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<p>An Android Authority team member since 2018, Hadlee is a technology journalist with almost 15 years of experience under his belt with expertise in chipsets, cameras, and niche tech brands you&#8217;ve probably never heard of.</p>


Hadlee Simons

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Mishaal Rahman / Android Authority

Material 3 Expressive Quick Settings panel in Android 16 QPR1

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If I wanted an iPhone lookalike system, I would have got an iPhone.  Generic, less options.

I used to be able to pick my colour palette for the underlying system, now I can't.

The power, WiFi and network icons now look like they have been drawn by someone with a sharpie.

I respect your audience is 20 something kids, but honestly allow the flexibility for the rest of us. 

We're losing the 'simple' design. Now everything is way more bulky and takes more space (have you seen the Gmail notifications? Instead of having the sender's icon, we now have the Gmail icon and the sender's icon that almost overlaps with the mail content, it's too much!) for nothing interesting in return. I hate it.

What i dislike with the status bar is the different font style of the 4G and 5G. Why didn't they use their new rounded something font scattered in the whole OS?

My Pixel7a staring to show it's age in battery. So having unnecessary blur and transparency effects is strong negative for me. The other things they did with colours and definitely resizable and more consistent quick settings is strong plus. So, I have very mixed feelings about the update so far.

I was happy when I heard Material 3 Expressive was coming. I thought it would give us the ability to customize things like Font and remove At a Glance, etc, but boy was I wrong. The redesigns, especially of the Phone app that has come to my device is appalling. They removed the very useful Favourites and Contacts tab and made the contrast between text and background worse. The only positive I can think of is the redesigned Quick Settings tray, but with its contrasting circlular and rectangular corners, even that was done in poor taste. 

Personally I love it because it looks better in my opinion and I can customize the size of my quick action buttons to not take up 4 pages and all be on one

I feel like it's gone back in time with the fonts &#129315; and very underwhelming after all the hype from media saying it's the update we should have had in 16 originally! maybe we're in a loop now where we will keep trying new things and then going backwards. Not noticed any difference with battery life or performance on my 8pro still crap if I use the phone. One thing i noticed is that the camera on my old google 6 has lost zoom capacity which my mum doesn't find a good point as she loved her camera on the 6 and it just doesn't perform the same at all!. Maybe a bad idea for her having auto updates if they're going to weed out older phones like apple does! 

I didn't ask for it. It doesn't make my phone run better. Unless a feature improves how a phone works there's no need for these kind of "updates". Let me customize MY phone the way that I want.

You could build your own OS and phone and do that....

Poll: What do you think of Android 16&#8217;s new Material 3 Expressive look?

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Android 16 QPR1 was recently released, bringing a new visual design. But what do you think of this Material 3 Expressive style?

Poll: What do you think of Android 16's new Material 3 Expressive look?

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Hadlee is a technology journalist with almost 15 years of experience, graduating with a national diploma in journalism from the Cape Peninsula University of Technology. He previously worked for websites in his native Cape Town, South Africa before joining the Android Authority team in 2018. Hadlee's areas of expertise include chipsets, cameras, and niche brands you haven't heard of. He spends most of his working time writing news, features, and the occasional device review. Despite his love of Android, Hadlee is a recovering Windows Phone addict and is intrigued by non-Android platforms (RIP MeeGo and BlackBerry 10). When he's not at his desk, you can find him playing on his Steam Deck, visiting local retro videogame stores, or at the beach.

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Poll: What do you think of Android 16's new Material 3 Expressive look?

How do you like the Material 3 Expressive look?

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