Google launched the stable Android 16 update back in June, but we had to wait a few months for the promised Material 3 Expressive redesign to appear. Fortunately, this visual overhaul landed in early September, giving us a fresh coat of paint.
We recently asked what you thought of this visual redesign. Now that the dust has settled and you’ve had time to explore the update, here’s how you answered that question.
How do you like the Material 3 Expressive look?
Over 3,000 votes were tallied in this survey, and ~63% of respondents said they loved Android 16’s Material 3 Expressive visual redesign. In other words, close to two-thirds of polled readers loved this new direction.
Reader charliedcarlsen praised the customizable quick setting tiles, which allows you to resize these buttons:
Personally I love it because it looks better in my opinion and I can customize the size of my quick action buttons to not take up 4 pages and all be on one
Meanwhile, user dja said they liked the redesign but didn’t love it:
Solid like. It’s an overall positive change except for IOS style status icons. Can’t say I love it, though. It’s just better.
Fellow reader Nicholas Vettese also praised the visual overhaul:
Honestly, it is much better than I thought it was going to be. The pics posted over the last few months did not do it any justice, IMO. Very pleased with it. The only thing I wish Google would do, is make it OS wide, like Apple does. Google needs to have standards that make the OS look cohesive.
About 27.9% of polled readers said they thought this change was okay. Meanwhile, just 8.86% of respondents said they hated Android 16’s visual redesign.
There was no shortage of readers who lamented this redesign, such as user b.nordgren.e:
I find it to be extremely underwhelming… And maybe it’s coz I’m from Denmark, and alot of pixel features aren’t available here… Can’t wait to get my hands on another phone
This sentiment was echoed by reader aauth:
We’re losing the ‘simple’ design. Now everything is way more bulky and takes more space (have you seen the Gmail notifications? Instead of having the sender’s icon, we now have the Gmail icon and the sender’s icon that almost overlaps with the mail content, it’s too much!) for nothing interesting in return. I hate it.
In any event, roughly 90% of polled readers thought Google’s Material 3 Expressive redesign was okay to great. Only about one in ten hated this change. So we can definitely chalk this up as a win for Google.