Pixelated - More M3E for you and me

Episode Date: September 5, 2025

Welcome to episode 68 of Pixelated, a podcast by 9to5Google. This week, Abner, Damien, and Will break down their feelings towards Material 3 Expressive now that Android 16 QPR1 is finally out in the wild. Is this the best Android has ever looked? Will Samsung follow Google's Material 3 Expressive rather than rushing towards a Liquid Glass-esque reality? Do we spend a large chunk of this episode breaking down how we've laid out our quick settings menus? That last one has an easy answer: you bet we do. Subscribe YouTube Podcasts Pocket Casts Spotify Apple Podcasts Overcast Sponsored by Gadget Salvation: Check out gadgetsalvation.com/9to5mac, featuring a smarter way to trade in your used tech for instant cash. Get a quote in seconds, ship for free, and choose how you want to get paid—all while giving your electronics a second life. Plus, use code GADGET10 at checkout to boost your payout by 10%. Thanks to Gadget Salvation for sponsoring! Gadget Salvation on Twitter Gadget Salvation on Facebook https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMLBdtmTd1Q Timecodes 00:00 - Android 16 QPR1 is here! 01:50 - Redesigned quick settings 12:20 - M3E vs. One UI and Liquid Glass 15:50 - My Pixel 19:00 - Desktop Mode 26:47 - Material You vs. M3E 31:03 - M3E apps 40:16 - Final thoughts Hosts Abner Li Damien Wilde Will Sattelberg Read more Google rolling out Android 16 QPR1 with Material 3 Expressive redesign for Pixel Every single new feature in Android 16 QPR1 How to install Android 16 QPR1 with its big redesign on Google Pixel Listen to more 9to5 Podcasts The Sideload 9to5Mac Happy Hour Electrek Space Explored Feedback? Drop us a line at [e-mail], leave a comment on the post, or reach out to our producer.

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So I am in a bit of an emotional state, guys. Basically May to, what is it? Is it September? It's September. I can't even believe it's September. May till September. I have been delving deep. We've all been doing it, but I feel like I've been doing a lot of delving into QPR 1. It's finally available. It's finally out there in the wild. People are installing it.

People are enjoying it in its stable format. Tell me what you think so far. I mean, no, we've all been using it in beta format, but please tell me some of the highlights that you guys are really enjoying, and I will go ham on this in about two minutes when you ready. I think the first takeaway, and I think the one that everybody will meet, we notice, is that we design quick settings just from the fact that you can condense the tiles from two by one to one by one and that you can have a max of 16 tiles on the first page or eight under initial notifications drop down. I think that drastically changes how people use quick settings in terms of there's no more swiping. I don't think most people have more than two pages. I think this is a very nice

modernization, but also productivity-wise, it's such an efficient update. How do you feel about the quick settings, though, in terms of going from, because this has been a bit of a culture shock from me, going from that material you redesign of like the long, thin, elongated, almost like oblong shapes, to then going down to almost shaving them in heart. I was talking about pretty chunky in the material you are always unnecessary. How do you feel about it? I think the, so Google's prep, going back, I think the previous design was a nine-by-nine grid or whichever the previous design was.

Yeah. And the idea with Material U was it wanted to be more spacious, it wanted to add text labels to be clearer. I think this new design proves that that premise was wrong. Like you don't, you, most people will be fine with just icons. You don't need accompanying. text of ables because it's just the material you design was just so bad for info density and I think this design Google's going back to something that's I think

people recognize these icons they see every day and for the ones they don't they can expand it and keep the old look yeah it's a good job you mentioned that because I was about to say there's a few icons where I'm like I get confused with it because I'm so used to see in the text so I'm like oh that which one's that when it's like that aeroplane mode, is that cast, is that cast. I mean, obviously, I know the cast logo, but there's certain ones where I'm like, huh, which one is that one again? Like, so it's kind of nice that you can expand them out, right? I will, I will say it's like, I'm looking at it. And it's like, the couple I don't like immediately recognize in my own are like also like pretty,

like my first guess is always correct, right? Because I'm like, maybe I don't totally like, quick share is such like a relatively recent rebranding that I don't have the icon for it cemented in my brain, but it clearly looks kind of like a queue with two arrows pointing. It's like, oh, that's probably quick share. And it is, right? It's stuff like that where it's, you know, easy to, uh, same with like screen recording, right? Like, it's like, well, that's probably what that is. And, and you're right the first time. I just feel like maybe this is where sometimes Google needs to double down on one icon style. So, you know, like they have, okay, this is the icon we're going to use for this. This is the icon we're going to do for this and be like, hey, we're not going to change

too drastically in the next few years because we've seen some big changes in this update, right? Everything feels, how would I describe it? Soften? Is it softened? Like, this is going to sound sort of disrespectful, but they've comic sands up the rest of the UI. Like, they've made things like almost bubbly, almost like instantly visible. Like, I don't know. Am I being disrespectful there?

Or is that kind of a good way to describe it? I don't really know. I feel like I'm probably being disrespectful. I don't think it's disrespectful. I know what you mean, but like, I don't know. I've also been using this since like May or, I don't know, I might have waited until June to install it just because I was between jobs at the time. But I don't know. I really think that this is maybe Google's like most cohesive overall visual design in a while.

Like, like even more so. Yes. I put a caveat on that, but yes. Oh, hit me with the caveat. Okay, on Android, which we're talking. about. I think material 3 Expressive is pretty solid. It's pretty cohesive, like you were saying. It's thought out. But we'll get to the app, to the actual apps in a second. But I think if we stick to Android for now, have you customized quick settings in any clever way? Or are you going for full

density? I've kind of left it as the default layout. Have you left it default? Oh, my God. That is 100% psycho- behavior. Because I'm like, I'm looking at it. I'm like, no, this pretty much has all the stuff I would add. Like I don't. It does. There are two things that bleed over on mine to a second page.

And one of them is the security and privacy tab, which like I could pretty easily remove. And the other one is dark load, which I just let automatically turn on and off. And I almost never trigger. And otherwise, it's like, you know, you've got your internet settings, your flashlight, which I have a hardware shortcut setup anyway. If I double tap or if I click both. the my both of the volume buttons my fly button's on. I thought you were to say you're using quick tap.

That never works. Oh, no, no, no, not that, not that. No, there's a, there's, I forget what the app is. Yeah. It's like flash dim or something that lets you map it to the volume keys and it works. And it, and it maximizes brightness instead of just doing half brightness, like the pixel does by default. You know, cast, I already mentioned QuickShare, uh, auto rotate.

All that stuff is already there. That's the stuff I would. to put in there. And so, yeah, I was just kind of like, oh, done, easy. So on the whole design, I had four pages. That's too many pages. Yeah, that's too many pages. That is way too many pages. Like, what are you doing that you need to be spending that much time in there? You could open up an application, right? I just feel like there's so many pages. I, okay, I've laughed at your psycho behavior, but mine isn't actually that far away looking at it. So I am a hypocrite. I'm a major hypocrite. Okay, so I haven't gone for the full 16 grid. I have a few elongated ones for like the cast tab, uh, battery saver

because I always, this is, it seems ridiculous because it's a battery icon, but I just forget what it is all the time. Yeah. And I don't know why. Then I have one for my alarm so I can see the exact time of the next alarm. Like other than that, it's pretty basic. Um, if, if we can put it in the show notes, I'll send a screenshot and we'll put that on there. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, people, people can kind of see our themes and stuff like that. But for the most part, I think, The way that they've handled it is, as Abner alluded to a moment ago, is it is really not. I like the fact that some of the where a quick settings tile is activated, it's almost like a square shape. And then it's like kind of round more, yeah, like a smaller oblong if it isn't activated.

It's a shame that there's still no one touch Wi-Fi, but there's one-touch Bluetooth and one-touch do not disturb. I don't know what Google's thinking with that. they kind of want to force that little Wi-Fi thing with us. But for the most part, I'm definitely enjoying the new layout for this. I think, I mean, I think I've made no secret on the podcast before that I have absolutely adored one UI this past 12 months or so. And this is now my favorite version of Android to use. It's so smooth.

The animations have been reworked in some cases. There's just as little touches. I think I've always been kind of one of these people who will spot what Google's hopefully I'm one of the people who do this. Google's little touches for animations are always like I know your favourite word being delightful Abner I do genuinely think some of these little like tiny touches swiping away notifications

has that kind of little bump bounce flick there's almost like it's almost like a liquid slash like amorphous kind of animation I love it I think there's little extra touches just really tie everything together because Matera Yu was like that first the first time I think we'd seen a UI from Google that was completely different from what anyone else was doing.

Right. And I think this is a really like natural and nice progression. I do feel like it's very much at home on the Pixel 10 as well. Like it's great to be able to test drive it for the past couple of weeks in its effectively final form. And I'm just excited to see what they do with like certain aspects of it with QPR2 coming in in a few months time. I'm getting ahead of myself. But there's just so much I just adore about this new look. Yeah, I think to add.

out quick settings and like control center is the competition obviously and my thing with control center I know you make you're telling me earlier with four pages and 32 top yeah 32 tiles that it's it's quicker to open the app my complaint with the control center on iOS has always been that it feels like a secondary home screen that when that's it's just too much complexity and quick settings feels the opposite to me And yeah, like you were saying, the morphing, I think quick settings is something the primary thing people notice, but also the primary thing people will get a productivity benefit out of. So I think it's been a long time coming. I think this is a solid design for them, and I hope they continue.

Moving on to the rest of the system, consistency. I think my second biggest thing is that this introduces a lot of consistency. So like with the most recent stable Android 16aries, the initial release, there are basically like three sets of volume sliders, the one that you use with the fiscal lockers, the full panel overlay, and the one in the settings app. All that is now consolidated into one design, one consistent slider design.

And I think that goes a long way because, Like after every major Android release, let's say Android 12, for example, Android 13, 14, 15, Google spent every year making piecemeal changes, new designs and interfaces and all that, redesigning existing things. But it was, like I said, piecemeal. It looked inconsistent year to year. And the benefits of these big redesigns, these big overhauls give Google a chance to unify everything. And I think it's something people appreciate, and I think Android is getting much better for it.

Yeah, I think as well, like you say, that consolidation and kind of unifying everything. As ridiculous as it sounds, I think getting really the pixel tips app has been a great choice and creating that my pixel application because it's something that like I didn't think, when I picked up the pixel 10 for the first time, I was like, oh, this is a new application. and it gives you more of an overview why. I say why, that there is, the tips there are a little bit better

because they feel more cohesive to the new version of the system and they have an application that is the home for everything you need to know as opposed to why would I want a tips app, I'm a power user. This feels like the best way to do it. And it does feel like everything is starting

to get more unified across, across Android and Pixel. I mean, hopefully that's a sign of things to come in the future. But I love, I just love that it is, I mean, it isn't a double down of material you. It's just the next version of it. And it feels like the, it just feels like they're in their element almost, if that makes sense. I'm guessing we've seen a lot of, a lot of OEMs out there try and emulate what iOS does. I'm very, very hopeful that people don't go down the liquid glass route in the next six to 12 months.

going to. They're going to. Yeah, I'm kind of, I'm wishful thinking, right? But I'm glad you said that because that's exactly how I feel about Google's build of Android and how I have felt since Interior U, as you said, which is that like they are the only, in my opinion, the only company that is not taking at least some amount of inspiration. You know, I like one Ui7 in general, but like you cannot say that that is not at least like

partially inspired by, you know, by iOS. and I would say that like for other smaller OEMs, it is, you know, especially like Chinese OEMs in particular. It is that this has been true for a long time, but it is, you know, typically the new features are like, oh yeah, that's like their take on like Apple's blank, like, film the blank here. And Google doesn't really do that.

And when they do, it is because an idea is so good that there is just no, like something like live updates where it's like, yeah, that is like obviously pulling from like, the dynamic island but but like that was a really good idea on on apple's part it was a little half-baked at launch because apps needed to support it but I would say by you know 12 months in the dynamic island in my opinion is like pretty you know ignoring the fact that it is a huge cut out on the screen the actual utility of it like the software side of it is really smart and I'm happy to see that stuff kind of coming to to Android slowly and it's it's

it's one of the few things where I can point and be like, yeah, okay, that is like taken from like an idea Apple had, but in a good way. Like, and the rest of it feels so cohesive, including that where it's like, it doesn't stick out as an Apple idea. It comes together to feel like a cohesive mobile vision that just doesn't feel like anything else, which is kind of the whole reason I want to use Android or one of them, right, is that I don't. I don't, don't want to use like something that just feels like an iPhone. Then I should just go get an iPhone at that point. And I also, real quick, Damien, just because I had not really dug into the My Pixel app

super deep since I got my Pixel 10 last week. Yeah, yeah. I really do like this, the new way they have the pixel tip stuff laid out, which I never found useful before. Now it feels, and listeners will not have this experience, but the two of you will. It feels like a consumer-focused version of reviewer guides. Like, this feels very much like they took the reviewers' guides that they hand out during a review cycle, which is a very long PDF that has tips and whatnot, like instructions and how to test out features. It basically just kind of put it in the phone and give it to people, which is good, because there's so many software features now that it's really, even for us, it is hard to keep track of sometimes.

and I think it's like a great way to make sure that like you can easily find all of the information on this stuff and how to use it in one single spot. I don't know. It just feels to me like a tips app is aimed at the first time users and this is like kind of integrating it into this, because this is obviously a storefront as well, a storefront with, I mean it even has offers if you have a pixel phone for instance, which is which I think is, hey, Google wants to sell products, right?

They need to get products in people's hands. and it's kind of one of those things where it makes sense if someone is going to use this they're going to go here for information there's some obviously they have that exactly you can tell that my my phone decides that it wants to speak to me about things so yeah they're definitely listening to me

it's nice to see the best phones forever stuff I think that's kind of cool as well it feels like there is more of a it's not totalitarian but it's like a totalitarian vision of what they want to do with pixel phones If this is the vehicle for someone who has an older device, potentially, to go and get a newer device, then that makes sense. Having the store at the end and the support in wall in one place. And this is just an application.

Like, everything else then ties in together with it. And yeah, I'm really, really pleased with it so far. Well, to your point, Damien, aren't you, like, I was just going to, I just want to add on is that, like, before we get too far from it, I don't think I ever open pixel tips because to your point, oh, that's for people who are new to pixel or whatever. But, like, when you put them in the my business. pixel app, it feels a little more inviting to even, like, a power user to be like, oh, I forgot it had this feature or, oh, I didn't even know, like, this one slipped by me or whatever, you know. This, it's exactly the same. Pixel tips in my, it's exactly the same.

There's no new information. No, but I'm saying the layout, the layout is, like, the way they are presenting the information is, is. No, it actually hides it behind the second tab now. But, but, but like, I think my point is that, like, I was never going to, open the pixel tips app because I didn't feel like I needed it. And now, and like it is, I think it is genuinely a smart, a smart idea to make it more inviting by putting it in this larger application that feels like a hub where you are more likely to stumble into it rather than

just ignoring the app, the pixel tips app in your app, which is what I did. I've done since they put pixel tips in there. Yeah, well, just saying all the information is exactly. Oh, no, no, no. Yeah. The information is new. It's the way it's laid out and especially in this new, Material 3 expressive UI, I think it's just like much more inviting. So in terms of the functionality, though, really a lot of it is just, it's almost just new, it's new clothes, Emperor's new clothes. There are a few cool features in there. I agree with Abner.

I think that unifying of certain like pull tabs, so like volume slider, the brightness bar, it just makes it clear. I think it's kind of nice as well that you have like a draggable tab. app. Like, I'm really excited, though, because while testing this out and showcasing the, if you haven't already seen my deep dive in the video on YouTube, go check it out. When I was playing around with the desktop mode, this to me is, it's one of those underrated features.

And I say underrated because we have decks on Samsung phones, right? Samsung phones have had this for a number of years. It's kind of, it feels like one of those features that if you are going to use it, you're going to be an evangelist for it. I feel like this is a little bit of a Google's way of doing it is a little bit more how to describe it like try it and see kind of deal at the moment but I've been playing around with it

it feels like that perfect combination so far anyway because it's in its early stages of like ChromeOS a little bit of Windows but I can definitely see this if Google can improve the performance of the devices in terms of like gaming and stuff this could be like the ultimate emulation option like you could just plug this into your TV

mouse and keyboard I've been playing Bellatro on it almost I played for hours. Like this is, this is where this story. A mouse mouse. When you're using a mouse mouse. And I've been using a mouse mouse and I have been dragging it on. And it, and it's literally like playing on Steam. It's insane.

I was like, I got carried away and lost 45 minutes just playing. It's playing again. I mean, I'm addicted to the game anyway, but just dragging windows around. I had the podcast open in the background. I mean, it was awesome. It was interesting because I've been so laptop first. like my entire technology, whatever. And that having to use a map,

what I need is to get a track pad to use this. But using a mouse has been, I think to me that's contributed to desktop mode feeling so old, the fact that I have to get a mouse, a separate user cursor in the first place, versus something like a built-in keyboard with a track pad and whatnot. But yeah, it's quite, From OS, it's the inspiration, so to speak.

It feels like, it still feels very first-gen. It's not first-gen in that it's been in the works for a few years, for a few Android versions in the developer preview. But I still am getting that, it's a mobile-inspired take on the desktop operating system is. It's, I don't know, I'm still getting used to the fact it doesn't, Like, my longest thing with ChromeOS, for so, it felt like, ChromeOS felt such like a web-based operating system.

It felt like a website as an operating system. And that was the case for so many years for me. It's, in the past few iterations, it's finally stabilized a bit to me, and it feels native. But it's, for the longest time, it felt like a web approach. to an operating system, which it was, but there was still some crankiness out on the corners. But with the Android take,

I've primarily been using it on a pixel tablet, so that's not the biggest screen, that's not the most ideal screen for desktop stuff. But yeah, I haven't connected the phone to a monitor yet, but I'm still... I highly, highly recommend it. I can definitely see this being... So for me, I mean, I'm not going to use this all the time, right?

But I can definitely see this when traveling in a pinch. You know, you can just throw it into your TV, potentially have like, I mean, you might not run loads of applications, but you might want to do some basic gaming on the go. And like, I potentially would do this quite a bit going to events and stuff. So there is an option there where I can just have one cable, H-DMI to USBC. I'm probably going to have a track pad or something with me.

So it's content. It sounds like it's still content consumption first. But what's productivity working way? What's productivity looking like? Okay. Because the docs web app, I'd use the docs web app over the docs Android app at this point.

And I'm not sure if that's, is that what Google wants. But the docs have an app, looks nice. It looks very material. But in terms of productivity and functionality, I'm going to the web app and that will chrome.

And I kind of feel that defeats the purpose of all this. Yeah, that's the only stumbling block. found so far is like the limitations of Chrome on Android versus Chrome on say PC, Mac, whatever it is, even a Chromebook, the utility is a little bit, yeah, it's stymied, it's kind of softened because you can only currently have two tabs side by side. You can't run any more than that. You can't have potentially three tabs of Chrome floating in Windows. You can only have the two. You can snap the windows. So it's kind of useful for that. You could do cross- referencing and things. You could maybe edit a document in the web up, like you say, rather than using

Docs application, but you could kind of get around it. It definitely feels like at the moment there's going to be a lot of workarounds. But yeah, I'm excited to see what they do with it. I do genuinely think that Dex is probably going to be the de facto leader in this space for a long time. And I don't know anyone who actually uses decks for work purposes. You're a video editor. You're a video editor. Is there anything? I could never see myself. Yeah. You could use LumaFusion, but I haven't tested it out yet. Maybe because I don't know if I have a license on Android on my work email,

so I didn't actually test it. I was testing it on my test device, which has not got my personal email logged in. I need to go out and try that because I do genuinely think that could be useful. Like I know a lot of people will go, you go on vacation, for instance, and you might want to edit a video quickly. That could be useful, I guess. You could edit on the go, but again,

you're kind of reliant like you say, there is definitely a big fallback on traditional keyboard and mouse. Yeah. Are you going to carry that? I don't know. Are they going to make them, hey, if somebody makes a MagSafe version of a keyboard and mouse, I'll be there. I will be first a test trial.

And I don't want to speak for you, Damien, but if someone handed me a different, like, video or audio editing application, it would take me four times as long just because I don't have a decade of muscle memory built up for keyboard shortcuts. Like, I would truly be like, it has to be premiere. or has to be audition for me to use this stuff, because that's just like what's built into my brain, you know? So it's, it gets tricky when you don't have those, those dedicated, those could come though, right?

Like, we've seen Adobe push pretty hard on iOS and then, you know, Android typically legs behind. But like those apps are coming. It's just a matter of when. I think we're probably still several years off from them. But I would love to see that. Like I would love the idea of like, I'm traveling and I want to edit

pixelated on the go and I don't even need to use my laptop to do this. I can just like plug it into whatever and and you know be ready to open you know an Adobe app or if I switch to something else that but but yeah

I think it it does depend on which piece of software you use. Yeah I mean the only upside is and this goes back to the cohesion comments is that because of the work on Android 12L we do have a lot of application scaling that works really well with this.

So a lot of apps that I thought wouldn't work and would be terrible. I'm actually not bad. I know that we still need a lot of work with Android tablet applications, but most of the time these are going to be Android tablet apps that are running on your screen. But for the most part,

if you want to play around with it, I highly suggest doing so. If you like me and you're a Balatro addict, go for it because it runs like a dream. I mean, it can run on a calculator. I think I've said it multiple times already. It can run on anything. It could probably run on a smart watch.

and I actually would like to see that. I was going to say, I want to see like a Ti-I-84 running Boulatry. Actually, that is where I want to play Boulatro. Well, maybe someone out there can get in contact with us and put that into reality. That would be amazing. Like, there is, there is a lot of,

there is a lot of, like, more modest changes in QPR one. I think most of them definitely pertain to cosmetic changes. Usability-wise, there isn't anything drastic. Like desktop mode is probably the biggest, cute quick settings. There are some big changes to how wallpaper and style works, but for the most part,

you are mostly getting quality of life changes, a bit of a visual overhaul, and I think that kind of is the best way that Google could have done it. It's the best way that they could have done this update because it's not going to just throw the baby out with the bathwater, as it were.

You're not changing things for the sake of it. It just feels like they've done things in the right way. Yeah, there's no performance bomb. There's no performance penalty, rather, from material to expressive. No. I think in comparison, again, liquid glass is, I'm running it on an older device, and it has a pretty big performance penalty. It feels.

So I think that's going into this seat, going into this upcoming fall and OS series season, which at Google went first. I think that's going to be something that people talk about. out and I don't think with Android, even on the, all the, much older devices, I think it's going to be fine. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know anyone who's run it on anything less than a pixel seven so far. I know that it is available for Pixel 6, but I don't know anyone who's running in it on

pixel 6 personally. But if you do, please let us know because I want to see how it runs on Pixel 6. I imagine it would be absolutely fine. But if you've had a Pixel 6, you've seen the full gamut. bit of material you right to where we are today. It's quite a big, I don't want to say drastic. visually, it can seem drastic at times. Like, for me, the biggest one is that is a new system font. Like, I want to ask, I wanted to ask you guys, what do you think of the new system font? Do you think it's a good change or a bad change? Because initially, I don't know if I

agreed with it. To be honest with you, I, I, um, I think I noticed it the first day and immediately just, I was like, oh yeah, new font, right? And then like, like, for me, it was, it's not in my eyes it was not a particularly extreme change from what was there and i've always kind of liked google's font choices to be honest like i i think they have you know they have switched fonts several times uh since i started using android with i think gingerbread and like you know it's or proeo maybe and and so like it's not like i haven't seen this changes before but i don't know it just looks clean and pretty easily uh readable to me and yeah I've been, I'm struggling to think of a thing about, um, about material three expressive that I,

that I don't like. Like it, it, it really does feel, um, even like I liked Android 12 and I liked material you, but obviously that was such a, an unfinished update and, and one that was, I think, really polished out with Android, you know, over the 12 months and then Android 13. And like, that doesn't feel like that here? This feels like the Android 13 update where it's kind of already cohesive and gelling together with the exception of the fact

that we're still like having the app updates rollout. Yeah, on that note, let's talk about what Material Tree Expressive looks like on apps, specifically Google's apps, which by the time Android 16QPR1 is rolling out,

I'd say the vast majority, with some standouts have been updated, like your basics. So how do we feel about material-expressive in apps? Because while again I praise it on the OS and thinks it's a cohesive experience, I think the apps thing is a more mixed bag that betrays, like how Android apps within Google work, how the team's approach. It's not a centralized team or anything like that.

There's nothing I actively hate. I like some of the modernizations, like something called the search app bar, where the search bar at the top of your screen is no longer full width, it's narrowed with the hamburger button and the account profile switcher outside of it. Like most workspace apps have that right now. I like that modernization.

I like how good keep walking. but it's a new, new color paint, but nothing has drastically changed, which I guess you could say that about the OS. But at the same time, while the OS feels expressive to me, I don't feel that in apps. Yeah, it's a strange one because, like, most, to be, to be quite honest with you, I don't use tons and tons of first-part applications beyond, like, the dialer, and messages here and there. But I agree with you.

Functionally, there is no change. I think some of the little changes do feel nice. Okay, the biggest updates are Google Messages and Google Phone. Those are the biggest, most comprehensive updates you've had so far. And I like the phone app. I like messages. Yeah, the phone app is the best, I would say, or at least the one that feels like the biggest change

and I think needed it the most, right? Like I think it kind of needed to feel a little bit fresher compared to the rest of the apps versus like, I don't know, like, Gmail's got that like big green archive thing now when you swipe a message away, which is nice. But that's kind of. It's expressive. It's expressive. Yeah. Like it's not a bad update, but it's kind of, or like Google Drive is like very similar to what was there before. Just like kind of slightly different icon shapes.

You know, it, I wouldn't, I wouldn't say there's anything I've spotted in these apps that I, that I actively. dislike, but some of them, obviously, again, Drive is like, did it update? Oh, I guess it did update. Okay. You know, it's like, you're looking at it. You're like, it's like playing spot the difference in a couple of these versus, versus more, you know, cohesive reimagining like the phone app. Do we think that's a good thing, though, that they haven't gone whole hog on some of the updates for certain applications? Because you could see backlash a little bit like Apple saw with, for instance, Is it their gallery of photos? Photos.

Like I know that, are they rolling that back right now? Yes, there's a bunch of, like, they're bringing back a bunch of different things in iOS 26 that were, that were, like, removed or, like, reformating it. And I've never been an Apple Photos person, obviously, but, yeah, they really wrecked that app with last year's update and have clearly been trying to pull up back. And I don't see anything like that here where if the biggest accusation you can throw at Google is that they maybe played it a little too safe. I think that's fine because, you know, at the end of the day,

I want Gmail to look pretty, but I also am opening it to respond to an email. Yeah, I don't, it functionality matters more in basically all of these apps, you know, and you can see, you know, we were talking about like My Pixel, right? Like I feel like they embrace it a little bit more in something like that where you were not opening it to get a task done. You're opening it to explore the phone or something.

And so they can be a little bit more free. with how they display information as opposed to, again, you know, something like Gmail where it's, you need to know where all of your email commands are. Yeah, I just, like, I, I appreciate that. I just don't think there was no point trying to reinvent the wheel.

If any broke it on fits, right? Exactly. If you're just going to add a fresh coat of paint, absolutely fine. That if it doesn't affect the functionality, and like you say, there's apps that take advantage of that that maybe people haven't seen before,

haven't existed. Go all out. Like, that's great. Go for it. I'm very interested to see what Google does with widgets because I think that's one of the biggest things, the biggest problems I think I have with material three expressive so far is a lot of the widgets are just, I mean,

they're hung over from material you design. Yeah. I'm having to use a third-party application at the moment. If anyone gets this, check this out, if this is a plug for an application, I think it might be free as well at this point in time. I think it's called M3 Expressive Widgets. It's about 300 or so, genuinely like 300 or so widgets

I've been using my home screen and it kind of like a really nice third-party widget application that ties everything together it like makes your home screen look a bit cooler, a bit nicer. But the most part, yeah, I guess there's some sort of like, I would describe it, you kind of, you want them to go all out on this but at the same time, like we're saying, with functionality, just don't throw that away because you can really alienate your user base by trying to change things for the sake of it.

And I like the fact that certain things are going to be slowly updated over time because, I mean, Google has so many users of, like you say, applications like Gmail, what is it, the world's biggest email platform? You could potentially piss off a lot of people very easily without making any changes, let alone making big wholesale changes. but all the little tiny accent in. I love all those accents in any way. I love that stuff.

Yeah, credit works due. I'm not going to be critical of the app so far. I like the new call screen for the dialer. And it looks awesome. I don't know how you guys feel about the simplified, no-contacts option in there. It's just a keypad, and that's hidden in that hamburger menu.

How do you feel about that? So I think that oversimplifies that. I will criticize that option. I think I'm I do I am a scrawler I do I do agree that that's my default behavior versus search but search is always there and I think have we used favorites so you can pin that at the top yeah but yeah that's phone being the most comprehensive messages it's more of a re-skin for messages But yeah, just looking at these other laps, like speaking of photos, they change some stuff up,

but I guess that's material tree expressive, but it kind of feels like they are on their own roadmap for updating, modernizing their own thing. So it's not exclusively, I don't think you can exclusively tie to this. But yeah, I think the point to what you said was that it's going, we're already seeing more material tree after this. expressive after the initial wave of stuff. I think Gmail is still adding more stuff versus what's already rolled out to people. So it will be a process. And I think as more and more screens updated

were in this for the long haul, but I guess the thing, the credit you can say about look at glass is that their overall is comprehensive on day one. And I'm somewhat envious of that and that everything rolled out one update versus with the Play Store updates and then plus server side, it's been a process cataloging all these things. But it's nice that Google hit most of it by the time that the stable release is rolling out. So there's that. Which is another big change from Material U because I remember, you know, Material U was still rolling out to Amazon like December of 2021. Like maybe even into 2022, like there were, there were applications that were not

ready at launch for that. And to be fair, again, that whole operating system was kind of not ready for launch. But that felt very much like the beta period extended into full launch. And, you know, that's not here this time. Like Google has learned over those four years to like, nope, we've got it ready now. Like maybe Android 15 was a little bit more of a safe update than you would have expected, but it's probably because they were getting this ready.

And I think they kind of crushed it. Yeah, I cannot agree more, really. I think, yeah, it's nice as well to finally get a device with an operating system that looks inherently different. So you buy the new device, it has a brand new operating system on it that looks different from the previous version. I think that's something that we've all been critical of over the past few years. I think Android 16 even as short a time ago as June definitely felt like Android 12.7 or something like that.

Yeah, yeah. 12.5, it definitely felt like that. Like that was the end of that road and it's like, fine. We basically now need to start renovating properly. We've put the framework in there. And I, yeah, I think it's a really good update. I've seen a little bit of performance uptick on my pixel 9 Pro Excel, which is now becoming a test device. it feels a bit snappier.

I don't know. It could be, it's always placebo with these things, right? You always think, oh my God, my phone is so much smoother now. And it could just be the extra animation frames.

It just always looks really good when you get a brand new update. But yeah, I want to, I want to see how other OEMs react to this now because we're going to have this weird fragmentation of design languages now, right? Where if Chinese OEMs go down the liquid glass route, yet if we're going to use Google applications

on those devices, it's going to feel really an odd, with each other, right? So I'm fascinated to see what that goes. Yeah, the biggest question is what Samsung does here. Yeah. Are they still doing the one UI thing of like that big header with empty space to push content

down? It's I mean, we're still waiting for one UI 8 to roll out Android 16. Android 16? Yeah, 16? Yeah, it is 16. It will envelop all of these changes from KPR though I do believe. I'm not sure. So all the under the hood stuff will be there.

But yeah, I don't know. I think that at least we have to wait until nine before we start to see if, how they'm doing M3E in any way. Yeah, probably. But it's going to be a really interesting period of time now because, like I say, there was a lot of brands that did adopt Material You. Some of them are definitely going to go down that Apple route again. And we're going to have this real weird change. Yeah, fast material for expressive.

And you know what? Liquid glass and Material 3 expressive are not going to... Those things are going to clash. They don't bother. So, oh, Samsung, please don't. Please, like, because, like, even if they, like, half embraced, like, if they were like, oh, we've got, you know, whatever, water, class, I don't know, I'm trying to think of another way to say open glass.

You know, we've got this new design language to, like, you're going to be. going to open up those Google apps and you're going to feel that level of, of, um, I can't think of the word I'm looking for it. Yeah, exactly. That, that, that, that, that we've been talking about over the last few weeks where it's like, oh, like, these do not mesh together at all. And, and so hopefully Samsung, like, at least kind of, they can put their own Samsung twist on it, but I, I hope that they, they steer in the direction of, like, what Google's been doing. And, or come up with their own thing. I'm fine with that, too. I just, I just don't want to see them be like, well, Apple did this thing that nobody likes to know we have to do it.

which they are hit or miss on. They do not always follow in Apple's footsteps as much as some people will try to throw it. Sometimes they do, but sometimes they do not. Yeah, I don't think they've been as bad in the past few years. And I mean, I guess they have, like, we're three months out probably from the,

from the Galaxy S-26 Ultra, so, and the Galaxy's 26th series. We'll probably know then, well, know by then. Four months. You can't say it for four months. God. I was going to say, and I think that it would probably,

probably is a really good note to leave it on. So I want to thank, thanks for joining me talking about something that I'm really passionate about. Hopefully, if you haven't already seen my deep dive, please go check it out. It's a labor of love at this point. It's linked to the show notes for sure. Yeah, it's a labor of love. It's around about 30 minutes of so. You can see every single individual change that we spotted. There may be some things that I might miss out. Hopefully not this time. Sometimes things do slip past, but it is, it is a pretty massive update compared to previous ones. So this has been a fun one to dive into. And really fun to talk to you guys about it as well.

I always love talking. I love talking with you guys anyway, but this is just like my bread and butter, as it were. I mean, I feel like I'm in my element, and hopefully that came across from you guys listening out there. But thanks for listening. As always, this is pixelated. If you haven't as well,

please go check out Will's latest podcast with the guys from Nomad. I have had a brief listen, and I'm going to go listening to it very shortly after we stop recording here, and I implore you to do the same. Thanks, guys. I got them to, at the very, end of the show, I got them to tease something they're working on. So you got to listen to the end. Yeah. Amazing. Amazing. And we will have some, we will have some MagSafe stuff as well

in the next couple of weeks. I haven't been able to test any because of this down update. But yeah, we will have some stuff we'll be testing that out because I think a lot of people will be asking, oh, what MagSafe stuff are you using? And I don't have an answer for anyone just yet. But yeah, thanks guys. And I'll speak to you soon. Bye. Bye.