Can we talk about how shamelessly Android OEMs are copying iOS's Liquid Glass UI? Thank God Pixel is actually sticking to its own identity.
It is honestly exhausting watching the current state of Android skins. Ever since Apple dropped the "Liquid Glass" aesthetic in iOS, almost every major Android OEM—Vivo (OriginOS), Oppo (ColorOS), Xiaomi (HyperOS), OnePlus—has tripped over themselves to copy it screen-for-screen.
The translucent frosted blurs, the bubbly rounded toggles, the exact same floating menu bars and dynamic island clones... it is a shameless 1:1 rip-off.
What frustrates me the most isn't just the copying itself—it's the complete lack of ambition. The whole point of Android is supposed to be variety, freedom, and distinct character. These brands have massive design teams and incredible hardware, yet they willingly throw away their own visual identity just to look like a knockoff iPhone. It screams insecurity, like they are telling their own buyers, "We know you secretly wanted an iPhone, so we made our software pretend to be one."
Right now, Google's Pixel UI feels like the only breath of fresh air left. With Material 3 Expressive, Pixel actually has a spine. It uses bold colors, distinct geometry, and fluid motion that doesn't look anything like iOS. Even Google's Android boss publicly shot down the idea of bringing Liquid Glass to Pixel, and honestly, thank God for that.
What blows my mind is how normal this has become. People in the community just shrug and say "everyone copies everyone" or "it looks smooth, who cares?" Taking inspiration on a useful feature is one thing; copy-pasting an entire aesthetic direction because you're afraid to be different is pathetic.
Why isn't there more pushback on this? Do people actually want their Android phones to look like iOS clones, or have we just given up on OEMs having their own character?
Note: Nothing os is another oem who has a distinct ui and still succeeded🔥
You’re naming all of these Chinese OEMs as if they haven’t copied Apple since the start of the iPhone’s existence. Xiaomi already has a whole iPhone Duo clone on the market.
Isn't it curious that Xiaomi released it first? Even if you ignore the fact that Apple is the dead last addition to the foldable segment, copying everyone else in the process.
Lmao. Xiaomi had been committing industrial espionage so they could release a clone of the Duo before Apple released it. They have insiders at parts suppliers
edit- perhaps 'industrial espionage' isn't the exact right term. But it's to that effect, Xiaomi getting leaked designs & specifications from suppliers.
? It's very well known that there are Chinese manufacturers which commit IP theft. It's ridiculous to think Xiaomi, a company with a long history of copying Apple designs, did not do something to that effect here. Maybe "industrial espionage" is a bit strong of a term, but it was certainly copied from somewhere.
Are you implying Apple copied Xiaomi because of release dates?
Copying is as old as human civilisation. Everything is copied from something else, in some way. Apple itself has a long history of copying and stealing ideas, sometimes from individual designers. If you zoom out even more, a majority of the modern west was built on robbery and pillaging the global East and South. IP as a concept didn't exist back then, conveniently.
Quit being disingenuous.
IP theft you say? The legal system should handle it. Why isn't Xiaomi banned in the US, EU and elsewhere?
Aero was at least fun for the time because nothing like that had ever really been done. At least not on something as massive as windows that so many people would see.
I've not seen much of ios tbqh so take this with a grain of salt but I don't get all the hype and hubub over liquid glass. Microsoft and Windows imo have done transparency and translucency in UI better and for longer. The only thing I'll say is that it's probably not as consistent as ios might be
It's such a sad state of affairs. Could you imagine if in the android world every phone maker just did its own thing, and we had like 6 or 7 different distinct flavors of UI and UX to choose from?
Instead, you've got only Pixel with its own visual identity, a whole bunch of iOS clones, and Samsung somewhere in between.
Same but why say that lol? I have a Xiaomi, I fuck with it hard, but I can't deny they are definitely copying Apple. Xiaomi even changed their phone naming format to match Apple, like the 18 Pro Max just released.
Also, I had a Motorla Razr 2025 and I thought it was a perfectly good phones, no real complaints from me on it, and I think it's a good thing Motorola Signature 27 will be coming to the US.
Pixel is already A/B testing Liquid glass style bottom navigation just like iOS and Samsung (e.g. Sam Gallery). Google is already looking bit by bit how to comply with the new established design.
I miss the good old days when Google was dedicated to making Android as innovative as it could be. Now they just mimic whatever Apple is doing, good and bad. I guess it's cheaper than thinking for yourself...
Apple is by far and away the company that is front and center in consumers minds globally. Doesn’t matter if you hate Apple or boycott their products. I mean, look at this post - Apple and iPhone live rent free in your minds.
Like it or not, smartphone = iPhone to a lot of people. And outside of the US, there are hoardes of people who want to get an iPhone but can’t afford to get one. It’s why every Apple launch people from various countries go to big Apple hubs to buy as many new iPhones as they can to resell to their people as soon as possible.
The way you word it makes it seem like its a fad that's going away, and not a 5 trillion dollar, 50 year old company, that is the most consumer facing in its sector, in the most developed nations across the globe.
Phone manufacturers in China have caught up and in some way even surpassed Apple especially in area like display, camera and of course battery including charging tech. We already have phones and tablets from Chinese manufactures utilizing SiC (silicon-carbon) batteries amounting to large battery capacities for the same physical size as common lithium-ion with insane charging speeds both wired and wirelessly that have long left Apple in the dust.
I'm every way other than their truly world class silicon design division. People often forget that Apple is entirely dependent on a few key companies, without whom, Apple would cease to exist as a hardware vendor. Not just for manufacturing, but for actual tech, IP and R&D.
A big reason for Apple's continued success is momentum. And lately, services. They're printing money, sure. And they've done many things right. But, to assume that they're technically superior to everyone else, is just ignorance.
Not even apple users like that.. 2 to 3 times a decade apple really messes up.. That would be the chance for other OS to shine.. Liquid glass was one of those opportunities and they the Chinese brands fucked up.. They really think they win apple users with the UI
This is apparent in two things: the first is that the designer who was largely responsible for it is no longer with the company and now works for meta. The second is that the 27 suite of software updates includes a slider that allows users to decide exactly how transparent or frosted the glass appears. If you crank it all the way to frosted it mostly undoes the hideous look of liquid glass.
I’m just glad everything is looking less flat. I remember wanting to chase that fad with my early web site designs back in 2012-‘13 or so. I’m glad we’re getting stuff with more character.
It's pretty much just the Chinese OEMs (I think One UI is distinct enough) and in part that's cultural, but it's also that in China, as a share of income it's roughly like an iPhone 18 Pro Max costs $11,000 where an Oppo Find X10 Pro costs $6700 (GDP per capita of China in rmb is roughly GDP per capita of the US in USD). And that makes an iPhone a vastly more aspirational product and so, much more than in the west, it defines what a phone should be; and that includes a glassy UI.
Thank God Pixel is actually sticking to its own identity.
Hahahahhaha. no, it's not. it's already breaking its design principles and version-by-version, it's slowly creeping in blur. it longs for frosted glass ios design, which might not be ios26+ but rather <ios18.
Right now, Google's Pixel UI feels like the only breath of fresh air left.
Hey i like nothingOS
With Material 3 Expressive, Pixel actually has a spine.
😬 . also m3e in implementation feels like a fever dream of new fashion and clothes, when your actual everyday style is still the same as of last wardrobe change. the brands' clothes havent even reached offline stores yet and the company appears to be in preparation of launching a new brand.
Do people actually want their Android phones to look like iOS clones,
Well having used both, frosted glass looks way better than liquid glass. The text legibility on liquid glass can be terrible at times, not to mention how the fancy effects frequently cause dropped frames. Too many unnecessary gimmicks nowadays. I miss the android kitkat era of android UI.
frosted glass will always have higher readability and visual accessibility than "liquid" glass; i dont know why the tech-bubble folks and ui design chasers refuse to accept it even when normal glass windows in shops/stores/malls have existed for years and everyone knows what they owners have do to make the written text, on them, readable.
that being said m3 is perfect for even low-power devices. solid planes, minimal shadows, no blur, heaven for the cpu/gpu.
being nostlagic, i really miss m1, that paper ui and all its motions was revolutionary for android.
Isn't it nice that at least some Chinese brands are giving you both options? I don't understand all the bitching and moaning. Pixel is the most boring, featureless and often really buggy on the Android side, at least in the premium segment. The pathetic SoC doesn't help either. Nor does their limited availability (globally) and poor after sales support.
I agree with you about other companies copying apple but i despise Google's design language lately. Their basic apps like calendar are so janky performance wise as well as being ugly and dumb looking, like forcing everything to be green blobs. Never thought id say it but even samsung apps are better and I'm disappointed that they're retiring some of them or like sem-retiring them into uselessness (RIP Samsung Messages)
Correction, Chinese OEMs. Not much to talk about they've been doing it for as long as they've been in the game. They copied the iPhone DUO itself before it even had it reveal. They copy the look and feel as much as possible.
Please stop regurgitating outdated info. BBK stopped existing years ago. Vivo and Oppo have been separate, independent and fiercely competitive companies from their very inception. Both the founders came from erstwhile BBK and that's all.
First, you know absolutely nothing about what they were "taught" under BBK. Because BBK was just a financial entity towards the end. Prior to that, it was involved in AV equipment (Oppo) and cordless telephones, early mobile phones (later became Vivo) and educational electronics. None of that had anything to do with Apple. The iPhone didn't even exist back then.
Second, they don't copy Apple because of some ancient corporate syllabus; they all do it because mimicking the iPhone's premium aesthetic is what actually sells in the domestic market. It's an industry-wide trend to lower the switching cost for iPhone users, not an inherited "BBK strategy".
Give Google time. liquid Glass has only been out for about 2 years. Once Apple starts to move on to something else, then Google will start trying to add it to the Pixel ROM. Leave it half done making us all wonder if Apples take was actually that bad given the mess Google has created. Then they will abandon it in that half done state for a few years before moving on to another design paradigm.
Yep those were the days. I was really happy with my Pixel 5 but its USB port crapped out and of course it stopped getting security updates. New pixels, despite having ok UI, were way too close to iPhones physically for my liking (eg flat polished sides and unnecessary double glass...).
People say this but you can't really. You can't customise the system level design much. And even custom launchers you can't use with gestures without weird bugs
So you can customise One UI rather than specifically android. Which this post isn't complaining about. It's complaining about the Chinese brand skins which are copying liquid glass. Which don't have a good lock alternative.
In android, it's completely upto you to change ur phone up. Even if the default is similar to iOS, u are at complete liberty to remove elements u don't need.
And it's also especially nice to have a ios aesthetic with the full functionality of android at times, and not to mention the much smoother and cleaner animations
This has always been the reality of Android. Apple sued Samsung 15 years ago for ripping them off, and nothing has changed since. Android has great engineers and terrible designers.
First off, none of this has anything to do with Android's engineers and designers; this is about what Android licensees are doing with the OS.
Second, Apple lost a majority of those lawsuits. The only country where they won was the US, which was then appealed to the Supreme Court who remanded the case back to the lower courts. The case eventually got settled.
Third, it was also shown that Apple had manipulated the images it had submitted to the courts in several of those cases to exaggerate the similarities between Samsung devices and the iphone.
Would you mistake this for an iPhone homescreen? Yes, the liquid glass aesthetic is certainly inspired by Apple, but it does enough of it's own thing (Shortcuts, Expanded app drawers) to set it apart imo.
Pixels may have their own design language, but hardware wise they're 3-4 years behind.
And I like my hardware ahead, to be perfectly honest with you.
As for the "I know you wanted an iPhone" No, explicitly not. If I did, I would have bought one. I had to jailbreak every iPhone I owned just to get the functionality I wanted, which with Android, I no longer had to do. Add to that that jailbreaking is pretty much dead, well...
You're slating Android for copying Apple? Boy have YOU got some catching up to do. Apple didn't have COPY AND PASTE for at least 4 years while Android users chuckled.
Bro - just use what you like; and ignore what you don't. Apple is (and has been for a good long while) irrelevant to my day-to-day - and no, Yankee Doodle - I don't "want one but can't afford one" - I have no interest in them. I loathe the interface and the gestures. I just use my Android phone because I like it... regardless of the shiny bits and rough bits in the interface.
Another short message to Yankee Doodle and his mates; most countries on the planet don't have any problem affording stuff compared to the US-ians. The US population is in general no richer and no poorer than most of the world. You're also not the greatest nation in the world, you're just another nation. There isn't a greatest because it's not a competition. We exist without having to be better than anyone else.
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u/VapidRapidRabbit 1d ago
You’re naming all of these Chinese OEMs as if they haven’t copied Apple since the start of the iPhone’s existence. Xiaomi already has a whole iPhone Duo clone on the market.