The example he uses is a bit contrived, since everything but the toolbar title is tappable. Does it need raised and colored affordances to signify such? Would this be more or less confusing than what was shipped?
And this gem: "In Android of old, you could swipe down from the top of the screen to open a panel of quick settings buttons (brightness, Airplane mode, and so on)." Which tells me the reviewer either has a poor memory or has confused Android with Samsung (which is an honest mistake to make).
That quick panel is indeed in stock android. On tablets, swiping down on the right side of the notification bar opens the quick settings. On phones, swiping left from the notification pulldown switches to the quick settings.
Additionally, IIRC swiping down on the right side for the quick settings is default in a number of ROMs.
Awkwardly, the "design design" is past that -- the guidelines say to use shadows to create buttons. But the deployed design is using the older design design that didn't realize that.
The guideline has 3 types of buttons one of which is "flat", just text with no decoration.
Here's an excerpt from the review:
"Unfortunately, there’s so little ornamentation that there are no cues left to tell you when something is tappable. What’s a button, what’s a label, what’s a heading? You won’t know till you try tapping."
Full review: https://www.yahoo.com/tech/android-5-0-lollipop-lighter-simp...