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You might already have heard about Project Hera, a huge update Google is currently working on to "bridge Android, Chrome and Search". The project, which we first got to know through an extremely coarse and confusing Androidpolice article, seems to be definitely true, but only very few information is given at this time.

Hera’s main goal is apparently to create a cross-platform experience comparable to the tab-syncing feature of Google Chrome. It's also said that the user will be able to interact with an app without having to actually fully start it. Also, a great shift in user interface design seems to be on the way, aligning the experience across Android and Google’s web services even more.

I thought much about what such a cross-platform multitasking feature might look and work like, and I'm proud to present you this concept imagining Google Hera. It's extremely unlikely that Hera will even work only a bit similar to this, but it might paint a clearer picture of the great possibilities Hera might bring.

This is my final entry for the Android UI/UX (Re)Design Challenge 2.0. It's a redesign of the normal Amazon app that is available from the Google Play Store (not their own store). Interestingly, even though Amazon is still the world's largest online retailer, the company has apparently only a very bad store for non-kindle mobile users.

Having such a bad app for your core business is very strange and also dangerous for various reasons. Interestingly, this app does not only ignore all of Android's design guidelines, but it does also not follow the style of Amazon's Kindle devices. It's rather a strange, outdated mobile version of Amazons website, which runs extremely insecure and slow.

My redesign does not aim at aligning the app to the Kindle Fire look, but at making it look like a normal Android app, following all guidelines. That's also the reason why this probably won't ever turn into reality. If Amazon will update it's app at all one day, then it will probably introduce the Fire style.

Software Buttons were added to Android phones as part of Android 4.0 alias Ice Cream Sandwich. A lot of people were rather skeptical about on-screen buttons at first, however, most doubts turned out to be unreasoned.

Now, more than 2 years after the release of Ice Cream Sandwich, also the "big" Android manufacturers, such as HTC, finally start to discard hardware buttons. Also Microsoft added them to Windows Phone as part of the 8.1 update.

So while Microsoft has just copied their feature, the Android team could make the next big step by replacing Software Buttons with new, system-wide gestures.

Have you ever thought about a completely new mobile UI? I remember that about 1 year ago there were some rumors about Google taking the next step with Chrome OS by bringing it to tablets and smartphones. So now I’ve taken the chance and imagined what Chrome OS for smartphones (alias Chromephone OS) might look like.

I want to clarify that this concept is not directly about Chrome or Google, but more kind like a symbol for a completely new UI. Showcasing many smaller ideas and concepts, you may as well call it 'iOS 9', 'Android 5.0' or 'Windows Phone 9' concept.

It has actually also lots in common with Microsoft’s current design and UI approaches. The advantage naming it Chromephone, however, is that it displays less an evolution of any established OS, but a whole new beginning, unrelated to anything existing.

With Android Wear, Google has just announced an operating system which builds completely on Android notifications. It seems to work great, proving just once more how much power lies in Android notifications. However, it is also yet another party that has been added to the already now complicated construction of notifications. Thinking also about Google Glass and other new device categories that might come up in near future, I would suggest Google to make the whole thing with notifications a lot easier by introducing a cloud-based notification system.

In a recent article I discussed the need of a new way to manage your tabs on Google Chrome on Android and on mobile phones in general. The basic idea was to replace the iconic card-interface with a Navigation Drawer, though at the end I concluded that Google definitely has to figure out how to bring mobile browsing finally to a whole new level, but that this particular implementation wouldn’t be the right way to achieve this.

So again I’ve taken some time and worked on another, slightly different idea. As shown above, this time I’m aiming even more for a desktop-inspired interface, placing real tabs on the very top. Google has already something very similar for Chrome on tablets, but this concept goes a bit further, adding new gestures to manage tabs better also on touch devices. The same ideas might easily be added to the tablet version, too.

As you can see, the tabs look pretty similar to pinned tabs on the desktop. Swiping a tab down closes it, which I think is a very quick way and can be infinitely useful. If the user has more than about 5 or 6 tabs open, he can of course scroll horizontally through the list of tabs - just like on the tablet version too. Tapping twice on a tab gives the possibility to reposition it.