Mishaal Rahman / Android Authority
long story short
- Google may change the design of status bar icons in Android 15.
- The design of these status bar icons hasn’t changed in a long time.
- The new OS may also add haptic feedback in quick settings and volume panels.
Thanks to the first two developer previews, we already have a good idea of what new features the upcoming Android 15 update may bring. While Android 15 is likely to bring many new, useful features, it’s unlikely to bring major UI changes. But that’s not to say there won’t be any changes to the UI, as we’ve previously reported that Android 15 may feature an improved volume panel. Additionally, we can now report that Google is working on improving status bar icons and adding haptic feedback to more parts of the system.
The status bar is one of the most recognizable parts of the Android operating system, and its design hasn’t changed significantly over the years. It is a UI element at the top of the screen that displays icons for various information. While the placement of some status bar elements has changed over the years to accommodate changes in phone design, the basic design of most status bar icons has not changed over the years. If you can believe it, the Wi-Fi signal strength, mobile data signal strength, and battery icons in Android 14 look very, very similar to the icons in Android 5.0 Lollipop, which was released in 2014.
Android 5.0 was the first version of Google’s Material Design language, which means the icon designs we see today in Android 14 are based on older versions of Google’s design language. We’re now in the third major iteration of Google’s design language with the launch of Material You in Android 12, but the status bar icons haven’t changed much since the launch of Material You, aside from Android 10 bringing outline borders to the screen outside. icon.
With the upcoming Android 15 update, some status bar icons may once again adopt a segmented design, reminiscent of the pre-Android 5.0 era. Additionally, the battery’s status bar icon could finally support displaying the current battery level inside the icon instead of to the right. The following screenshot shows the new status bar icon design for Wi-Fi signal strength, mobile data signal strength, and battery in light and dark modes in Android 15.
The charging chip that appears when the device is plugged in for charging is also updated, as shown below.
However, you can turn it off if you don’t like the battery power. This is what it looks like in dark and light modes:
Tactile feedback has also been updated
In addition to these new icons, Android 15 may also add some haptic feedback to the quick settings panel. When you long-press on a Quick Settings tile (for example, Bluetooth), your phone will vibrate slightly as the tile expands to open the relevant settings page.
Finally, Android 15 will soon also add some haptic feedback to the volume slider that appears when either volume key is pressed. There will be some haptic feedback when moving the slider to adjust the level of the current volume stream, just like there is now when adjusting the brightness level using the slider in the Quick Settings panel. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to capture these tactile feedback changes on video, so you’ll just have to take my word for it.
These UI and haptic changes are not currently enabled in the public Android 15 Developer Preview 2 build, so I had to manually enable them in this article. If Google does move forward with these changes, we might see them in the first or second public beta of Android 15. We’ll be keeping an eye out to see if these changes land, but in the meantime, let us know how you feel about these design changes in the comments!