Android 5.0 Lollipop is the biggest overhaul to Android since at least the release of Jelly Bean and might even be the biggest Android design overhaul ever. Business Insider has scored an interview with Hiroshi Lockheimer, who serves as Android’s vice president of engineering and who explains the reason that Google decided to give Android such an extreme makeover with Lollipop.
In the first place, Lockheimer explains that Google has been planning to do a Material Design-like overhaul of Android for years now but he says that company had to make sure to take its time and get all the major design elements in place before making the switch.
“It’s been a multi year process,” he says of Material Design. “One of the things we do at Google in general, but also at the Android team, is iterate. Focusing on the user interface has been an area we knew we wanted to iterate on for a long time. We did the first major UI overhaul with Gingerbread and Honeycomb back in those days and we’ve been planning for something like Material Design since then. It took a while to get the designs right. We wanted to perfect it.”
In addition to talking about Material Design, Lockheimer also details why Android decided to start supporting 64-bit architecture with Lollipop, how switching Android’s runtime has helped make the OS much smoother, and how new Android boss Sundar Pichai has influenced the development of Lollipop. LINK
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