Why don't more phones have a dark theme UI?

[sharon harvey]

Why are the majority of smartphones designed with white UI with no option of dark mode like old Kit Kat?

Posted via the Android Central App

 

[libra89]

I think on IPS displays, it isn't really useful unless you want the dark theme personally. Maybe they think it's safer to choose something that would work with every phone.

 

[Sam_Gs7]

Hi SharonHarv..welcome to ACapp: I support you on this issue of un-Customizable
background=Theme in Latest phones. I got a SGs7 dislike the,.Apps Messages

and Contacts-Settings,.etc. with a whiten Background screen. Wish to install
a Wallpaper app toFix that.? : Any idea posted in AC-Have good day!

 

[Aquila]

IMHO, you can blame Google for that due to their heavy push of Material Design which is about bright contrasting colors.

Material Design is about layout and interaction, not white cards. It literally makes the software seem three dimensional and provides a coherent interaction across design elements that should, by now, appear in most decent applications. Most Google apps use whites, but there's no expectation that all devs do so and dark theme design is 100% acceptable.

Material design tries to succeed making different elements feel logically interactive and somewhat tactile. So making edges that indicate how things appear in spacial relation, using light and movement in a way that makes the software feel more natural. Typography, space and color are important, but only as they direct a user in the ways that the app works. There is a point made in the guidelines about creating intentional white space, but the same can apply to intentional dark space. The intent is to make the functionality immediately obvious and give visual cues to the user for what they ought to do next. The biggest piece of material design coding is focused on motion. What things do when you touch them, how they move around and there's an emphasis on following the rules of physics, to a point. From a color standpoint, the focus is on having colors work well together and having consistency in the principles behind which types of colors are used in which .

This is the official video on the palette:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYkz0Ueg0L4

Within the style guidelines there are specifics about how to create a dark theme, including a super dark theme that looks like this:

Many apps do make use of dark themes, but many more haven't gotten the urge yet and emailing the developer to do so is a good thing to do. From a design standpoint, it's not that difficult to implement a dark mode, they just have to be aware of how their buttons, toggles, etc. will appear and make adjustments to the color selections.

 

[Aquila]

Yet Google themselves have yet to implement a dark theme in their own software despite feedback to the contrary. Sure they've teased us with a dark theme option in dev editions for their Nexus software but they never follow through. Thus why I blame them.

Yeah but Google being stupid isn't the same as all of Material Design being bad. The problem is too many devs try to emulate Google apps instead of following the spirit of the guidelines to make their own thing. Google apps are not the end all of design, they're barely the beginning and aren't meant to be the goal, they're meant to be the launching pad. People can't think, "this is what Google did, so I'll do that". That's lazy and misguided.

 

[Aquila]

Twitter finally got on board, so maybe more devs will follow that.

 

[Aquila]

This thread just made me able to articulate one of the things that I hate most about Google's presence in and lack of direct weighted influence on Android apps. It's that devs get lazy and treat them as the pinnacle and not as a foundation. E[FONT=&quot]very android app should take the best Google app and treat that as a bare minimum and then use the philosophy to create something better. [/FONT]

 

[sharon harvey]

Well you'll be happy to hear as soon as you receive the new update Android 7.0 nougat dark mode will be available in settings. Sorry about late replies I haven't been receiving notifications. My Android Central settings are set to do so but am not.

 

[brkyk94]

This should be a common feature in every phone and should be easy to access...

 

[Morty2264]

Why are the majority of smartphones designed with white UI with no option of dark mode like old Kit Kat?

Posted via the Android Central App

Awesome question.

You know, I really liked the Dark Theme on my BlackBerry Q10. Dark themes are good for battery saving and the display won't kill your retinas as badly when it's late and night and you whip your phone out to read something.

I find myself more intrigued by darker wallpapers, perhaps because the brightness or contrast of colours is sometimes too much when you factor in display brightness, etc.

 

[anon(9419666)]

A dark theme would bet great for devices with a AMOLED display.

 

[Jackie Chen2]

I like dark theme too,but I think the developers consider the bright theme may be more comfortable for most users