iOS 7 Inspires Android

A few weeks back I noticed an interesting trend, the new flatter design of Apple iOS 7 has began a migration to Android Devices.

I have an HP TouchPad that I have hacked Android to run on it – WebOS is dead and gone from an app point of view. Anyway, shortly after the major app developers of iOS started to update their apps for iOS 7, an interesting thing started to show up on my Android tablet. Those same apps now look more like their iOS counterparts. The first app I noticed was Dropbox, followed by Foursquare.

I understand why this is happening – since developers don’t want to develop two different designs (perfectly understandable) they are just porting the design to Android. But the more interesting thing is I see in about an year or so, Android will pick up even more of this flat design of Apple at the operating system level. I know what you’re thinking, Android already has a flat design, which yes it does – but it’s not as flat as iOS 7 design. Android still has a skeuomorphic design – look at the icons of applications and the keyboard, they still look like the real world counterparts. But in the next version of Android I think they will follow more of the iOS Design because they will look at there app developers and the competitors and see the new trend.

I know that Google has been moving down to a more flat design in their products, just look at Google Search Today verses two years ago. So the flatting of Android Design is inevitable, along with the new design language for current and future apps on mobile devices. (Unless something so new and creative comes about in the next few months)

Have you noticed any other apps on Android moving to this design styling, if so share in the comments.

Disclaimer: I’m a big fan of Apple Products and Design Language. I have used Windows, Mac OS X, iOS and Android (Linux/Unix Also but unrelated to this article).