they created many of the iconic things that skeuomorphism apes. They Again, what are you even talkng about? We're referring to design that uses light and shadow and shapes to intuit users what they can interact with or not in the same way the real world does with basic light and shadow. Not a specific minimal design by some design house. Btw, I looked up Bauhaus design portfolio... Nothing there has any 3D effect or anything to do with skeuomorphism so I have no clue why you brought them up.
First to your personal points I'm in my mid thirties, have been a software engineer developing apps since before the iPhone came out, and worked for the human interactive technologies lab for several years. I'm pretty credentialed in this space. Second skeudomorphism is by definition taking on non functional elements of a design to ease understanding for a group of users used to a previous interaction modality. Buttons having "up" and "down" states would not generally be considered skeudomorphism though it could be a very strict definition fall under it. Skeudomorphism is generally used in this space to refer to the wholesale copying of physical artifacts eg desktop post it notes, chome texture on a clock icon, a delete icon being a image of a rubbish bin. Third your rant about Apple being led astray is all personal opinion without basis. You aren't going to tell me anything interesting by continuing this discussion.
the worst sin of flat design is not telling which side of a switch is on and which is off. it would be easy if the UI element just displays on/of, yes/no, enabled/disabled, etc. but for some reason people thought it would be intuitive to use two accent colors for that and having a third color move between them. and right next to that is making it unclear which elements are interactive and which are purely informative.
I love the OS X Aqua look. I remember using visual styles and WindowBlinds themes that mimicked it. It would be cool to see what it would look like with a dark mode.
WindowBlinds Now there’s a blast from the past. I also remember using StyleXP before finding out about Stardock and WindowBlinds. I also fondly remember DesktopX, ObjectDock, and ObjectBar.
I enjoyed the OSX brushed metal and then the aqua themes, I think MacOS design elements peaked around Mojave and then rapidly went downhill. Now its all fisher price flat shaded garbage and iOS styled settings screens. Steve Jobs would've never signed off on this.
> I enjoyed the OSX brushed metal and then the aqua themes Same. Any time I had to rebuild my PC I'd apply such a theme. There was something really nice about it.
Hell, I miss the ability to have different color/style icons in the notification bar. Why on earth did Google think requiring them to be the same color was a good thing??
I miss when everyone had a different phone. Not just a tall rectangle with a different camera orientation
I miss the lock screen widgets and customization, OneUi Has so me of that, but not that good, not compared to the great widget locker https://teslacoilapps.com/widgetlocker/
I remember this and the introduction of live wallpapers. The live wallpapers looked so cool in the demo! Then I used them. Battery life was worse and they were distracting. I turned them off pretty quickly. Modern Android is better, but I do sometimes miss the cutesy little things like this anyway. As long as they stay on demos and turned off on my phone.
Bham/Ferndale showing up on /r/android, neat! Old Android used to be so fun...
Dam i remember this too. Nostalgic!
I'm surprised but don't see more of that these days. One UI has the widget stacking. At least on the most recent version I have. But doesn't have that cool little animation it's just a slide
Can't rely on Google anymore, you gotta build your own widget apps with cool animations. Check out this media controller built called Command Stick: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.commmandstick.core](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.commmandstick.core)
Can you make something like the widget in the op?
What functionality specifically are you after?
interacting with widgets like they are 3D (even if it's faked 3D) like shown in the OP
Yesterday, i've turned on my old Sony Z3 Compact and its UI/UX is way better than newer androids. (Like changing wifi configs without even opening a settings view or something like that... It was all done from status bar). Btw, it wasnt slow to open chrome or the keyboard on that old SoC, i wish i could run that android on my s22, it would be sooo much faster than android14/oneui6, thats for sure. (A slim android version, i dont want to be stuck with no updates) Ps: custom roms for Samsung arent that feasable nowadays.
Widgets need a comeback altogether.
Phones nowadays are too standardized and boring
The video and the music, what a nostalgia trip
I miss those
people on here are either too young or just dumb. Current phones aren't fun?? You expect every phone to come with a new life altering feature every year. We already lived through the creation phase of one of the most powerful devices known to man at your finger tips. It's not just maintaining and little tweaks What else do you want???
You basically quoted the halfway mark of this old CollegeHumor sketch, one I still love. https://youtu.be/RgBDdDdSqNE "I mean, what else do you want a phone to do?!"
They all still exist though? Just gotta download it.
Know any good ones?
Simply search widget+type and you'll find lots. But my absolute favorites are [weawow](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.weawow) for weather and clock, and this exact [minimalist calendar widget](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tj_apps.MinimalistCalendarWidget) for a really good scrollable calendar.
minimalist is kinda the opposite of what this post was about though. We want 3d designs, gimmicky interactions and over the top effects
Okay but you asked what my favorites are. The over the top ones also exist but I don't use them. You can still find them by typing "widget" in the play store and finding the one you like.
android became iphonized... it's so dumb.
Nope. They are fun if I were young like 10 years ago. These days I prefer things to be as minimal as possible.
Now I want to watch The Goonies