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Sony Ericsson has leaked a new video of a prototype Android UI they call “Rachael” which has “This is just a concept for internal use only, sit the hell down” warnings all over it. Once you accept that fact that you can’t buy a phone with this UI today, tomorrow, or possibly ever (or possibly in 4 days with the Xperia X3), the video is a very interesting picture of a direction User Interfaces may be going.

The interface is heavily Zune HD influenced. For example, the focus on thumbnails and graphics, the use of album and secondary art, the way the choices are arranged and presented…especially the way that screens move in and out fluidly and from all directions. In fact, watching Rachael it makes me appreciate all the more how conservative and controlled the Zune HD team were, since in this demo video things swirl and flash around a bit too much, as if the developers were doing things just to show they could. Actually, since this is a concept, they likely WERE just doing some of those swirly effects just to show the capabilities of the platform…it still makes me a bit bilious.

As for the direction of mobile UIs today, I think we are going to be seeing more and more Zune style interfaces as designers adjust to the power inherent in such tools as Tegra chips and the Snapdragon platform. The days of static lists of music  or contacts are definitely gone, whatever OS you are using.

So what do you think, is this hot little media UI another brick in Android’s wall, or another lame attempt at stealing Apple’s thunder?

(Source: Gizmodo)