Update to Android 12 dialer is hidden in Google Phone app

Even before Android 12 was released, Google was pushing out Material You updated versions of some of its apps. For example, on this writer's Pixel 2 XL, which lost Google support at the end of 2020, the Clock and Calculator apps received a Material You makeover even though the phone was never going to get Android 12. Google originally added some of the Material You design color scheme to the Pixel dialer last year, but that only covered the background and the numbers on the app.

9to5Google was able to enable a new Material You dialer that includes a border around each number and an animation that takes place when you tap a number. This animation shows the touch moving outwardly toward the edge of each button's border. You might notice a similarity between the new Material You dialer and the Android 12 calculator app keypad with its shape shifting buttons.

It isn't clear when Google plans on updating the Google Phone app but the new design, seen with the images that accompany this article, is currently hidden in the Google Phone app and it could be released via a future server-side update.

Google already has said that non-Pixel Android phones will get the Android 12 Material You wallpaper theming system that uses a color extraction algorithm to determine the more dominant and less dominant colors found on user-selected wallpaper. With that information, the app icons on the home screen are given a color that is the closest to the dominant wallpaper color.