Google Standalone Clock App For Android

The article I read is: Google further embraces custom Android with standalone clock app.

I'm not sure if that is the article I first read a couple days ago, but I did also read the one I linked.

Recently Google's been releasing more of the apps that are built into Google's Android "ROMs" that are seen in the line of their Nexus phones.

The couple days before May ended this year, I recently got a 64GB ASUS Zenfone 2 (ZE551ML) to replace my Galaxy Nexus. I was greeted with apps that I thought were Google's, but were actually ASUS's version of them, and I promptly installed the Google version of the things I use most (Calender, Keep, Gmail).

This article piqued my interest, as I was curious to see what Google's released, and when I looked at the reviews in the Play Store, I saw that it was very simple, had an ability to dismiss alarms early and had the "material" design that launched with Lollipop.

I opened it up and it was definitely simple and basic. The background is a dark steel blue, the text is white and the buttons/sliders are (deep?) pink, it was much better than the black on white scheme of ASUS's clock that blinded me every morning when the alarm went off to get up for work. One of the reviews I read said it was a bad colour scheme, but from what I remember of Friday morning, it's still better than the black on white ASUS clock scheme.

The early dismissal is quite interesting, it is (probably) designed for when you wake up before the alarm goes off and want to dismiss the alarm since you're up - instead of the alternative options of either waiting for the alarm to go off to dismiss it (bad if you share a room/bed) or turning the alarm off (bad if you forget to turn it back on sometime after the time of the alarm has passed and before it's needed again).

While the article states that Google is giving Android users a choice, I think the other part of the reason behind Google doing this is because (if I remember correctly) Android M will be the last version of Android that Google will make their own phone - what better way to preserve the legacy of a clean version of Android than to release as many of the "stock" apps that's possible?

Before Google released their clock app, they released their camera app, and while I liked it better than ASUS's, I ended up installing "Open Camera" instead (I still use ASUS's from the lock screen when/if I need it).