There are two things you can bring up that will almost instantly annoy certain diehard Android fans: The first is mentioning what a drag it is to wait so long for the latest software updates thanks to carrier and OEM constraints. The other is Samsung’s TouchWiz UI, which is to many Android fans what Jar Jar Binks is to Star Wars fans or what Nikki and Paulo were for Lost fans — that is, something that’s capable of single-handedly wrecking something they otherwise love.
RELATED: The inside story of how Google rescued Android from Samsung’s Magazine UX
Why do many Android fans dislike TouchWiz so? For a couple of important reasons. In the first place, TouchWiz often hinders Android’s performance on Samsung’s flagship smartphones, which can be surprisingly laggy given their often gaudy specifications, though some of the blame for that also goes to the insane amount of bloatware that Samsung clogs onto its devices. Second, because Samsung is by far the biggest Android vendor out there, many people assume that all Android phones offer the same kind of experience as TouchWiz-enhanced phones, which thus hurts Android’s reputation.
Now PhoneArena points us to some new leaked concept images posted at GalaxyClub.nl that indicate Samsung has a new UI in the works called Iconic UX that will hopefully be a lighter touch than TouchWiz.
“Solely judging by the accompanying images, the user interface will allow Samsung users to navigate between various UI elements by swiping up or down, thus expanding or compacting a slew of UI categories, namely the calendar, the music player, the gallery, etc,” PhoneArena writes. “All in all, it bears certain similarities with Samsung’s Magazine UX. “
For those of you who don’t recall, Magazine UX was the Samsung-designed UI that so thoroughly took over the Android home screen that Google had to angrily intervene to get Samsung to scrap it.
We’ve posted one concept image of Iconic UX below but you should really head over to GalaxyClub.nl to get the full look.
