One UI vs Sailfish Silica
ワンUI / Sailfish Silica
Both sit in Platform Screen Languages, so the question is not what they belong to but how they behave. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
One UI
Samsung's design language for Galaxy devices. It cuts the screen at the height a thumb reaches most easily and calls the part above that the viewing area and the part below the interaction area, so titles sit high while buttons, tabs and dialogs are gathered low. Content is collected into containers with heavily rounded corners, the ground is either white or true black, and a single blue carries every accent.
Sailfish Silica
Sailfish OS's QML language centers the mobile experience on edge gestures and Ambience: wallpaper color runs through translucent type and highlights, while the screen edge itself becomes back, close and switch.
| One UI | Sailfish Silica | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 2018– | 2013– |
| Family | Platform Screen Languages | Platform Screen Languages |
| Kind | Style | Style |
| Cues | The upper part of the screen holds nothing but a title and open space, with no touchable control in it / Text and images are collected into card shaped containers with strongly rounded corners / The title bar has only two states, expanded and collapsed, and never rests anywhere in between / In the dark theme the ground goes to true black and only the blue accent sits on top of it | Text and focus tinted from the wallpaper / Translucent controls floating over dark imagery / Layers peeled by swipes from screen edges / Pulley Menu revealed by pulling, with generous spacing |
| Best used for | Pulling every control to the lower half of a large phone screen so one thumb can reach all of them · Rebuilding a list screen as a set of rounded containers instead of rows divided by rules | Mobile applications that concentrate one-handed navigation in edge gestures · Coloring system UI and wallpaper into one personal ambience |
| Type | Let the title fill the height of the upper area and open a wide gap between it and body text. The collapsed title may be a shorter, different string from the expanded one. | Use light, large sans text and write only current state and next action. |
| Composition | Split the screen at thumb reach. Keep only the title and open space above, and move everything that is pressed, switched or confirmed below it. Never let the side margins fall under 24dp. | Place content on one vertical plane and assign back, close and menu to edge and pull gestures. |
| Material | Round corners generously, roughly 12dp to 26dp. Choose one of two grounds, #fafafa or #000000, restrict the accent to a single blue, and bring no other hue onto the screen. | Start from a dark wallpaper, use one extracted highlight color and vary white transparency for primary and secondary text. |
| Caution | Putting a pressable control into the viewing area destroys the reason for splitting the screen at all, and what is left is just a layout with a lot of empty space at the top. | Dark wallpaper and thin type alone are not Silica. Edge gestures, Pulley Menu and Ambience color must form one operation model. |