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Samsung’s zhuzhing up its TouchWiz Android interface with a new look that’s inspired by Google Now’s context-sensitive cards, according to a fresh leak.
All we have to go on is an apparent screenshot or design mockup from the prolific Twitter-based leakmeister @evleaks, but they appear to show a wide variety of slides related to what you’ve been doing or have coming up.
Sport scores, flight details, appointments, exercise tracking, route maps, home control, message notifications and NFC payment confirmation are all shown — a much richer mix of features than Google Now currently offers. Here’s the full image:
There’s no way of knowing if any or all of these cards will be available in the next version of TouchWiz, but evleaks has a pretty good track record and it seems a logical evolution of what Samsung already offers, and a smart take on rival services such as Google Now and HTC’s BlinkFeed. The company never comments on leaks and rumours.
All major Android manufacturers tweak Google’s user interface with their own custom software — Samsung’s is called TouchWiz, which it has admirably stuck with, despite several years of non-stop sniggering from overgrown little boys like me in the tech press.
A new version of the software could appear as soon as March, when the Samsung Galaxy S5 is likely to be debuted. Such a major interface revision would surely be saved for the company’s biggest launch of the year.
evleaks also claims Samsung has filed a trademark application for a new brand name: Samsung Galaxy S Value. If a phone is ever released with that name, it’ll join the Active, Mini and Zoom as variants on the company’s most popular line. Samsung’s produced a phone in the past called S Advance, which looked like the current year’s model but had last year’s innards, which is what ‘S Value’ suggests to me, so maybe it’s a rebrand for that.
Do you like the look of this possible new direction for the Galaxy interface? What do you make of current context-aware services like Google Now? What would you like to see from the Galaxy S5? Let me know down in the comments, or on our hyper-aware Facebook page.
Image credit: evleaks
