Will Android Ever Look as Good as iOS?

In May 2025, Google released the beta of Android 16 with Material 3 Expressive. The design language is more animated, more colorful, and — according to internal testing Google cited — helps users find key interface elements four times faster. People over 45 performed as quickly as younger users. If accurate, these are significant numbers.

And yet, the honest assessment is: we've seen this before. Three times, in fact.

The history of Android design systems

2014: Material Design 1

Android 5 (Lollipop) and the original Material Design were genuinely exciting. The design concepts shown at Google I/O — layered cards, meaningful motion, a coherent system of elevation and shadow — felt like a complete rethink. The Google Play Music app at the time, preinstalled on Android 5 devices, barely resembled the concept shown on stage.

Material Design became influential beyond Android. React and Tailwind CSS incorporated its ideas. Third-party apps that implemented it fully — Solid Explorer, ViMusic — became examples of what Android could look like. But the major players (social platforms, banks, carriers) never implemented it with that level of fidelity, and the OEMs shipped their own skins on top.

2018: Material Design 2

Even within design circles, Material Design 2 is largely forgotten. It moved toward brighter colors, larger rounded corners, and reduced use of shadows. Cosmetic changes. Few developers updated their apps; fewer users noticed.

2021: Material You (Material 3)

Material You introduced dynamic color — the system derives a palette from the user's wallpaper and applies it across the OS and apps. It was announced with the Pixel 6 in 2021 and was the most personal design system Google had shipped.

Four years later: Google's own apps implement it inconsistently. Google Fit and Google Classroom still run Material 2 designs. Google Maps, Meet, and Translate updated to Material 3 years after the announcement, not months. Third-party apps and OEM skins followed their own timelines.

Why Android design systems don't converge

The underlying issue isn't Google's design quality — the concepts are consistently strong. The problem is Android's distribution model.

Roughly 70% of Android devices are budget and mid-range hardware, predominantly from Chinese manufacturers: Samsung, Xiaomi, OPPO, Vivo, Realme. Each ships with a custom launcher and UI skin. Those skins have their own visual identity, their own design decisions, and their own update cycles — often lagging Android releases by months or years.

Apps that implement Google's design system look out of place on these devices, because the surrounding OS doesn't match. The design pressure runs in both directions: OEMs borrow aesthetic elements from iOS (rounded icons, translucency, bottom navigation) because that's what their users associate with a premium experience.

What Material 3 Expressive actually changes

The specific claims Google made for Material 3 Expressive are more concrete than previous announcements. A 4× improvement in key element findability — if substantiated externally — is a meaningful usability improvement, not just an aesthetic refresh.

Whether it propagates through the ecosystem is a separate question. Based on historical precedent:

• Google's own apps will update within 1–2 years
• Major third-party apps will update within 2–4 years, some never
• OEM skins will incorporate some visual elements on their own timeline, which is not Google's timeline
• Budget devices sold in 2025 will run a launcher skin that doesn't reflect Material 3 Expressive

The practical implication for app development

For teams building Android apps, the question isn't whether to use Material 3 — using the current design system is the right baseline. The question is whether to invest in dynamic color, expressive animations, and Expressive-specific components knowing that many of your users will see them on a device whose OS skin overrides or ignores them.

The answer depends heavily on the target market. Apps targeting Pixel users, users in markets where stock Android is common, or users who have explicitly chosen stock-Android devices benefit from deeper Material 3 implementation. Apps targeting the global mass market — where Samsung One UI and MIUI dominate — will find the return on that investment lower.