Comments on: You Do Have A Choice: Android UI Flavors

By: Jason Norment

Jason Norment — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 15:32:01 +0000

@Kris: Your absolutely right. Of course, when looking at their products they don’t mention the official name too often so I stuck with the more “consumer friendly” name for the Samsung devices.

By: Jason Norment

Jason Norment — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 23:55:41 +0000

I wrote this article trying to give a perspective from the main three manufacturers that produce custom UI’s for their devices. With a stock UI, there is nothing to compare! When running stock, your options are only limited by the version of Android you run (1.5, 1.6, 2.1, etc…). When consumers are faced with these custom UI’s the problem occurs how to tell one from the other. Some users will in fact use the added software available from the manufacturer, some don’t. It’s simple a matter of choice. Of course, if you don’t like what’s on the phone you can always change it! Thats the beauty of custom ROMs (and Android as a whole). @Tenkely, you bring up a good point. My assumption is that Gingerbread will bring some light to this issue and hopefully should help streamline updates and the availability of apps in the market.

Everyone, thank you for the response so far.

By: Joe

Joe — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 23:15:01 +0000

Stock all the way. Hate those custom UI’s.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 23:02:41 +0000

None of the above! I’ve got a Moto Droid and I’m so very happy I don’t have one of these UI replacements.

My only problem now….I’m going to be replacing the phone in November and I want another phone WITHOUT these crappy UI ‘enhancements’.

Leave the UI as it is and I’ll install apps if I want to change it.

By: Tenkely

Tenkely — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 22:58:57 +0000

I see you forgot stock, or Vanilla in your cute little analysis there. Hands down it’s the best flavor, unless of course you want a bunch of useless crap all over your phone that you cannot uninstall. Everything a manufacturer UI offers you can find in similar fashion from in the Market. Not to mention the slowed down updates and extra resource demand manufacturer UIs give you. In still advocate for a true choice; When buying a phone it should come stock but give you the option to download the proprietary UI for the device. That way you only have yourself to blame once you do it.

By: Jason Norment

Jason Norment — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 21:04:50 +0000

It’s just the way the image is displayed. The display of the DEFY is only 3.7″ while the Evo is 4.3″. Here’s how the devices compare in size:

Evo: 4.8 x 2.6 x 0.5 inches
DEFY: 4.2 x 2.3 x 0.5 inches

http://www.motorola.com/Consumers/XW-EN/Consumer-Products-and-Services/Mobile-Phones/ci.MOTOROLA-DEFY-XW-EN.alt

http://www.htc.com/us/products/evo-sprint?view=1-1&sort=0#tech-specs

By: Kris

Kris — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 21:00:26 +0000

The Galaxy S UI is actually called TouchWiz 3.

By: Danny Perez

Danny Perez — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 20:50:27 +0000

The motorola defy has a bigger screen than the evo!!!!!!!!!!

By: brinox

brinox — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 17:37:05 +0000

how about none of the above – i use Launcher Pro Plus and have never ever looked back to using anything other than a stock android phone with that home screen replacement.

the apps that both samsung and HTC have replaced on the phone (mind you, without the option of replacing the original vanilla android applications including the phone/call log/contacts/favorites, calendar, clock/alarm clock and other assorted applications) leave much to be desired. Many developers are increasingly slow to add functionality into their apps (including some prominent home screen replacement apps such as Home++) for these replaced applications.

One example i ran into was Home++ and its favorites shortcut on the scrollable bottom dock. on SenseUI it failed to launch the HTC flavored version of the favorites in the contacts app. This inability to restore Android’s original design from Google is very much akin to the commonly referenced problem that has plagued android from the beginning: fragmentation.

Without the ability to have a seamless layer between android and the customizations created and installed by the manufacturer/carrier, the burden on developers will only compound as more and more players enter the arena in this fashion.

By: zenaxe

zenaxe — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 17:29:40 +0000

Having the UI tightly coupled to the OS is RETARDED. I wish Android manufacturers would stop doing it because it slows down OS updates for devices. Android should be like UNIX: the OS provides the framework and it comes with a stock default but the user selects the desktop/UI if they want an alternate and it doesn’t matter what hardware they have, they can pick any desktop they want.

I’m glad I got a Moto Droid 1 since I can just load an alternative home/launcher app and widgets and get a customized experience without having deal with some manufacturer enforced variant of the OS.

By: Originalme8

Originalme8 — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 17:27:47 +0000

I like the stock Android “skin”, with a little bit of Launcher Pro sprinkled in, MOTO BLUR and HTC Sense suck.