It would answer my question properly if I'd seen that it looks just like the stock Android UI, so even though it's almost exactly the same, that's still quite valuable for me rather than pointless.
I've also done some image search and it does change a bit with apps and they look quite good. So I'm still baffled why this aversion to images is decided. Or just overlooked maybe?
Our own apps and the currently basic forks of Android Open Source Project sample apps use black, white and gray as their icon color scheme. It's similar to how other organizations choose a few colors for their apps. The icons aren't grayscale, those are just the current colors we use for our own.
I've also done some image search and it does change a bit with apps and they look quite good. So I'm still baffled why this aversion to images is decided. Or just overlooked maybe?