Summary
We all have our small annoyances that seem to bother us more than everyone else. One of mine has always been Android’s incoming calls screen with Google’s Phone app. Thankfully, it appears a redesign may be on the way.
The “Phone by Google” app is the default dialer app on many Android devices, and it has a seemingly basic incoming call screen. A floating phone button appears at the bottom of the screen, which you simply swipe up to answer or swipe down to decline. However, at least for me, it’s not that simple.
My problem is the placement of the button. For some reason, I’ve always felt like there’s not enough room on the screen to swipe down far enough to decline the call. It usually takes me multiple, very deliberate attempts to do it. Maybe it’s because I typically have a case on my phone with a small lip around the edges, but that shouldn’t matter. There’s plenty of room on the screen for this to be a non-issue.
Thankfully, Google seems to be working on a new design that might give us control over how incoming calls are displayed. Last year, Google was working on separate answer and decline buttons. Then, earlier this year, it was working on a pill-shaped horizontal slider. According to strings found in a teardown of a recent APK, both UIs may be available in the app for users to choose between.
Here is what both versions of the new incoming call screen UI could look like.
AsAndroid Authoritypoints out, the separate answer and decline buttons are similar to how incoming calls look on the iPhone and Samsung Galaxy phones. The pill-shaped horizontal slider is a much more Google-y look. It’s the same way the Google Clock app displays the dismiss and snooze options for alarms.
While it’s still early days and only based on an APK teardown, I’m still very excited about the possibility of either UI. Both would be an improvement over the current swiping gesture. Unfortunately, we have no way of knowing when the change will come, though it does seem likely it will come. Personally, I’d be more surprised if Google allowed it to be a user choice rather than simply updating the app with one of the new UIs. We shall see.
