[Xperia Z2 General] vctrdnl:
Now that I am on Lollipop I have to say I am not convinced at all by the new design philosophy. The design is so inconsistent in terms of shapes and colors!

- There are some elements that are left unchanged by the themes. To make things worse, there is always some teal creeping in here and there, obviously left unchanged from stock android.

- The stock themes themselves are way too bright and shiny to be called 'elegant'. I see there is always a combo of 2 colors: one primary on the top of the screen and one secondary which serves as a highlight (e.g. blue and orange). Well, I'm sorry to say this but not even one of these themes offers a reasonable match of its 2 colors. They all look too cheerful in a childish way, like Easter eggs.

- The status bar is a whole other matter (nightmare): sometimes it shows completely different color than the title bar of the app displayed, sometimes it is only just in line, but with a different shade of the same color and, finally, sometimes both colors are completely the same. Some apps change the color of the status bar, some don't. So with 80 or more installed apps, within one theme used, you get pretty much all color combos you can or cannot think of. Where is the elegance in that?

- I know, there are 3rd party themes which potentially tone the whole color madness down but they often go too much in the other direction, looking too boring and dull with half of the screen black (or dark) and the other half - white. So far I have found one single theme which may be called 'elegant' in my eyes.

- Some of the status bar icons (WLAN and mobile network) are way too big and dwarf all the others, e.g. alarm clock icon, battery icon, digital clock. Their new design is okay but they were neither scaled nor aligned properly.

- Notification area offers yet another background color which has nothing to do with the rest of the design. But that's my smaller issue. I could live with it as it is.The limited amount of quick toggles and their customization is what really drives me crazy. For example, you can't adjust the notification volume of calls, texts, etc if you are listening to music! How idiotic is this?! Moreover, the new sound profiles (whose usability is also questionable) are only accessible via the volume rocker. There is no other chance to turn your notifications completely off, not even in the full Settings menu! Please correct me if I am wrong.

Maybe there is more but I can't think of it right now. In my opinion Sony did okay in terms of the functionality of their first official Lollipop build, with only X-Reality not working properly as of now. Maybe there is more, e.g. battery life on mobile data, Ultra Stamina mode etc. But I am sure all of them will be fixed in the future. Anyway, all the functionality shortages that really bug me have actually come from Google.

The design of this new Android version is something that I deeply disliked when I saw the first screenshots/videos around the web. Now, I feel even more strongly against the new design philosophy. Yes, KK may have looked old and somewhat boring but it offered elegant and well-thought UI. The new UI looks like it escaped from the looney bin. I am really sorry to say that but it is what it is.