A new modern look for the Android brand | Hacker News Reader

A new modern look for the Android brand

blog.google

42 pointsuptown40 comments

The branding problem here isn't going to be fixed by making a 3d robot. The problem is that it's not entirely clear there is such a thing as "Android." Even in this announcement, they refer to it as the world's biggest operating system and as a platform, which do not have to mean the same thing. It's almost like they need to clarify that Android the OS framework is massively successful and open, while the purest implementation of it is Android the OS on Pixel devices (for example). A lot of folks think of Android as adware and bloatware-infested devices that get next to no support after sale, and that's really unfortunate given how good it can be.

Or, shorter, making it too open and not distinguishing between the platform and vendor-specific implementations of it is allowing others to dilute the meaning of "Android" in a way that is detrimental to the brand.

Discussed at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37412331 (September 6, 2023 - 12 comments)

The biggest thing Google could do is simply change the color. Its not an appealing shade of green.

The color isn't great, but I'm more annoyed by how he arms and legs attach differently... Especially since the arms barely connect at all. (And at one point in the animation, I think they don't connect.)

It looks very amateur-ish to me, like someone's first Blender project.

I don't see how it's "modern" either, it looks very dated as if it's from the 3D logo craze era that we're long past. If they're gonna try to revive something maybe go for something that was actually you know... good.

That's intentional. Bugdroid is usually depicted with stump legs and floating arms:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Android_robot_(2014-...

As an Android user for 10ish years, I don't care about what it's called or what their logo and mascot look like. I just want it to work.

So do Google... Unfortunately the 10,000+ people who work on Android and related projects at Google so far haven't managed to make it much more bug-free than it was back in 2012...

The camera still crashes if you take too many photos too quickly... The backup service still does a shitty job and doesn't backup some apps... The phone still occasionally randomly gets hot and drains the battery by midday... Sharing a file with another android user over bluetooth/wifi/nearby share still fails more often than not. A VoIP/video call still stutters and glitches when you switch from wifi to cell or vice versa.

The fact I can list 5 bugs from memory that have existed for 10 years is a sign that perhaps those 10,000 minds may be misplaced.

> VoIP/video call still stutters and glitches when you switch from wifi to cell or vice versa.

I'd be curious if you or anyone else has any ideas on preventing that, because I think it's impossible? A voip or video call uses one or more network sockets. If I'm using wifi, that socket goes over my network, which the server communicates with. If I suddenly switch to cellular, there will always need to be a reconnection over the cellular network, because the server was previously communicating over a completely different network route.

The hardware is totally capable of having both network connections up at once.

It could have a transition period where the data is sent over both networks for a few seconds until the transfer could be completed seamlessly.

Sure, it would require app support, and server support, but if the OS supported it I'm pretty sure app and server support would happen.

Alas - sadly it's currently impossible for an app to talk over both wifi and cellular at the same time on android - although it is possible for two different apps to each be talking over different networks at the same time. This functionality is used for the captive portal signin screen so you can be signing in to one network while still connected to another.

On what hardware and how many photos? This has never happened to me.

Watch a jogger jogging, and try to take a photo each time their foot hits the ground (so about 1.5 Hz). Within 10 seconds you'll find the camera crashes and/or starts throwing away photos you already took. Try it on battery saver mode or while playing music for even more bugginess.

Tested this on: Nexus 4, Nexus 5, Nexus 6P, Pixel 1, Pixel 5, Pixel 7.

Does disabling HDR solve the problem?

I've always suspected that the constant push for new features has made it too complex to keep up with bugs. Every major release always has bugs left over from the last, plus new ones. Over time I've seen the UI go from pretty stable, to weird redraws, blanking, hanging, etc, which are nearly impossible to screenshot or reproduce, yet persist across versions and hardware; every release is just a bit worse. I don't envy their job

When you can't make a product that works well, throw a bunch of marketing at it to add some lipstick :)

Not a good look for the blog post revealing the new brand to have horrible aliasing on the animation...

That would be your own browser resizing the video incorrectly. Open up the mp4 directly to see the full size and anti-aliased video.

The full size is even worse. This is a direct screenshot from the full res video, red markup is my own: https://image.non.io/9cf685b1-bbbb-4dac-a6cd-5c698fb62dc3.we...

Full res video: https://storage.googleapis.com/gweb-uniblog-publish-prod/ori...

The full res clearly has an existing vid imported in where the color space was incorrect. The bottom right droid looks like it was exported as a gif in a reduced color space. This is extremely sloppy for a rebrand announcement.

Edit: It gets even better, the bottom gif doesn't loop for the entire duration of the video. It stops 13s into the 16s video.

> It gets even better, the bottom gif doesn't loop for the entire duration of the video. It stops 13s into the 16s video.

The rest is bad enough, but I could not believe that until I saw it for myself. It is honestly like some highschool level presentation video or something.

One thing that bugs me a bit too, is when the left hand bugdroid jumps up, the legs have some kind of glossy shine, when then just pops away. Not sure if that intentional, but it is very jarring to me.

Indeed it is... But it's Chrome on wayland - so I'm chalking that up to a google bug too...

Interestingly I can't seem to find anyone else complaining that Chrome on wayland only does nearest-neighbour resizes of videos. I wonder if it's crappiness in the hardware video decoder or a deliberate performance decision because my hardware is slow at texture resizing?

This is some of the most soul-dampening marketing pablum I’ve ever seen. Perfectly inoffensive and adhering strictly to all Acceptable Mainstream Concepts. Well done, Google. An achievement of a kind, for sure.

I thought maybe they were finally abandoning Material Design

What don’t you like about Material design?

The roundness of everything is excessive. Hopefully this trend dies soon.

Most of it is tolerable to me, but I particularly dislike that it can be hard to tell what elements you can interact with and what elements you can't. That, and the animations.

Every app/website made with Material Design looks generic, and/or low effort

They abandoned Material Design with Android 13, but for some reason decided to call the brand new and completely different design system Material Design too - and it's even worse than the original, at least when it comes to wasted space and gross animations.

Last 3 android releases have seriously been in terms of new features, especially when you compare it with iOS. It used to be a completely opposite case 7-8 years ago. Is android team working on something big, running out of ideas or just under-staffed? I don't know who cares about a new android logo. I switched to iOS this year because I gave up on android adding anything new that's worth looking forward to.

I think the word "missing" is.. missing.. in your post.

Someone at Google needed a promotion

I don't mind making the android 3d-ish, but I sure hope that those animated versions never show up anywhere.

They changed the logo to regular English capitalisation, away from stylised lowercase. Such fun.

That’s why they make the big bucks

The rebranding looks like a move from flat to 3D, from a single green standard to customizable skins. Probably in preparation for Android to compete in the consumer VR space

All I see is annoying moving images dragging attention away from any content.

Oh, and what appears to be a failure to comply with cookie laws (UK).

So are we moving away from flat logos and going back to 3D logos?

FYI news from September 5th (why the post OP?)

Some previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37412331

Still looks like Fisher Price My First Robot.

Wow the new one looks dumb.

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