A University of Michigan student by the name of Jinesh Shah likes to play around in Photoshop when he’s not studying. He’s released an “Android 5.0 Design Concept” that’s currently being passed around the Android community because it’s so incredibly polished. Shah didn’t do anything too radical to the current version of Android however, he just made the bottom control bar transparent, made widgets overlap, integrated Google Now into the home screen, and tweaked the Google search widget. Still, the guy did put some effort into this, so I’m sharing it here.

Will Android 5.0 look like this? I honestly don’t know. Android went through a major redesign between Gingerbread and Honeycomb. It then got polished in Ice Cream Sandwich, and the current version, Jelly Bean, is very much just a spit shine update. Does Android’s appearance even matter though in a world where people think TouchWiz is what Android always looks like?

That’s the real problem here. No matter how pretty Google makes Android look, companies are going to continue putting their user interfaces on top. It’s like going to a fancy pants restaurant just to cover your meal in McDonald’s ketchup.