5 dots vs 5 bars

[XianNewman]

Has anyone seen the 5 dots that represent signal strength on the new iOS 7?

What do you think? Change for the sake of change? Or does this change actually remove unnecessary complexity?

To me it looks clean, simple, and while it's a bold move, of anyone Apple can pull it off.

The bars, while somewhat well understood by most, once required users to process not only the number of bars, but also the relative height of each. But don't most of today's users simply ignore the relative height and count the number of bars? If so, why not remove the height dimension and instead illustrate signal in a way that people actually process it - nothing more, nothing less.

[Silver_Arrow]

I find it to be a lot sleaker and modern then the bars. 

[rgl168]

Someone researched where the dots came from.  The dots in iOS7 were the nearly the same as Ive's conceptual documents filed during the Apple/Samsung lawsuit.  So Ive has the vision of the dots all along, just that he wasn't at the helm for iOS to execute his designs until recently.

http://www.cultofmac.com/231140/ios-7s-flat-icons-are-a-blast-from-the-past/

[arkon]

Looks nice, I suppose. Kind of weird though, since dots traditionally mean pages in iOS...

[Erwin]

I love it, it's different and sleek