The Beautiful Design Summer 2014 Collection on Google Play

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It’s that time again! Last summer, we published the first Beautiful Design collection on Google Play, and updated it in the winter with a fresh set of beautifully crafted apps.
Since then, developers have been hard at work updating their existing apps with new design ideas, and many new apps targeted to phones and tablets have launched on Google Play sporting exquisite detail in their UIs. Some apps are even starting to incorporate elements from material design, which is great to see. We’re on the lookout for even more material design concepts applied across the Google Play ecosystem!
Today, we're refreshing the Beautiful Design collection with our latest favorite specimens of delightful design from Google Play. As a reminder, the goal of this collection is to highlight beautiful apps with masterfully crafted design details such as beautiful presentation of photos, crisp and meaningful layout and typography, and delightful yet intuitive gestures and transitions.
The newly updated Beautiful Design Summer 2014 collection includes:

Flight Track 5, whose gorgeously detailed flight info, full of maps and interactive charts, stylishly keeps you in the know.

Oyster, a book-reading app whose clean, focused reading experience and delightful discovery makes it a joy to take your library with you, wherever you go.

Gogobot, an app whose bright colors and big images make exploring your next city delightful and fun.

Lumosity, Vivino, FIFA, Duolingo,SeriesGuide, Spotify, Runtastic,Yahoo News Digest… each with delightful design details.

Airbnb, a veteran of the collection from this past winter, remains as they continue to finesse their app.

If you’re an Android designer or developer, make sure to play with some of these apps to get a sense for the types of design details that can separate good apps from great ones. And remember to review the material design spec for ideas on how to design your next beautiful Android app!.

Allthecooks on Android Wear

The best cooking companion since the apron?

Android Wear is designed for serving up useful information at just the right time and in the right place. A neat example of this isAllthecooks Recipes. It gives you the right recipe, right when you need it.

This app is a great illustration of the four creative visions for Android Wear:

1. Launched automatically
2. Glanceable
3. Suggest and demand
4. Zero or low interaction

Allthecooks also shows what developers can do by combining both the power of the mobile device and the convenience of Android Wear.

Pick the best tool for the job

One particularly well-designed aspect of Allthecooks is their approach to the multi-device experience. Allthecooks lets the user search and browse the different recipes on their Android phone or tablet. When the user is ready, there is a clearly labelled blue action link to send the recipe to the watch.

The integration is natural. Using the on-screen keyboard and the larger screen real estate, Allthecooks is using the best screen to browse through the recipes. On the wearables side, the recipe is synchronised by using the DataApi and is launched automatically, fulfilling one of the key creative visions for Android Wear.

The end result? The mobile / Wear integration is seamless.

Thoughtful navigation

Once the recipe has been sent to the Android Wear device, Allthecooks splits the steps into easily glanceable pages. At the end of that list of steps, it allows the user to jump back to the beginning with a clearly marked button.

   

This means if you would like to browse through the steps before starting to cook, you can effortlessly get to the beginning again without swiping through all the pages. This is a great example of two other points in the vision: glanceable and zero or low interaction.

A great (cooking) assistant

One of the key ingredients of great cooking is timing, and Allthecooks is always on hand to do all the inputs for you when you are ready to start the clock. A simple tap on the blue “1” and Allthecooks will automatically set the timer to one hour. It is a gentle suggestion that Allthecooks can set the timer for you if you want.

 

Alternatively, if you want to use your egg timer, why not? It is a small detail but it really demonstrates the last and final element of Android Wear’s vision of suggest and demand. It is an ever ready assistant when the user wants it. At the same time, it is respectful and does not force the user to go down a route that the user does not want.

It’s about the details

Great design is about being user-centric and paying attention to details. Allthecooks could have just shrunk their mobile app for wear. Instead the Allthecooks team put a lot of thoughts into the design and leveraged all four points of the Android Wear creative vision. The end result is that the user can get the best experience out of both their Android mobile device and their Android Wear device. So developers, what will you be cooking next on Android Wear?

For more inspiring Android Wear user experiences, check out the Android Wear collection on Google Play!

Nexus 6: Android 5.0 L and specs confirmed

Following the many rumors detailing the 5.9-inch Motorola Nexus 6 (also known as the Nexus X or its codename, “Shamu”) smartphone, Android Police managed to confirm the existence of the handset, and many of its characteristics, providing more details about the device in the process, including a mockup image supposedly based on the phone’s design (available below).

FROM EARLIER: Leaked pic may show us just how massive the Nexus 6 will really be

According to the publication, the Shamu will be called Nexus 6 – not Nexus X as the more recent rumors suggested – and will run Android 5.0 L out of the box. Android Police is apparently able to confirm that with Android L, Google is moving to Android 5.0, something that was also previously rumored.

The Nexus 6 is based on the Moto X, although some design variations are expected, such as black front-facing stereo speakers and lower placements for the power and volume buttons.

When it comes to specs, Android Police says the phone packs a 5.9-inch QHD display with 496 pixel per inch (ppi), a 13-megapixel camera with optical image stabilization (OIS) and a dual-flash ring, a 2-megapixel front-facing camera and a 3,200 mAh battery with fast-charging technology.

As for Android L’ user interface, it appears the Nexus 6 will feature several changes, such as “revamped” icons for the dialer, Play Store and Gmail, “tweaked” icons for Maps and Google, a Drive apps folder, and a special “messaging” app.

Android Police says it hasn’t seen any proof to confirm the existence of a smaller version of the new Nexus phablet yet, in spite of what recent rumors have said. It’s not clear whether Google is working on such a device, or whether it’ll keep the Nexus 5 in stock for one more year.

Android Police’s Nexus 6 mockup follows below.