14 DAY TRIAL // Over the past few months, Mountain View-based Internet giant Google has been rumored to be working on a major redesign for its Android operating system and on refreshed UIs for its mobile applications, and it appears that the Google Play Store will be one of the mobile clients to receive this makeover.
Said major change in look for Google’s mobile apps was said to be called Material Design, and new info that has emerged over at Android Police provides us with a glimpse of what the upcoming app refresh will look like.
At the moment, the new Play store for Android application is only in a pre-release state, but the UI changes mentioned above are quite visible on it.
However, as the aforementioned news site notes, changes are that the final version of the application will actually look completely different from that.
In fact, it appears that the only thing that has been changed when compared to the current flavor of the application would be the content listings.
Even so, the visual tweaks performed to the application already confirm that the upcoming iteration will fall in line with the aforementioned Material Design guidelines. The application’s content listings have been modified to put content at the front.
As can be seen in the leaked screenshots with the new application iteration, users will enjoy more immersive and colorful listings, with hero images displayed in some cases.
However, while apps and games will display hero images and promo videos, movies will use trailers, and books and magazines will show an expanded header, Android Police explains.
When it comes to movies, for example, the demo screen will look similar to what was showed at Google I/O, but will display a lot more info than before.
Apparently, Google will change more than just the initial view of each screen, with additional white space, better used typography, and a full-screen view for the content description. Other changes will involve a mode colorful reviews section, which will also have new iconography at the bottom.
As it turns out, users will also be able to interact differently with the content listings. The Play Store will include a row below the review section, as well as wishlist and Google+ buttons, while also providing users with info on how many people have “+’d” an item.
As mentioned above, the UI changes spotted in these screenshots are not final, and the final app iteration might look completely different from that. No info on when these changes will start rolling out has been provided as of now, but chances are that we’ll see them arriving sometime this fall, along with Android L.
