Left: old, Right: new
Our long national nightmare is finally over—Google has updated Maps with a translucent status bar. No more will you stare at that flat black status bar and curse your life and everyone in it.
The status bar is plain gray on the main map interface, but it's blue in the areas of the app that use a standard action bar (i.e. local business listings and the settings). There very well may be some other changes lurking in Maps 9.9, but nothing is jumping out at us. It's possible we've simply been thrown off by the shocking addition of the translucent status bar. You'll need to be on Lollipop to see any difference, though.
I should note that readability of the bar is somewhat bad when there's a busy map on the screen. At least it's more consistent with Google's other apps. You can grab the update from APK Mirror below if you don't want to wait.
Source: AndroidPolice
