Last year, Google unveiled its design vision for the future. Called Material Design, it incorporates bold colors, flat elements, and informative animations to create a fresh user interface for the modern age. Material Design made its major debut with the launch of Android 5.0 Lollipop in the fall, and Google has been rapidly updating its own apps and services to take advantage of the new design directives.
Google isn't the only one that's been applying Material Design ideas to its apps: plenty of third-party Android app makers have released refreshed and overhauled apps to match Google's new platform. These apps often look and feel great, and they're typically much more enjoyable to use than older Android apps thanks to their fun animations and delightful transitions.
Here are 10 Android apps that have taken advantage of Google's new tools to provide fresh takes on old ideas. (Note: if you don't yet have Android 5.0 Lollipop on your phone, you can still install and use these apps. The designs and appearances will be the same, but older phones won't support all of the animations and transitions possible with Lollipop.)
Like Inbox and Messenger, Google's own Calendar app is a brilliant example of Material Design in action. Bright colors, pleasing images, and fast and informative animations all combine to make a ...
QuickPic has been my go-to gallery app on Android for a long time because it's fast and easy to use. A recent update made it even better, with Material Design animations and integrated cloud storage ...
Once again, one of Google's own apps offers some of the best Material Design you can get. The recently released Messenger app is a straight-forward SMS and MMS app that uses Google's new design ...
Simplenote is my favorite cross-platform note taking app because it's just so fast and simple to use. A recent update to its Android app brings the Material Design you've been craving, along with a ...
Checking the weather is one of the most common things to do on your smartphone, and Weather Timeline is the prettiest way to do it on your Android device. Weather Timeline taps into the data from ...
It might be cheating to include Google's own apps in this list, but Google's Inbox is one of the best examples of Material Design in action to date, so I'd be remiss to ignore it. Inbox has ...
Cabinet was one of the first apps to apply Google's new design directives, launching even before Android Lollipop became officially available. It's a basic file browser that makes it easy to jump ...