UX Glossary · A
Android
Google's mobile operating system, and the platform conventions that come with designing for it.
Android is Google’s mobile operating system, first released in 2008 and now the most widely used mobile platform worldwide by device count. For a designer it mostly means one thing: a second set of platform conventions that differ from Apple’s.
What actually differs
Google’s design language is Material Design, currently in its third version. It specifies its own components, motion and elevation model, and its own approach to theming.
The practical differences from iOS are navigation and hardware. Android has a system back affordance that iOS does not, so a screen can be exited in a way the app did not design. Android also runs on a far wider range of screen sizes, densities and manufacturer skins, which makes flexible layout a requirement rather than a nicety.
In practice
The temptation on a cross-platform project is one design shipped to both platforms. That is usually the right economic call, but the parts worth keeping platform-native are navigation patterns, system controls like date pickers and share sheets, and typography defaults. Users do not read your app in isolation, they read it against every other app on their phone, which is exactly what Jakob’s Law predicts.