The first thing you'll notice after your phone gets updated to Android Pie is its significant UI refresh, which is based on the newest Material Theme guidelines (commonly referred to "Material Design 2"). Love it or hate it, Google is updating their entire apps and services suite to fit these new guidelines which adopt elements such as clear, vibrant colors and rounded corners across the whole interface. Google Maps recently received a makeover based on these new Material Theme elements, and we've already gotten a glimpse on how will they look on apps like Android Messages and desktop/mobile Google Chrome. The latest app to receive a facelift is Google Contacts, and it's quite beautiful.
Google Contacts 3.0 gets rid of the top colored action bar to make room for an all-white UI. Additionally, Google Sans font is prominently displayed across titles, list items, and hamburger menus, leaving Roboto for smaller, regular text. Most icons have been swapped for outlined ones, and floating buttons were also changed. The end result bears little resemblance to the previous version, which is not necessarily a bad thing in my view. There isn't a dark theme included with this version, but the all-white interface fits perfectly for one, and given that Android Messages is probably getting a dark theme soon, it could potentially come to Google Contacts in a future update.
Google Contacts 2.8 (first 2 screenshots) versus Google Contacts 3.0 (last 2 screenshots).
Functionality-wise, there are no new features to be seen anywhere. The focus of this update is the significant UI change. The Google Contacts update is now rolling out on the Google Play Store, although if you want to skip the whole update process, you can get the APK right now on APKMirror. We're expecting more Material Theme updates during the course of the next few weeks, so stay tuned for that as well.