For example when swiping up to go home or opening multitasking on the S24 vs. iPhone. When I go home by flicking up on iPhone the app window follows my finger exactly. If you flick to the right a bit the window moves in that direction as it's minimizing before settling on its original location on the home screen. It's like someone implemented physics into the OS and that my finger is the driving force behind that app minimization animation. Flick faster and the animation is more violent. Flick slowly and the animation is gentle. On Android it's like I would flick and a pre-canned animation would fire off. No physics, no personality, nothing to make the experience feel organic like I'm somehow involved in the process of going back to the home screen.
Interesting. Haven't really paid much attention with the animations (never had any major issues with it) ... in the dev settings there's ways to tweak it to your liking.
Now I did come across one video explaining how animations were pre-canned... for instance if I launched an app through a widget, I would get the same animation if I were to launch it from the dock or app launcher. But now that's been fixed.
For Android in general there is no clear design language DNA that exists throughout the different app experiences. It was a mess to be perfectly honest with you, I really didn't like it. I downloaded a bunch of the same apps I use on iOS and the design language between them was all off, like each one was made from scratch completely separate from one another. On iOS those same apps feel like they were made using the same base elements. I'm not anti Android but using the S24 for a short while really made me appreciate iOS and Apple's design guidelines/SDKs a lot more. Again, consistent text size across iOS apps really makes the experience feel polished. 1Password on Android, Chrome, Settings app, and a bunch of others all had different text and button sizes like someone hit the randomize button on window scaling for each.
Well, there is Material Design by Google... some devs adopt it whereas some don't. But when it comes down to design languages... it's predicated on the developer. For instance, Pocket Casts app design language is universally the same on both iOS and Android.
But in the case of OneUI... well, it's a skin... Samsung has their own deign language whereas Google have their own. There's going to be some clashes, but for the most part... Google have their choice in how they want to design their apps and Samsung does the same.
But the user is going to get a different app experience whenever they dive into an app in terms of design language... that's a given (goes for iOS as well). Now in regard to polish, you have a point there... but more and more I use Android, I'm feeling that gap is shrinking.
Folks think that we are still back in the TouchWiz days when iOS was far ahead in terms of fluidity and polish, but Google has made incredible work to push Android to where it is now.
Android felt like a computer with software, cold and utilitarian. iOS feels like my companion or home for interacting with the digital world, it's personable.
Cold and utilitarian? That's interesting choice of words. But you are entitled to your opinion.
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