COMMENTARY | Google recently unveiled its new Android design guidelines, which are meant to help people develop apps for its open-source smartphone and tablet operating system. The guidelines work in tandem with Android Ice Cream Sandwich's visual overhaul, which was designed to "enchant" smartphone and tablet users in a way that Android's previous, bare-bones iterations, did not.
Aside from the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, though -- which, as a Nexus phone, is largely staying true to the spirit of Android's design -- you wouldn't know it to look at some of the Ice Cream Sandwich phones coming out now.
One step forward, two steps back
That's how Cameron Summerson of Android Police describes HTC Sense 4 on Android Ice Cream Sandwich.
HTC Sense is one of many manufacturer customizations layered on top of the Android OS, ostensibly designed to improve the user experience. As the owner of an HTC Android phone, I've spoken highly of it in the past. When Android was just a framework for apps and widgets and overlays, with little or no personality of its own, it made "sense" for a manufacturer that cared about good design to overhaul Android's interface.
On Android Ice Cream Sandwich, however, it largely feels redundant, or even regressive. Worse, it throws away a substantial amount of work that Google put in to making a spectacular mobile OS. HTC Sense may be shiny, but it has its own separate design guidelines for app developers to remember, which look nothing like the ones for Ice Cream Sandwich's "Holo" interface. And partly because of that, HTC's apps look like they were designed for an entirely different phone.
Being different for the sake of being different
You can argue that this is less the case for HTC than it is for other Android smartphone manufacturers. HTC Sense has a lot of fans, myself among them, for its spectacular widgets and (internally, at least) consistent design.
But the wireless carriers don't want to stock rows of smartphones that all look and feel the same. Which is one reason why Samsung has Touchwiz, and Motorola has Motoblur, neither of which have approached quite the same level of fan acclaim (or tastefulness) that HTC Sense has. On top of that, the carriers themselves intervene in each phone's development, insisting on branded apps that duplicate Google or Android apps' functionality. Or memory hogs like Sprint ID, which ostensibly make it easy to customize your phone but in reality "drain patience and processing power," according to CNet's Jessica Dolcourt.
Google has the clout to occasionally get its hardware partners, like Samsung, to make pure Android smartphones in the Nexus series. These have less non-uninstallable "crapware" and less clutter getting in the way of Android's full Holo experience. But most manufacturers are at the mercy of the carriers ... and aren't so good at software engineering or user interface design, besides.
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