You can actually reskin the keyboard back to the old look.

Click the unlock button, swipe up on your phone, not left or right, pull down on your phone twice, click the settings button, ignore the randomly flashing menu items as you scroll down, find "language and input", click "Google Keyboard" (not "Current Keyboard"), click "Appearance and Layouts", click "Theme", click "Holo White".

you forgot to say stand on one leg.

And the repeated incantation of "Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn!"

> swipe up on your phone, not left or right

The way you wrote this makes it seem like swiping up instead of left or right is really horrible and confusing. Why? Previous versions of Android had a totally different lock screen design, so I honestly do not know why you feel so confident that the correct swiping direction should be left or right. Because Apple did it that way?

The problem is that if you swipe left it will open the dialer, right photo. Only up unlocks it.

While it's useful having shortcuts to do these things, they've gone far too far and made it too hard to do what you most often want to do, which is simply unlock the phone. The old photo button worked well, for example.

They had also previously used "up" on the lock screen for voice commands/google now, so I for one have learnt never to use "up" unless I want to set a timer using voice (pretty much the only useful thing it can do).

I still don't see how that's bad. My current lock screen, a custom one, only unlocks if I swipe right. Not up, not down, not left. Swiping left would open the camera. There's no easy way for me to get to the dialer straight from my current lock screen. From the way you describe it, Lollipop's lock screen sounds great to me. Full notification list, the ability to interact with the notifications, the ability with a single swipe to either get to the camera, the dialer, or just unlock the phone... sounds great to me. I'm not trying to be facetious, just to be clear. It sounds like by far the most useful lock screen Android has ever had by default.

Also, for what it's worth, I find swiping up to be easier to do one-handed on large phones.

The issue is the previous lock screen didn't require any swipes to enter your unlock pattern. They added a step, making the most common gesture slower than it was before.

Ahh, I see. I guess I wouldn't notice that since I'm so used to already having notifications shown first on the lock screen. I can see how that'd be annoying if you don't care about the notifications list.

Usefulness does not increase linearly with increased feature interface/interaction complexity. Usually it's the opposite.

That's a very general statement which hasn't been customized at all to the current scenario. So really there's no way for me to respond, but I'll try.

As I said, swiping up actually feels easier to me on a large screen than swiping left or right. And putting notifications on the lock screen is a critical feature in my opinion, something Android has desperately needed out of the box for a while now. I use a custom lock screen just for that feature because it's so useful.

The notifications are a great addition in stock usefulness. You could always add that functionality through 3rd party lock screens but it's nice to see it baked right in.

It's the swiping that I'm specifically disliking. Every time I swipe to the right it opens up the phone app. Probably there are many users who have formed a really strong habit of swiping a certain way to unlock their Android phone. I would bet on that direction being left-to-right.

Do you know if it's possible to change the way the lock screen handles swiping in some settings page somewhere?

>why is removing the key separators a good idea? //

I've a suggestion for this one - key separators support a paradigm of key presses, following the [traditional] keyboard metaphor. However with swipe-able keyboards it doesn't really make sense, you only need to approximate the position of the letter during your swipe - no "barriers" helps to enforce that new paradigm. If most people swipe, then it makes sense to move away from representing the keyboard as a layout of switches (a key-board).

Yes but swiping does not work particular well if the words you use are not in the dictionary already.

What fraction of the words you type are not in the dictionary? Why not revert to tap-typing for just those words and use the faster method for the dictionary words?

Depending on the region, it can be common enough to be annoying. Your second point would be the reason why id just not start swipping, if I need to stop in order to type, id rather just keep typing. Typing is more natural from being used to the keyboard anyway

> If most people swipe, then it makes sense to move away from representing the keyboard as a layout of switches (a key-board). reply

Do most people swipe? I honestly have no idea, and I'm not an Android user. I'm wondering if there are any stats on that. Particularly for older or less techno-phile users, swiping keyboards might be difficult to get into using.

I swipe heavily (using the original 'swype' app). It's still much faster than the others, and I've tried almost all of them, including the Google keyboard. Also, everyone else who sees me typing using that tries to learn the same. It's really more convenient than traditional touch typing.

A large fraction of Android users around me use one of the swype type keyboards... but that could be because I've been evangelizing it for close to 5 years now to anybody who'll listen... it really is a genuinely better and faster way to input on the mobile.

Wait...swiping? On a keyboard? That makes absolutely no sense. Most words contain a pair of letters that are not adjacent on a QWERTY keyboard.

Swipe typing on a touch screen [1] is analogous to T9 [2] text entry on a traditional keypad. In fact, they were invented by the same group [3].

On numeric keypads, each button corresponds to ~3 letters. Basic text entry involves pushing each button multiple times to select the index of the letter you want[4], then waiting to confirm the selection before moving to the next character.

T9 sped up this process by allowing you to press each button once. It would determine which word you meant by comparing all possible combinations of letters that could be created from the buttons you pressed against a dictionary of known words.

Swype provides a similar extension to QWERTY touchscreen keyboards. With Swype, you drag your finger across a QWERTY grid, creating a path. This path starts on the first letter of the intended word and crosses all letters in the word, in order. It also crosses lots of letters that aren't in the word, or are out of position. The 'secret sauce' lies in how to compare the ordered set of keys defined by the path to a predefined dictionary and produce a meaningful prediction of the intended word.

I haven't implemented such an algorithm myself. However, you can imagine how it might be done. For example, acute angles in the path probably occur when you reach a letter you want, then angle off to collect the next letter. This provides a signpost that can be combined with the initial letter to reduce the possible words down to the set that starts with the initial letter and includes the key with the acute angle.

[1] First introduced by Swype: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swype

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T9_(predictive_text)

[3] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/24/swype-vs-iphone-typ...

[4] e.g. the "3" key corresponds to "DEF", so press "3" twice to enter "E"

Who said it has to be adjacent? To type WHAT just click W, swipe to H, then to A, then to T (and that roughly).

Why would that not turn into WDFGHGFDSASERT?

Because it's got a big list of n-grams and knows what words are more commonly used than others. It uses a predictive model to generate a list of words from your swipe, and then sorts that according to usage. It also continuously learns what words you use the most and prioritizes those. It picks the most likely word, but also displays a list of other possibilities you can tap. It's pretty slick.

Okay, so I grabbed my phone and tested it out. It...actually works. It's a bizarre method of text entry, but interesting nonetheless.

> It's a bizarre method of text entry, but interesting nonetheless.

And by bizarre you mean fantastic... It's even better in a language like French, where swiping means not having to type in the accents, whereas normally you'd have to do a long press of the letter and then select the accent you want...

You don't need to type spaces either and keyboards can be more compact as it's about the word shape rather than hitting a particular letter sequence exactly. Stock Android 4.1 version at least seems pretty forgiving provided I hit the correct first letter, a lot of weight in the algo appears to lie with first letter.

See also this for a similarly working, but different approach to the same thing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9b8NlMd79w

Because the keyboard has a dictionary and can choose the most likely word you meant from your swipe waypoints

Clever programming.

I doubt most do, but there's no reason to not be forward thinking and hope that new users will - IMO it's a far better experience.

I swipe, but I must be in a minority. People always seem a bit surprised when they see me use the keyboard that way.

I like the new keyboard. I feel like my typing mistakes have been reduced. Earlier i felt like i need to be precise on clicking the buttons now without boundary i don't need to.

I like everything about the new UI except for that Gmail profile switching. But you can easily switch from menu so no problem. Now OS X Yosemite those changes are annoying me and also slowing down my macbook pro. I had to disable few settings to get a acceptable performance.

Edit: There is one particular annoying thing in L. Sometimes when click on a tab like in Chrome, the notification window gets the touch and is semi shown.

I think the account switching in gmail is the single most annoying issue I've come across in lollipop. Most of the other changes are a matter of taste, the account switching in gmail is just plain bad. I have 5 accounts and can't even see all the "icon" versions at the same time... make the dropdown more distinctive and nuke the icons imho. I feel much the same about the icons in the message list too.

I wouldn't mind if the desktop/web interface were a bit more like the tablet sized gmail though... also if gmail proper could also see my other email accounts this way since there's no proper mail client in chromeos.

> Gmail app is now rubbish. HORRIBLE account switching. Do they even use their own app?

The gmail redesign is really jarring if you're still on KitKat. It "fits" visually with the design language of Lolipop, but it still feels like a major step backward in terms of usability.

The conspiracy theorist in me is inclined to conclude that they do not, in fact, use their own app; it's almost like they made the Gmail app worse to encourage people to migrate to Inbox.

Thanks for the calendar recommendation. Ugh. Already switch to City Mapper from Google Maps when Google stripped that app. Sad to see the rest of the apps going the same way now.

While we're on the topic:

Clock - I used to be able to dismiss my 7:30 wakeup alarm if I woke up at 7:20 by simply swiping away the notification. But now I can't find any way to suppress the next instance of a recurring alarm.

I'm still on KitKat, but I think you can swipe down over the notification to open up a dismiss option underneath the notification.

(at least you can on kitkat, I swipe down over 3 alarms at once and dismiss them all)

I've been happy with Alarm Clock Plus as my wake up alarm. has the ability to set an alarm on some days of the week, and the "skip next" feature.

The upcoming alarm notifications seem to work exactly the same way for me. If you have the alarm notification expanded there's a dismiss option.

The month view is not gone ("three dot" menu on the right side -> Month) and you can easily untick `Events` per account to hide them.

The gmail app still allows you to use a list to select different accounts (tap on the account name).

Nope. The three dot menu has Schedule, Day, 5 Day, Search and Refresh. There is no Month there.

By the way, limiting to 5 days is at best inflexible. Many people want to look at 7 days because, you know, that's a week.

A quick search reveals, that the Week/ Month view is not available on phones (I only own an N7). Definitely a step backward.

Three dots. Obvious it is a menu (sarcasm).

I have just realized in the last month or so that three stacked bars is a menu (bootstrap style). I am sure those have been around for a while now.

So-called hamburger menus. New Relic has oh so helpfully moved everything useful into a hamburger menu it took ages to find (it even turns into a picture of a hamburger bun when you hover), while useless trivial distinctions get giant, labeled dropdown menus. The affordances are all backward. But I bet everybody clicking around looking for the features they used to use showed more "engagement" with the site, right?