An Ultimate Comparison of iOS6 and iOS7 User Interface Design

It has been a month since Apple released its iOS 7 in September 2013. We feel that it would be great to compare the good or bad from its last version iOS6. Here we kind of collected a large number of comparison screenshots of iOS 6 and iOS 7. We also would like to hear your thoughts about the changes.

The concept of Flat UI design has become more and more popular especially for the user interface design of mobile devices. Microsoft Windows logo changed to a flat design and its new Windows 8 OS (the metro UI), Google Chrome logo changed into a flat design (not the case for the Android OS yet). Apple started this change as well. The major changes from iOS 6 to iOS 7 are the icons, the UI elements, and some of the details. They become flat and simple.

The Icons

Personally, as an icon designer too, I have a lot of feeling of the changes of the icons. I like the concept of the icons but I don’t like the color combination. The icons are a mixtures of plain color icons and gradient icons. And the gradients to me are a bit overdone. In my opinion, the top color and bottom color of the gradients have too much difference. Some of the colors (e.g. Green in phone/message/facetime icons) are too bright. This is not so good for your eyes.

The Frosted Glass

One of the highlights in the UI of the new iOS 7 is the frosted glass effect. This might be an old idea like what was featured in Mircosoft Windows 7. To me it works fine and give the user a rich feeling of the textures.

UI Elements

Some of details of the UI elements have been redesigned which removed some unnecessary components. In this fast moving world, quick and simple UI is what is needed. However, the design and evolution is much more complicated. A system with a simple outside definitely has a complex inside. Here are some examples of the changes and evolution.

Personally, I don’t really like the change of the dial pad, the circles makes the touch area smaller. This is not good for a mobile device especially when you have a big hand with big fingers.

More Exclusive Comparison

Below you can find some more comparison in different applications. Most of them are improvements. We only would like to mention that in the Weather App, it is not clear to see those icons in that background. Therefore information can not be delivered quickly.

Conclusion

The redesign of the iOS has got some highlights in terms of user interface, we summarised the good and the bad in our opinion. Please let us know your feeling about the change in the comments.