I concur, I think the successor flat design trend has nailed on reducing the styling visual clutter and keeping the user just focused on the "substance" from the app UI whilst keeping the UI itself minimal with no distractions.
The problem is that minimalism and maximalism in UI design exist on a kind of horseshoe curve. Extremely maximalist UI is indeed distracting, but past a certain point of pruning so is minimalism, just in a different way. Instead of having your eyes drawn away from the content by flashy widgets, you’re poking and swiping to find the function you’re looking for, like someone feeling around trying to find the exit in a pitch dark room.
