Bad skins hurting Android's reputation?

[Tig Bitties]

I thought the original point of the GPE program, was for each manufacturers flagship phone, to offer a stock vanilla Android version.

So right now there should be a Samsung Galaxy S5 GPE, a LG G3 GPE, a Sony Z2 GPE, etc...

But I think that's what the upcoming ' Silver ' program due out mid next year is supposed to be doing ? Make these phones more widespread available, in Carrier stores, and sold at Best Buy, etc...

I LOVE my HTC One M8 converted to GPE, if I upgrade or change phones the only phones that even remotely interests would be;

- OnePlus One maybe
- Nexus 6 this Fall for sure, as long as a good size battery
- HTC One M9 GPE next Spring

That's it

 

[gotluck]

I am not sure, the continued lack of a GPE S5 is concerning..

I hope the program continues in some fashion. I like the goodies GPE can have over nexus. Camera, sd card, removable and/or larger battery, ir blaster, htc build. I am up for paying more for those hardware components over a nexus

 

[Stuntman06]

My old Android was an HTC Desire Z running Froyo/GB. My current Android phone is a Samsung Galaxy S3 running KK. I found that both HTC Sense and Samsung TouchWiz has some cool features that I liked.

Sense had the best widgets. The Sense Twitter widget and the Sense clock (not the standard one you see all the time, but another analogue one I prefer) were better than any other such similar widgets. I had to find substitutes for my GS3 that I feel were not as good as the Sense versions. Also, Sense makes merging contacts very easy. It scans your contacts lists and merges them with contacts from other sources like FB and Google. It asks you first to see if you want to merge them first. You select yes and it merges them. You don't have to manually go through your contact list like in TW.

The TW feature that I use the most is voice commands. I can turn off my alarm, for instance, just by saying, "stop." I could snooze it by saying, "snooze." It's very convenient, especially if you have to plug in your phone in an outlet far away from your bed. The power controls in the notification area is also very handy. I often toggle my auto-rotate depending if I am using my phone lying sideways or not.

My experience with my GS3 has been very good. I've been using it for 2 years and plan to use it for another before looking for a new phone.

I use an iPhone for work and also have an iPad Mini for home. I find that iOS and Android are just different and have different strengths and weeknesses. There are things I like better on each platform.

 

[VulchR]

Can't change my TV with an iPhone so no thanks.

I can.

 

[0dev]

Yup.

Touchwiz/KitKat destroyed my Note 3 experience. Great hardware but over Android after this last experience.

I gave them another try after an average experience on my S3 but that started to lag bad towards the end of life so I gave the Note 3 a shot.

Everything was great until KitKat and then there was random restarts, terrible battery life, and just varying issues.

I came to Android from iOS and enjoyed the customizable ability but I can't stand the inconsistencies of the operating system that come out of nowhere.

Yes, I can root or whatever or buy a non-Samsung device as I have heard stock Android is a totally different experience but I am leaving for a bit. I may be back though down the road with a non-Samsung device.

That's not KitKat, that's Samsung. Just flash CM on your Note 3 and it will be fine. I did the same for a friend just a couple days ago. Official Samsung firmware for her Note 3 was buggy as **** so I put CM M8 on there and now it flies and runs fine.

 

[0dev]

I thought the original point of the GPE program, was for each manufacturers flagship phone, to offer a stock vanilla Android version.

So right now there should be a Samsung Galaxy S5 GPE, a LG G3 GPE, a Sony Z2 GPE, etc...

But I think that's what the upcoming ' Silver ' program due out mid next year is supposed to be doing ? Make these phones more widespread available, in Carrier stores, and sold at Best Buy, etc...

I LOVE my HTC One M8 converted to GPE, if I upgrade or change phones the only phones that even remotely interests would be;

- OnePlus One maybe
- Nexus 6 this Fall for sure, as long as a good size battery
- HTC One M9 GPE next Spring

That's it

I really hope so. Currently GPE devices are only sold in the US and in the Play Store. Google should at least expand availability to the UK and Europe. They leave other countries out in the cold for years before bringing new services and devices to them very often. They didn't even provide the "okay Google" voice command outside the US for months. Why? No justification for that at all. They just only care about America.

 

[Mr Rabbit]

Based on my experience I definitely think they are.

Prior to my Nexus 5 the only Android experience I had was a few minutes here and there with a friend's older HTC, a friend's Galaxy S3 and probably an hour or so playing with the Galaxy S4 and S5 in Best Buy. Before the Nexus my only smart phones had been the iPhone, of which I've owned every generation.

Based on my pre-Nexus experience I thought the Android OS' was very clunky unintuitive. Every action seemed to have a bit of lag to it, the experience in one app was different from another app, there was no uniformity, etc. But, from what I understood, you could change everything. Not the best option for probably 80-90% of consumers, but it's an option.

Anyway, after seeing flame war after flame war from both sides for years I found myself in a situation where I could pick up an Android phone to use until the iPhone 6 comes out, at which time I may (which has been my plan) or may not upgrade. After doing lots of reading and talking with friends I chose the Nexus 5. It's specs were nice and whatnot but I was sold on the fact that it's as close to Apple and the iPhone as one could really expect from the Android world, it's Google's baby with the most vanilla Android version.

My experience with it has been much different and much better than what I had experience before. Little to no lag is apparent outside of the camera app, a lot more behaviors are found across multiple applications, layout within stock apps is more uniform, etc. It feels a bit more intuitive, which was the biggest hurdle. Going back and playing with a Galaxy S5 after owning my Nexus I still feel like the Galaxy has a clunky & unintuitive feel. That alone has cemented the idea that OP was getting at. Now that I've got a good feel for the OS I can't blame the odd feeling from other phones/skins on my ignorance of the OS in general, I can instead blame it on poor design from the individual manufacturers.

With that said, at this point I'm still planning on upgrading to the iPhone 6 when it's released. I enjoy my Nexus but every few days I find another missing feature (compared to iOS), or significantly changed feature thanks to a software update, etc. Within a day or so of purchase the camera app looked entirely different than it did when I first launched it. Just a week or two ago I noticed I was mistyping a lot of characters, thanks to a keyboard updating rolling out. Etc. I realize that many consider this a development platform for Google, but it still seems crazy to me that as a new user I can't rely on the core apps/functions remaining static or seeing slow changes rather than these major changes. I mean really, the keyboard layout was altered. I can't think of any good reasons for this.

 

[mrex]

Within a day or so of purchase the camera app looked entirely different than it did when I first launched it. Just a week or two ago I noticed I was mistyping a lot of characters, thanks to a keyboard updating rolling out. Etc. I realize that many consider this a development platform for Google, but it still seems crazy to me that as a new user I can't rely on the core apps/functions remaining static or seeing slow changes rather than these major changes. I mean really, the keyboard layout was altered. I can't think of any good reasons for this.

Why dont you look at first what have changed before updating? If you dont like the new features, dont update then.. or install some other apk for the keyboard for example.

 

[Shanghaichica]

I agree with the poster who said that they find stock android bland and lacking in features.

Also the general public are not interested in stock android phones. To the general public Samsung=Android and Samsung sell more phone than all the other OEMs combined. Even if you take the S4 alone it sold more than the HTC One, the LG G2, The Sony Z1 and the nexus 5 combined.

So as much as the purists, techies and anti Samsung brigade want to moan on, the general public appears to like Touch wiz and plastic Samsung phones. The sales figures speak for themselves.

 

[Oohara]

I agree with the poster who said that they find stock android bland and lacking in features.

Also the general public are not interested in stock android phones. To the general public Samsung=Android and Samsung sell more phone than all the other OEMs combined. Even if you take the S4 alone it sold more than the HTC One, the LG G2, The Sony Z1 and the nexus 5 combined.

So as much as the purists, techies and anti Samsung brigade want to moan on, the general public appears to like Touch wiz and plastic Samsung phones. The sales figures speak for themselves.

I honestly think most people buy Samsung because of the marketing. I don't know how many times I've heard: "Oh, it's not an iPhone? So it's a Galaxy then?" regardless of which Android I've been speaking.

I'm currently looking at new Android phones with my girlfriend (currently has iP4S). She's not into tech but wants a bigger screen, split screen, SD card, and some other Android features I've shown her. At first she was going to go for Samsung because that was all she knew of. After I've shown her some options though, TouchWiz is a No for her. Currently it stands between the G3 and M8.

And I think she's quite a typical non-techie customer. They go for Samsung because that's all they know of, and they never bother to go one level deeper in their research because phones as such are not an interest.

Regarding the skin issue, I think it swings both ways. Skins may initially make the phone look more attractive, and vanilla Android perhaps a bit unexciting. But once you do get to comparing, I think at least TouchWiz does Samsung a disservice with its gaudy look and overwhelming heap of settings. The LG and HTC skins I find quite OK by comparison.

 

[Klyster]

Android wouldn't have a much of a reputation if it wasn't for the so called, "bad skins".

The non pure android devices put android on the map in the first place.

 

[Vegastouch]

I liked many things about TW, just not the launcher so i used Nova instead. No big deal. I liked the extra things that TW had but i didnt use the motion gestures.

Using a Nexus now, i do miss a couple things on TW but im used to not having them.

I can use my Nexus as a remote on my DirecTV with an app but it wont control volume because it doesnt have a IR blaster but everything else works ok. It works with my wireless network that my recievers are on but again, the volume control needs the IR blaster. Maybe the Nexus 6 will have one.

Id buy another Samsung Galaxy phone as i loved my GS3, but im more interested in the next Nexus than i am the next Galaxy phone and yes, price has a lot to do with it. And not having all that bloatware is another.

 

[EmaDaCuz]

Definitely yes. At least in my case. As much as I try to love Android, I often think that I wasted my money buying a device that doesn't suit me.
Maybe I am wrong and the interface is designed to be extremely intuitive, but I find it... well... not ergonomic. Everything looks unpolished and unfinished, icons are meh, there is always some lag, horrible lag when i try to do something while an app is downloading.

I am not a phone fan, so I won't change it now. But, for the first time in my life, I hope that a tool -in this case the phone- breaks down so I can replace it with something else -an iPhone, in this case. Ah, I can't sell my phone because the reselling values of Android terminals is redonkulous.

 

[0000757]

I've so far converted two different handsets to GPE devices, my old HTC One M7 and my current Motorola Moto-G. I love the GPE program and the clever people that make it possible to convert retail handsets to GPE ones, especially as they aren't available worldwide.

I love the GPE program too, except there's no way to get them on CDMA networks

 

[Mr Rabbit]

Why dont you look at first what have changed before updating? If you dont like the new features, dont update then.. or install some other apk for the keyboard for example.

Out of the box it updates automatically. I've finally gone in, following the keyboard update, and set it to prompt for updates rather than installing them without warning.

 

[Savor]

I think it depends on the bloat and features an OEM adds onto the skin. I think some features actually gives ideas to Google like the KitKat gallery app copying HTC's Zoe gallery.

I am experiencing MIUI for the first time and while I'm not into theming like before, it does add replay value in case of boredom. I can have an HTC One or Nexus boot animation, Xperia lockscreen, etc. I did use the MIUI icons pack when I had my Nexus One, but currently trying to avoid the iOS/early TouchWiz rounded corners and cartoonish icon look that Huawei and Xiaomi try to emulate.

Still, there are some nice features that MIUI skin that isn't just catered for theming. There is settings feature that can wake your phone using the volume buttons with no root required. It can show your data speed on top. It has a great security app and battery optimization features and virus scans. It has a Do Not Disturb mode similar to Motorola Assist where certain times calls and texts will be silenced. I even fell in love with many software features from HTC's Sense 5 like the Zoe gallery with the ability to trim videos and BlinkFeed. And I loved the LG lockscreen ever since the Optimus G. Many local brands also have features like wave to unlock, voice to unlock, tapping a breathing LED light to wake, etc.

I think customization is a great thing. Not all the best ideas come from Google and they would copy it for their next Android update eventually similar to Apple copying ideas from the jailbreak development team and other platforms.