Robert Triggs / Android Authority
I’ll admit, I’m hard to please when it comes to UI, but that might be because I’m the sort of person who secretly wishes were peering at green text and living in a world of cassette futurism. I had to invent a new word to describe my displeasure with Google’s Material 3 Expressive revamp, but it’s a bastion of sane design compared to the eyesore that was Apple’s Liquid Glass debut. Honestly, why is modern UX too often hard to get right?
But if there’s one thing worse than either of them, it’s brands copying each other’s bad choices. The revelation that Android 17 is preparing to adopt parts of Apple’s transparent aesthetic had me reaching for the sick bucket.
Do you think Android 17 is at risk of becoming too much like iOS? 1419 votes No, the new blur/glass effects aren't that big of a deal 52 % Yes, Google is taking too much Apple inspiration 48 %
Thankfully, Google’s take doesn’t appear to be as ghastly as Apple’s. The more frosted glass appearance doesn’t result in illegible transparency and blends nicely enough with Google’s existing aesthetic rather than reinventing it. But this still begs the question: why adopt aggressive transparency now, and not last year or the year before? In fact, why bother at all?
Annoyingly, the answer is the same as it’s always been — wherever Apple leads, Android soon blindly follows. The lack of originality would be depressing if it weren’t so predictable. Yet if anything, Android 17 is simply catching up with what various manufacturers have been slowly implementing into their designs since the iPhone 17’s launch last year.
Does no one have faith in their own ability to lead the UX conversation?
I’ve had the pleasure of running the OPPO Find X8 Pro as my daily driver, but since its Android 16 Color OS update, the company has snuck in more than a few sycophantic hat tips to iOS 26. The status bar now blurs rather than hides what is behind it in certain apps — hardly a major change, and I’m not going to pretend I hate it. I can abide a little bit of imitation, especially in the admittedly rarer cases where brands pinch genuinely superior ideas. Samsung’s new Quick Settings customization in OneUI 8.5 is genuinely useful, even if the aesthetic is a shameless copy-paste.
However, what I really dislike is that a variety of OPPO’s apps, though certainly not all, have now adopted iOS-inspired layouts.
I can look past the fact that the calculator is now unnecessarily glass-inspired, but the pill-shaped menus that hover over the bottom of the calendar and photos (gallery) apps are far more irritating. Besides their unsightly and overly cramped appearance, these changes throw any pretense of muscle memory out the window. There’s no real rhyme or rhythm to what each menu contains, what the small icons on the sides are for, or even where I’ll find the specific setting I’m after. Their design might look familiar, but the functionality is anyone’s guess — why is there a menu on the left in one app but on the right in the other?
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