Google is building up the excitement around its upcoming event, dropping hints at the changes that are to come in the Android ecosystem. With its latest update, the company revealed Android 16’s Material 3 Expressive design language, which is set to make the interface more “fluid, personal, and glanceable.” The new OS changes won’t just be exclusive to smartphones, but will also extend to Wear OS in order to make smartwatches significantly more customizable.
From the looks of it, Material 3 Expressive for Android appears to offer a big leap forward not just for Pixel phones, but all the other smartphones that build on the Android technology. This new update capitalizes on the features introduced almost four years ago with the Material You design and presents a new layer of responsiveness to the experience of using our smartphones.
Image: Google
Understanding the Android 16 Material 3 Expressive Design Language In Greater Detail
Say what you want about Google, but the company knows a thing or two about staying relevant. The new Material 3 Expressive design language aims at creating a more vibrant, fluid, and emotionally engaging user experience through enhanced animation, typography, colors, and room for customization. There are an assortment of small changes that may not feel noteworthy on reading about it, but alter the user experience when it comes down to daily interactions with the smartphone.
Let’s break down the Android design news straight from Google.
Fluid and Springy Animation with Android 16 Material 3 Expressive
The Material 3 debut design introduces “springy” and physics-based animations to make interactions feel natural and lively. Dismissing a notification causes a subtle reaction in nearby notifications with a haptic feedback response from the action.
Similarly, dragging the notification shade or making adjustments to the volume slider are designed to reflect responsive animations and haptics that make the action feel more immersive and interactive. The animations are designed to mimic real-world physics, making the transitions smoother. There are also background blur effects in Quick Settings and Notifications which adds depth while preserving context.
More Color and Theming Options and New Shape Library
Android 16’s Material 3 Expressive builds on Material You’s dynamic color theming with bolder, richer palettes extracted from wallpapers. It offers improved contrast and readability. The customizable accent colors and app icon customization will be a big hit with users.
Google’s upcoming update includes 35 distinct shape options and shapes morphing to Material Shapes Library (Figma) and Jetpack Compose, for developers to create diverse, expressive app interfaces, and components like buttons, toolbars, and floating action bars feature updated shapes for a more modern look.
Enhanced Typography in Material 3 Expressive Design Language
There are new type styles that emphasize the information hierarchy with larger sizes, heavier weights, and improved clarity on the text. The M3 type scale has 30 font styles with 15 baselines and 15 emphasized variants. Material tokens easily define the font, line height, size, tracking, weight, and more.
Headlines and key actions are more prominent and the Material typescale is available to developers, enabling apps to feature a richer layout and improved readability.
The Upgraded UI Is What We Like Most About the Android Design News
With Material 3 Expressive design language fueling the OS, the various UI components will become more configurable with the new shape options and emphasized text. There are new components like button grounds, floating action bar menus, loading indicators, split buttons, toolbars, etc.
These accompany updated components like app bars, carousels, common buttons, icon buttons, quick action menu components, etc. The Live Updates setting makes it easier to prioritize apps that you want to track more consistently, providing glanceable, real-time progress for these apps.
Material 3 Wear OS 6 Updates
The updated design language is also being integrated into Pixel watches, and other developers who use this OS are also free to experiment and implement these changes into their own offerings. Better fluid scrolling animations that keep the round watch face in mind are expected, with UI elements like pin pads and media controls featuring more responsive motion and haptic feedback.
You can also expect system-wide color theming that syncs with the watch face, and up to 10% improved battery life through internal optimizations within the system.
Rollout and Availability of the Material 3 Expressive Design Language
We expect to learn more about the release of Material 3 Expressive during the Google I/O event but it will not be a part of the stable Android 16 release in June. The design upgrade will likely debut in the Android 16 QRP1 beta which is expected at the end of May for users in the Beta program.
A full rollout is likely for Pixel devices later in 2025, possibly with a Feature Drop or alongside the Pixel 10 series expected in August. Non-Pixel Android devices could see a more limited adoption of the software features, depending on how much of the UI elements they want to prioritize and integrate into their own.
Final Thoughts on the Android Design News
Material 3 Expressive is the result of extensive research with 48 studies that included 18,000 participants worldwide. From eye-tracking studies to focus groups, Google left no stone unturned while designing the new OS and the upgrades that could be most relevant and impactful for users. It expands significantly on Material You’s focus on user identity with deeper customization options than ever before, giving developers all the tools they need to create a truly phenomenal UI.
The Material 3 Expressive design language also caters to accessibility in its application and the changes are also optimized to avoid impacting battery life—a key consideration when you think of how all the animation and haptic effects could negatively impact the battery. Overall, we can’t wait to see how Google embraces the new OS and what changes it brings to our smartphones this year.
Subscribe to Technowize for more updates on all things technology.