Last Updated: December 2nd, 2013
Besides a bevy of new features, Android's update to 4.4 brought forth a ton of tweaks to the interface through GEL launcher and a fresh round of updated stock apps. There's little doubt Android's user experience and overall design paradigms are continuing to evolve, becoming more refined, usable, and useful. We covered most of the changes to the interface in Getting to Know Android but, as with any major update, new changes come with new opportunities for error.
There are plenty of incongruences, inconsistencies, and lingering design problems in Android 4.4, and just like previous entries in the Stock Android Isn't Perfect series, we'll be running through those of note.
This time around, we'll segment the post into a few categories, starting with an overview of what's been fixed since the last SAIP, and continuing on to remaining (or new) issues from high-level to fine-grained. Before we get started though, I should emphasize that SAIP - like GTKA - is a living document - there are bound to be things big or small that have as yet gone unnoticed, so should we learn of anything else, we'll be sure to discuss it as it pops up.
Fixes and Updates Before getting into the nitty-gritty of what's problematic in Android 4.4, we should take a quick look at some of the things that have been updated, fixed, changed, or not changed since our last Stock Android... post. Our last post covered Android 4.2, so a few of the things mentioned in that post were wiped clean in Android 4.3. In the interest of word economy, we won't discuss those (changes like Google Maps' overhaul, etc), but there's still plenty of ground to cover.
Fixed: Back Button Is No Longer Missing Two Pixels The back button may still be a little confusing (we'll talk about that in a moment), but it is at long last fixed visually. The two pixels missing in previous versions of Android have finally been filled in.
Recent Apps Switcher Last time, we discussed the fact that the recent app switcher had at least been partially fixed, displaying a screenshot thumnail of the last activity you were doing, while in some cases displaying an icon and app name for the app that referred you to that activity rather than the app you were actually viewing. For example, if you searched in Chrome for a video, and got a link that popped you into the YouTube app, the app switcher would show Chrome's name and icon, but a screenshot from YouTube.
In reality, this makes sense because if you go to that switcher entry (in this case labeled Chrome) and press the back button, you'll jump back over to Chrome. It wouldn't make sense for Android to tell you you were in YouTube from a UX perspective, because if you go back to what you think is purely a YouTube instance and hit back only to go to Chrome, you'll be popping a marble into the "negative" UX jar.
Not Fixed (At All): Settings Shortcuts Settings shortcuts, as discussed in SAIP 4.2, didn't spawn recent apps entries, so navigating back to the setting you were fiddling with isn't possible with the switcher. They also lacked upward navigation, so you couldn't get to other settings from the shortcut you'd opened. In some way, this made sense, since you weren't actually opening the full settings app, but it was hugely inconvenient. Sadly, neither of these things has been resolved in 4.4. With the Quick Settings panel firmly established as a staple of Android's overall interface, this behavior only becomes more problematic.
Kind Of Fixed: Camera Controls and the Transparent Thumb The camera controls are thankfully no longer a circle with settings hiding underneath your worldly, visible, opaque thumb. Now they are broad arcs that appear above your thumb. This is better, but it is still far from perfect. The way the settings work is this: a long press brings up an arc with settings. Entries with secondary options can be swiped over, bringing another - higher - arc up above that.
The problem here is that navigating up these settings is kind of like climbing a tree - it's much easier to get up than it is to get down. Other than simply letting go, there's no option to get down or out of these settings besides continuing an already-too-long swipe gesture. If you do choose to just let go, your finger had better be over the desired setting, because whatever you end up on will be selected when you lift your finger. Besides causing uncertainty, the camera's upward-climbing menu interface can be forced off the screen, as shown below.
Of course, you can always tap the circle to the right of the shutter release, but that still segments the settings interface awkwardly into arcs. Plus, there's the fact that the control ring is off-center with its touch highlight.
One remaining gripe with the camera app is that - as DP Review pointed out in their review - the viewfinder actually shows a cropped version of the photo you'll actually get. This makes some sense since the phone's display and the final image have different aspect ratios, and a full-screen viewfinder is prettier than having letterboxes, but I can't help but feel there's a more elegant solution to this design problem.
Not Fixed: Widget Picker and Horizontal Pagination In short, the widget picker is still a horizontally-scrolling tile-based list view. For many people, widgets are one of the huge benefits to Android. They provide quick, at-a-glance access to information, and look pretty besides. Keeping this in mind, it would make sense to have an easy way to browse through your ever-growing selection. The current widget picker is not easy. There's no easy way to accelerate your journey through the list and no heuristic scrolling (a la the giant letter tabs that come up with scroll bars like in the People app).
Similarly, the app drawer is still horizontal. A simple way to zoom through apps and find the one you want would be a great convenience for those with lots of apps.
Kind Of Fixed: The Lock Screen's Weird Nav Bar I say "kind of" fixed for this one because the arrow discussed last time (which persisted if a user pulled up a keyboard and then locked the screen) is no longer visible to the user. The remaining issue is with the notification shade. If you pull it down while on the lock screen, you get a back and home button. The home button does nothing (for obvious reasons) but the back button at least raises the notification shade back up.
Not Fixed: The "Timer" Voice Action Sets An Alarm Sadly, though the clock app still explicitly contains a timer, Google Search will set an alarm rather than trigger a real timer in the appropriate app.
Not fixed: Gallery Can't Decide Whether it Needs a Status Bar
As discussed last time, opening the gallery from the camera puts you into a gallery view with no status bar, while opening it from its launcher icon gives you a status bar. The answer to this in KitKat is to swipe down to exit this partially immersive mode, but that seems messy - the gallery should either open in immersive mode all the time, or with a status bar all the time.
Speaking of the gallery, Rehan brought up another issue in the comments below. If you swipe left to a photo from the camera app, you'll get an image with black letterboxes, but if you access the same image from the gallery by hitting its launcher icon, the letterboxes are gray. Why?
Not Fixed: Google's Square Icons Google has an issue with icon sizes. In some respect, I can understand why icon heights for all Google apps aren't the same - after all, each product has its own brand identity and language, some have drop shadows (of varying sizes), and there's no rule that icons have to be a certain maximum height. What's strange though is that Google's square icons (Search, Settings, and Google+) still aren't all the same size. They are all based on the same block, have roughly the same visual elements, but they're still not equal sizes. Why?
Fixed: Adding a Word to the Dictionary Google's keyboard now lets you add a word to the dictionary with a simple two tap process. No more dialog popup!
YouTube No Longer Breaks Auto Rotation These days, finishing a video in landscape on YouTube keeps you in landscape as long as you wish, switching to the page-with-tiny-video-in-the-corner layout.
Broad Strokes Cards - Do They Really Foster Consistency? Many stock Android apps (most famously the Play suite) have moved to card-based interfaces, or UIs that integrate cards in one way or another. Cards - at first glance - seem to foster a certain consistency of interface, and are meant primarily to offer a heuristic interface element for recognizing how content is divided and organized, as well as providing information about what content you are actually looking at. The issue is that, for all of their visual finesse, cards can be kind of a wreck in terms of consistency.
Let's look at three examples:
These cards are all part of a visual hierarchy, and communicate certain key information, but they are inconsistent with one another. How users can interact with cards, what information they can expect to see there, what will happen if they hit the overflow button, and how/whether they can get rid of them are all different among many of the apps in which they appear.
The quick, at-a-glance understanding of what cards do and what can be done with them flies out the window, as users have to learn about specific instances in specific apps with specific implementations rather than having one knowledge set that helps them understand all cards. Perhaps the visual appeal of cards, in the minds of those designing with them, outweighs the fact that they suggest a consistency of interface that just isn't there, but in my mind, such a prominent UI element should have some basic rules across apps.
Touch Targets With ever-increasing phone sizes, the ever-decreasing size of certain touch targets is almost understandable. But even on the Nexus 5's ample 4.95" display, it's clear that some targets are simply undersized. So much so that they are hard to press, or don't make sense as touch targets to users. This problem happened in the Play Store with buttons like "see more," but it was remedied by making a full-width rectangle the actual touch target for the button. This seems inelegant, as the delineation of a button should serve the purpose of telling the user that's what they press, not the whole row, title and all.
That being said, there are plenty of other examples. Information buttons in the dialer app, overflow menus on cards for Play content, and a button that perhaps hit the shrink ray unintentionally - the "up" navigation when searching in the clock app.
Are We Ditching Holo Blue or Not? One of the major design points of KitKat is the move toward white iconography and white action highlights. The white icons, as one Googler told us, make sense for the transparent bars, and provide a better overall experience. What's confusing though is why almost everything has been switched to white when there's still plenty of holo blue hanging around. Good old #33B5E5 can be found in settings toggles, the recent app switcher, the camera app, the end of albums in the gallery app, and the "settings>about phone>status" screen, among other places. Perhaps most oddly, checkboxes in the settings menu have gray assets for when they're touched, but are otherwise blue. DAE #BEBEBE?
