First of all, let's say 80% of Android apps are ugly. So many have outdated UI's. There are only handfull apps on Android that are nicely designed, which are mostly the big popular ones (Google, Twitter, etc).
Can't the Android developers give some more attention to pretty UI design and nice icons? Some icons look like some kid pasted some crappy compressed graphic into a small space. So many of icons at very low blurry resolution too.
Google really needs to do some better standards like Apple has.
Not saying you are wrong. I pulled the icons of KitKat out of the code and while most of them are the correct size of 144x144, some of them were 92x92 and some were 196x196. I don't know who approved these to go out, but they should be fired.
While iOS like to have square shaped icons for everything, it isn't necessary and I even like how Google uses different shapes (i.e the phone icon, the play store icon, etc), but they should all be the same size. (Your comment about blurry icons is do to 'old' and no longer updated apps that were built for lower resolution screens (you will find similar issues on iOS by the way.)
But your comment about a kid pasting a crappy graphic into a small space really isn't needed. I mean, you have actually looked at icons in iOS7 haven't you? Not exactly what I would call appealing. I don't know what the hell Apple was thinking??
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The issue is that Android development sucks beyond all belief. Eclipse is a poor IDE and the resource management within it is terrible. In a given project, you have 5 different folders for different asset sizes (low res, hi res, x-high, xx-high, and nondescript). Things are just messy, and it's reflected in the quality of apps.
Android development has sucked. I think that is why Google is pushing developers and giving incentives to create nicer looking apps (Timely is a very nice application in terms of UI and more image space for tablet apps). They have also added in screen recording for developers to make better quality movies to show their apps within the Play Store.
Your criticism is not unique and Google has taken it to heart in 2013. Developers have a new tool to create their apps (which allows for simultaneous previews of how their app looks at different resolutions and screen sizes) and with the upgraded runtime from Dalvik to ART, we should see much smoother graphical interfaces and quicker animations within the whole UI.
In a years time, you may have a different look on Android as an OS?
