Ever since the release of Android 5.0, Google’s philosophy has been “Material all the things!” Today it’s applying that mindset to its Google Contacts.
Google today announced a major update to Google Contacts that brings a fresh, Material Design-inspired user interface. There are cards as well as a floating action button down in the lower right corner of your screen. The changes go deeper than that, though.
One major new feature of Google Contacts is a better system to merge duplicates. When you ask Google Contacts to find your duplicates, it’ll put together a card for each person and show the information that you’ve got for them. You’ll then be given the option to merge them all at once, merge each contact individually, or dismiss a duplicate.
The new Google Contacts can also keep your contact info up to date automatically. It does this by utilizing the Google profile information that it’s got along with the information that you have.
Finally, the new Google Contacts will display the recent messages and meetings that you’ve have with a person.
The new Google Contacts looks like a major improvement that improves the features of the service and also brings Google Contacts in line with all of Google’s other, Material Design-ified offerings.
If you’d like to give the Google Contacts a go, you can enroll in the preview right now. Google notes that it doesn’t yet work with Google Apps, but the company promises that it’s working on that feature.