leged ay Store revamp continues ‘s drive towards a unified interface

BY GreenBot Staff

Published 21 Mar 2013

‘s engineers haven’t missed a beat after the death of Reader. Not only has the company launched the new note-taking Keep service, but a new leak suggests that may soon give the Android’s ay app store a much-needed facelift.

The current ay store design was introduced in 2012, not much has changed since its debut. Now, the Droid fe blog claims to have gotten its hs on a leaked upcoming version of the ay store, which shows a complete user interface overhaul in a series of images a video.

If the leak is accurate, ay 4.0.16 will bring a br new interface in line with the UI changes seen in Android lly Bean. Overall, the look of the leaked ay app is cleaner, with a focus on bigger images italicized text.

Individual pages for apps, movies, magazines books have bigger images are displayed in a card-like interface similar to Now. The move to a Now-esque card-like interface could shine some light into the direction Android OS design is heading as a whole, in fact.

Since the app store Now are two important parts of Android, they seem headed for a unified look, it’s possible we will see more apps approaching this interface in an upcoming major release of the OS—+, another cornerstone of ‘s vision for the future, has already embraced the card UI. The drive isn’t surprising; co-founder rry ge has focused on bringing a cohesive design vision to ‘s disparate products since he assumed the CEO role in 2011.

One particular issue that did not seem to address with this redesign is app discovery. th more than 700,000 apps in ay, there still does not seem to be a practical way to surface relevant apps for users, or filter dubious apps from searches, there is no apparent new functionality in this regard.

Android isn’t the only major platform with lackluster discovery chops. Apple, whose app store is just a plentiful as ’s, also implemented a card-like interface in the iOS App Store last year but it hasn’t implemented any improved app discovery functionality since the launch of Genius, a feature that recommends apps based on your current downloads. The ndows Store’s discovery functions are just as paltry.

has yet to confirm a new version of the ay store in on the way, so it’s uncertain whether the leak is true or whether the new version will be available to users any time soon. Assuming the leak is accurate, it’s likely that will wait until its I/O developer conference in mid-May to unveil the new interface.