[Q] Too much monochrome in Lollipop? - General Topics

Does anyone else feel that Lollipop has gone too far with the monochrome styling of notifications and popups? It started with KitKat and a preference for monochrome icons in the notification bar. There were some good reasons for this, mainly AIUI to do with transparency (although I preferred the icons from my older apps that were still coloured).
But now Lollipop seems to have gone even more monochrome. My beef is particularly with the extended notifications on the lock screen, and the popup-down for incoming calls and alarms.
Colour is a great cue to help you know what something relates to without having to look too hard. You probably identify the launch icons on the home screens as much by colour as anything else. Now in Lollipop I see a list of notifications from apps on the lock screen, but at a glance they all look the same. I have to look closely to see whether I've got an email, an SMS, or an app's just been updated, etc. If these were coloured I'd see much more quickly, which would help me know whether I needed to deal with it immediately or not bother unlocking the phone. With multiple notifications it would make it much easier to differentiate (and help avoid tapping the wrong one!).
The other issue is the new incoming call toast. It's definitely better than taking over the screen, but everyone knows that to answer a call you hit green, and to reject you hit red. But we get no colours, instead the words "answer" and "dismiss" with monochrome icons. It takes close attention to pick the right one. Same with the alarm. Trying to read the difference between "dismiss" and "snooze" while in a blurry-eyed state without glasses on a fully dimmed screen while lying in bed is far from easy!
I just feel that graphic design aesthetics have overridden proper usability concerns in the mansion of Android development. Is this just me, or does anyone else agree? If so, how do you feed these concerns back to Google so they might take some notice?
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I'm not a big fan of this whole "material design" thing they're doing.

Related

[Home Replacement] Slide Screen

I've been waiting for this one check it out
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Paid:
Free:
I like the concept. I like that you are able to quickly get an overview of messages, calendar, calls and you can adjust was you like it. It would be better if it had facebook, twitter intergration as part of all the other info panels also.
The only issue here I see is that the whole notion of android is the widgets...which I like. I'll keep it on for awhile to test it out. Maybe it will grow on me.
It's basically windows mobile homescreen.
I agree with archboy, great concept, but still missing some customization features. The ability to move an item from the top half to the bottom half is needed. This would be great if it could also be used as a fullscreen widget, so that I could still use the rest of my screens.
I wish this was a lock screen.
IMO, this information oriented approach instead of the action/application oriented approach is much better in terms of productivity.
The only drawback of this application? I cannot access to some widgets/actions and I do really want to be able to do things like enable wireless, 3g, change brightness... without the pain of going through the setup menus.
A good solution to this problem would be a light weight home screen app which could be launched from slide screen and load the the 4 or 5 widgets I need. I've tried aHomeMini but it forcecloses, any suggestions?
@iVisionX01: yeah, having it as a lock screen is also great but, again, I won't need the full featured home app.
iVisionX01 said:
I wish this was a lock screen.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
2nd that
Tried it for a couple of hours, but missing customizability and getting settings too far out of reach made me uninstall quickly.
I wish it was a widget!
Try QuickDesk or PowerStrip with this, working great for me, very pleasing to the eye..
wow i cant believe i missed this home screen
should be perfect with QuickDesk and PowerStrip
i dont get it??? Whats it suppose to do??
It's a shame FroYo won't let you change default launcher programatically any more (you have to do it through the settings). I would love to have had Tasker set this is default when I was at work, then LauncherPro the rest of the time

Display burn-in?

This G Tablet is just out of the box, but appears to have some type of "burn in" that shows up one certain colored backgrounds. I noticed it first in the background of the application Tweetdeck, but the attached image is with the plain background using the free application called "Dead Pixel Test". It was a little tricky to capture with the camera, but there is an outline about 1/2 an inch all the way around the screen with rounded corners and on the left side it it juts out to a point sort of like a "speech bubble" from a comic. This is the third display color of Dead Pixel Test, "light grey". I didn't see it with any other colors in that program, but depending on what colors are in the background in other applications, this outline may appear.
Could anyone else confirm if their display has this issue? This unit is new, so I'm not sure how it would have any burn in like this, so maybe all displays have this, or maybe it's just a display defect on my unit.
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I ran the dead pixel test and it didn't have any issues like your pic. If you bought in a store bring it back and show them the test and have them run the same test on an in store display model.
Sent from my SPH-P100 using XDA App
Definitley bring it back. Better to have peace of mind than to worry about it.
Scott
Thanks for the confirmation. It didn't look right and now it does sound like it's just a problem with this particular unit I have. I am going to take it into the store as you suggested.
LCD panels can experience retained images, but it's far less likely to be permanent than the phosphor damage seen on CRT tubes and plasma displays. The new OLED panels will probably be bad for this as well. Set a pure white background for a few hours at low brightness to keep the temperature down (with no icons) then see if your pixel test shows any difference. If the image is really permanently retained out of the box my guess would be that it was probably a test result screen from the factory.
Good reminder for the rest of us that screen savers/timeouts are important!

Suit UP! A brief review of the HTC Dot View case

The HTC Dot View case looks like just another case, but it comes with a cool trick. The plastic backing offers some protection for the back and corners, but not enough to feel comfortable doing a drop test. The thing that really impresses me is the front cover that interacts with the screen. Unlike other cases with screen covers that interact with the display of the phone this case does not have a plastic window. Instead it has a hundreds of dots giving you a very 8-bit look.
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The pictures above shows what my case displays when you tap on it twice.
Outside of the clock shown above the display also has a few other functionalities. Some of those include weather / temperature graphics, picture personalization, call and text message notifications. You are also able to pick up calls using a quick gesture. The ability to place calls can be done using HTC voice recognition software or by selecting one of your three previous calls.
Overall this case is a really great complement to this great device. Every time I pull it out of my pocket it still impresses everyone I show it to and still even me. Thanks for taking a moment to read my blog. If you have had a chance to check it out let me know what you thought of it or if you have any questions let me know.
Thanks again,
Aaron (Your friendly neighborhood Sprint Product Ambassador)
Disclaimer: The Product Ambassadors are Sprint employees from many different parts of the company that love technology. They volunteer to test out all sorts of Sprint devices and offer opinions freely to the Community. Each Product Ambassador shares their own opinions of these devices; therefore the information in this post does not necessarily reflect the opinions of Sprint. The PAs do not represent the company in an official way, and should not be expected to respond to Community members in an official capacity. #sprintemployee.

Help with Lockscreen Clock font

Hi guys, so I just recently updated to Oreo on my device, and I really like the new Always on display and lockscreen FONT for the clocks, but I've noticed that the regular samsung digital clock widget has a different font when you place it on a page, am I doing something wrong ? Is there a way to change this ?
hudtwalcker said:
Hi guys, so I just recently updated to Oreo on my device, and I really like the new Always on display and lockscreen FONT for the clocks, but I've noticed that the regular samsung digital clock widget has a different font when you place it on a page, am I doing something wrong ? Is there a way to change this ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
settings>display>font and screen zoom
Thread cleaned - please avoid making unsubstantiated comments and also reacting to them. Give us a shout instead (orange triangle on post header bar). Thanks.
@LenAsh the answer provided by the prior user doesn't resolve the issue. It's important to note so that others coming across this thread don't go on a goose chase in their settings. That is not an "unsubstantiated comment," that's simply fact. The settings page suggested does not contain any options for changing the lock screen font.
The unsubstantiated comment - so what is the answer, or if there isn't one, why not state that? Better then just "you're wrong"?
I don't know that there isn't an answer. I just know that the answer given is not correct. There is value in knowing what the answer is not - process of elimination is literally the process used in every type of engineering or problem solving. Saving users' time is also valuable. I also did not say "you're wrong," I merely stated the answer was not correct. I can't understand why there's pushback against that, nor why leaving an incorrect answer without followup is more valuable to users that stating it's incorrect.
The attached image provides additional substantiation of the statement; the settings suggested as the answer change font system-wide, not the lock screen font individually.
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Android 11 wallpaper bug/'feature'

I was holding off on updating, after getting the Android 11 notification a few days ago in the UK, as I couldn't see much user feedback on One Hyper upgraded to Android 11. But I updated it today and while it seems to be working OK (with seemingly no loss in general performance), I did immediately notice a bug/feature on wallpapers.
It doesn't matter which app you use to apply a wallpaper, the system seems to take over and crop the image. When you pull down the notifications bar it zooms back out to the original 1:1 wallpaper.
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Forgive the quality of the above gif, I didn't want to overload the thread with a massive image. But you get the idea.
I did a Google search and it seems to be a common issue, at least on some Android 11 devices, I saw some archived reddit threads from 2020. It's a shame but thankfully there is a workaround (if a little clunky). Apparently live wallpapers escape this weird bug/feature, so with an app like KLWP you can turn a wallpaper (like some of the 1080x2340 formatted wallpapers I made) into a live wallpaper. Again it works but for such a simple thing, it's a shame you have to jump through hoops that weren't there in Android 10.
Eh, why do they need to do these things. I'm already really annoyed that the lockscreen overlays a color tone over the image, dampening all cool vibrant colors and contrast. When i now choose a lockscreen wallpaper i have to overdrive the colors and contrast before applying it to counter the tone.
is this a bug? I thought it was some new effect of the system, if you repair it well, when you are using the Motorola launcher and make the gesture to open the app drawer, the same thing happens.
Whether it's simply an annoying new feature or a bug, either way it would be nice if it was an option.
Again I'm able to use the KLWP app to get around it, but its a lot of extra hoops for such a simple feature (and not a particularly intuitive app to use).

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