[ANDROID] Material 3?

[Icy-Thought]

Comparing the design of SimpleX with other android chat applications, I see no benefit in SimpleX using an iOS design in an Android environment rather than using Material 3. SimpleX does look out of proportion on Android in my opinion.

More information about Material 3 theming can be found at Android Developers, but for the sake of ease of access I'll add their chat application example here:

[epoberezkin]

Thanks for the feedback.

I agree that our current design of the app is suboptimal, to put it mildly, particularly on Android, and we will definitely be improving it. I am not a huge fan of Material 3 design though, I hope we can do better than that. Maybe Material 4 will be better - we will see.

For now we are focussed on the functional aspects of the app, and the resources are very limited, so we won't be prioritising design changes in the next couple of month. What we are/will be working on:

• database encryption - we are aiming to release it this month
• scheduled chat data deletion - probably this month as well
• messaging queue rotation to improve connection privacy - maybe this month
• voice and gif messages
• support for large size file transmission (up to 1gb with our servers, unlimited with users servers).
• maybe disappearing messages or "ephemeral conversations" (the latter seems increasingly more likely, as the design we consider would protect privacy much better than disappearing messages in the same chat - the latter has as many downsides as it has upsides, and definitely not an acceptable thing in the business context, so it would require mutual consent per chat anyway).
• public channels and large groups.

Improving design seems a lower priority than any of these, but I might be wrong - so any comments on that are helpful.

[Icy-Thought]

I certainly agree with your statement regarding "design being a lower priority" as of now. Nonetheless, I do appreciate your work on SimpleX and I am looking forward to the future of this wonderful project! :fireworks:

[epoberezkin]

Thank you! We will still be improving some small design aspects in between the things, like we've been doing so far :)

[ioiouaua]

@epoberezkin

Thanks for the feedback.

I agree that our current design of the app is suboptimal, to put it mildly, particularly on Android, and we will definitely be improving it. I am not a huge fan of Material 3 design though, I hope we can do better than that. Maybe Material 4 will be better - we will see.

For now we are focussed on the functional aspects of the app, and the resources are very limited, so we won't be prioritising design changes in the next couple of month. What we are/will be working on:

• database encryption - we are aiming to release it this month
• scheduled chat data deletion - probably this month as well
• messaging queue rotation to improve connection privacy - maybe this month
• voice and gif messages
• support for large size file transmission (up to 1gb with our servers, unlimited with users servers).
• maybe disappearing messages or "ephemeral conversations" (the latter seems increasingly more likely, as the design we consider would protect privacy much better than disappearing messages in the same chat - the latter has as many downsides as it has upsides, and definitely not an acceptable thing in the business context, so it would require mutual consent per chat anyway).
• public channels and large groups.

Improving design seems a lower priority than any of these, but I might be wrong - so any comments on that are helpful.

Ofc design is low priority for actively developing project. But for mass spreading it's required. I want to be a sponsor for your project. And I really will like to see material design in SimpleX Chat.