Here’s A Sneak Peek At The 5.0 Version Of The Play Store

Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Here’s A Sneak Peek At The 5.0 Version Of The Play Store

Play-Store-AH

The new version of Android software is still not quite here yet, and that likely means the new version of the Play Store is a little ways off as well since it will most likely get updated alongside the new version of the OS. We do however get an early look at the Play Store’s 5.0 version thanks to Android Police, with screenshots included at the bottom giving us a peek at what’s to come. There are some pretty obvious visual changes here and we’ll go through them, but it should be pointed out that since this is not an officially released update as of yet anything could change really. That being said lets go over some of what we see here from the images.

The obvious first thing to note is the changes that Google has made to the front page of the Play Store. As you can tell from the pictures, the buttons that take you to the various different sections of the Play Store look more flat and better evoke the style of Material Design. The colors are even a bit more vibrant, which is something that we kind of expected to see given that Material Design is associated with a lot of bright colors that make things really look alive and pop out from the screen. The main bar up top in Play Store 5.0 also got a color change to the accent we see already within Android L, that familiar(to some of you who are using the preview build)teal color which Google will probably be using throughout the system UI in many things.

For those of us on Paranoid Android’s latest beta build that includes Dynamic System Bars, we can kind of already experience the new banner bars in each associated category for things like Games, Movies, Music etc. In Play Store 5.0, those banners have more depth and are longer showing off more of the color belonging to that category, which Dynamic System Bars likely got some of their inspiration. Google is also giving some makeovers to various pages throughout the Play Store, implementing more color for background on pages that are currently and predominantly white, while also adding in some imagery to draw more attention and add more visual appeal.

In addition to the visual changes to the actual Play Store pages and colors, there may be some new launcher icons on the way for the Play Store itself, as well as for Play Apps(presumably the little Andy Bugdroid icon)Play NewsStand, Play Movies, Play Music, and Play Books. Lastly, Google may be looking to make it easier to restore apps and games from previous devices onto new ones. What we mean is that there were some strings of code found within the preview apk for Play Store 5.0 that suggests users will have the option to pick and choose(on a per device basis)what apps or games get restored when loading up a new device. While visually things seem to be getting quite the beautification, functionally this potential new feature to have a restore profile of sorts should come in extremely useful and give users more control over what gets restored and what doesn’t.