Anyone disliking the visual appearance of stock android?

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Mario007

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So I've been researching into the ROMs for my Xperia Arc S recently and it seems almost everyone in the Android dev community is obsessed with getting stock android on their device. It seems to be the cool and hip thing to do, with the skins being always laughed at. Now when I took up my mom's nexus 7 I found the UI on stock android to be quite dreadful as opposed to the Sony UI I've been used to on my Xperia. The UI is very inconsistent and many of the apps and simply looks like it's trying to be too techy and future-like.

Can anyone explain to me why are people falling over themselves to get stock android on their phones? For me UI looks are an incredibly important part of the phone experience so I'm trying to find a ROM that is stable, work great and has a nice look but all I can find are ROM based on stock like Cyanamogenmod.
 
Stock Android has far less bloatware and you can still get custom launchers with fancy effects like Apex and Next Launcher 3D
 
I personally think it's the nicest looking mobile OS and that you are a bit crazy for thinking it's unattractive, but to each their own. I haven't seen any of the Sony variants, but I think a big part of people wanting stock Android is because the skins used by Samsung, HTC, etc. look worse than stock.
 
Usually stock means the most clean version of Android, a.k.a. the fastest. At least, that's what I understand from the ROM flashing business. When I first rooted my Vodafone branded phone and threw CM on there the thing felt like a new phone, because it was much faster.

I don't really see a difference with CM on my Nexus 10 and Android that came with the tablet. I'm sure there are many other ROMs out there that aren't a lot like CM.
 
I prefer stock. Every time I pick up my friends G3 I feel like it was designed by someone that didn't know when enough was enough.
 
DonMigs85 said:
Stock Android has far less bloatware and you can still get custom launchers with fancy effects like Apex and Next Launcher 3D
Click to expand...
But if you go with stock (ie less bloatware) and then put a launcher on top of it it'll probably make it as slow as with bloatware.
cajunator said:
I like the stock look. Never bothered to change it on either Galaxy S2 or Galaxy S4.
Click to expand...
Do you mean Touchwiz, since you say you never changed it?
Malvolio said:
I prefer stock. Every time I pick up my friends G3 I feel like it was designed by someone that didn't know when enough was enough.
Click to expand...
I've heard not so good things about Touhwiz visually to be honest. It has some nice functionality improvements though.
 
It's not the sexiest looking OS by far, but stock android runs the best. I tried my friends galaxy s3 and it looked so damn clunky and felt slower than my hacked hp touchpad...
 
I like it a lot, both in terms of looks and performance; much more than either HTC's or Samsung's custom things. And it's easy enough to modify so it looks exactly how I want it to look.

Edit: I do use Apex as my launcher though, which has only a few graphic tweaks in comparison with Stock.
 
I ran stock on my old HTC Incredible and it was nice, although I'll probably keep Sense 5 on my One. I haven't heard a compelling argument to switch away from it.
 
Mario007 said:
So I've been researching into the ROMs for my Xperia Arc S recently and it seems almost everyone in the Android dev community is obsessed with getting stock android on their device. It seems to be the cool and hip thing to do, with the skins being always laughed at. Now when I took up my mom's nexus 7 I found the UI on stock android to be quite dreadful as opposed to the Sony UI I've been used to on my Xperia. The UI is very inconsistent and many of the apps and simply looks like it's trying to be too techy and future-like.

Can anyone explain to me why are people falling over themselves to get stock android on their phones? For me UI looks are an incredibly important part of the phone experience so I'm trying to find a ROM that is stable, work great and has a nice look but all I can find are ROM based on stock like Cyanamogenmod.
Click to expand...

Going "stock" has more to do with a lack of bloat than anything else. As others have already said, there are launchers and skins you can install and there a billion ways of customizing the look...Have you been to the android customization thread here on GAF?
 
3rdman said:
Going "stock" has more to do with a lack of bloat than anything else. As others have already said, there are launchers and skins you can install and there a billion ways of customizing the look...Have you been to the android customization thread here on GAF?
Click to expand...
I'll go have a look in the thread, but I don't have much time to spend on customising my phone (unfortunately), that's why I was looking for a ROM with a nice skin already built in. Again, wouldn't putting a launcher on top of stock lead you back to the slowness of the skins with bloatware?
 
Pazuzu9 said:
I've never owned an Android phone, but I've read this comment so many times and not really understood - surely there are basic skins that don't affect performance at all?
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A stock setup is only really available with the Nexus phones (from Google)...all the other manufactures write their own launchers and apps that usually drag performance down.

The commercial for the new HTC phone shows this pretty well...they advertise their launcher so that "everything you want" is right there on the home screen and you don't have to "dig for it". Great, but all that crap also uses up a ton of data and battery. Stock is essentially "bare bones".
 
Mario007 said:
Again, wouldn't putting a launcher on top of stock lead you back to the slowness of the skins with bloatware?
Click to expand...

basically it depends on what launcher you use and what graphical effects are enabled and what the performance of your phone is.

Chalk another up for stock here. GNex Verizon REPRESENT.
 
Mario007 said:
I'll go have a look in the thread, but I don't have much time to spend on customising my phone (unfortunately), that's why I was looking for a ROM with a nice skin already built in. Again, wouldn't putting a launcher on top of stock lead you back to the slowness of the skins with bloatware?
Click to expand...

By using a 3rd party launcher, you are simply replacing the stock launcher so it doesn't really change the systems drag until you start adding a lot of (constantly running) apps and widgets or effects.
 
I have an HTC One that I'd like to get onto stock Android. Some of the HTC stuff is really nice, but I've always preferred stock Android.
 
3rdman said:
A stock setup is only really available with the Nexus phones (from Google)...all the other manufactures write their own launchers and apps that usually drag performance down.

The commercial for the new HTC phone shows this pretty well...they advertise their launcher so that "everything you want" is right there on the home screen and you don't have to "dig for it". Great, but all that crap also uses up a ton of data and battery. Stock is essentially "bare bones".
Click to expand...
Oh right. So there's no such thing as a basic skin that just changes the look of the icons and clock or whatever, it has to be an elaborate change from other manufacturers with loads of performance problems?
 
Really? I'm pretty fond of stock android myself..

android-4-23.jpg
Click to expand...

(Not my image)
 
I got Touchwiz on my S3. It looks kind of cheap and hokey but functionally I think it's great. Otherwise I've only had stock (2.3?) on the original Moto Droid.
 
Mario007 said:
So I've been researching into the ROMs for my Xperia Arc S recently and it seems almost everyone in the Android dev community is obsessed with getting stock android on their device. It seems to be the cool and hip thing to do, with the skins being always laughed at. Now when I took up my mom's nexus 7 I found the UI on stock android to be quite dreadful as opposed to the Sony UI I've been used to on my Xperia. The UI is very inconsistent and many of the apps and simply looks like it's trying to be too techy and future-like.

Can anyone explain to me why are people falling over themselves to get stock android on their phones? For me UI looks are an incredibly important part of the phone experience so I'm trying to find a ROM that is stable, work great and has a nice look but all I can find are ROM based on stock like Cyanamogenmod.
Click to expand...

well, they have the source for stock android and anything they do with 3rd party skins are just hacks, so that's a big reason why many devs focus on stock.
 
Mario007 said:
Again, wouldn't putting a launcher on top of stock lead you back to the slowness of the skins with bloatware?
Click to expand...

Not necessarily. Apex for example isn't bloated at all, if anything I think it runs as smoothly as the stock launcher. For the record, when using an alternative launcher, you're not running it "on top" of the original one, but actually replacing it. So, it greatly depends on what Launcher you are installing. There's a couple of them out there (hideous-looking ones, IMO), that have ridiculous 3D effects for just about every little thing that will definitely slow down your phone. Others just feature a couple of graphic/behavior adjustments (transparent background for the app directory, being able to hide apps from your app directory, modify the grid size for widget placing on the home screen, stuff like that), and have practically no impact on your performance.
 
Xperia's skin is probably one of the better ones, TouchWiz etc. all seem a bit over the top to me.

Stock looks great, but I prefer just customising stuff from a launcher, there's so much choice its unreal.
 
Agree with you OP, but at least on the internet we are in the minority. As a matter of fact I'm not a fan of stock Android at all. I prefer Sense. The UI is just so disjointed to me with almost any stock Android or theme, etc. Just a personal preference for the entire experience to a bit more cohesive visually.
 
So Touchwiz is what comes with the Galaxy S4 right? If so, I think it's pretty cool and it seems to run fast. I've never tried Stock android though. Are you able to switch over to Stock Android using an AT&T Galaxy S4?
 
StickSoldier said:
So Touchwiz is what comes with the Galaxy S4 right? If so, I think it's pretty cool and it seems to run fast. I've never tried Stock android though. Are you able to switch over to Stock Android using an AT&T Galaxy S4?
Click to expand...

My wife is enjoying Touchwiz on the Galaxy S4. It does have a lot of cool tweaks and tricks in there. We used to use Launcher Pro on top of Touchwiz on our Galaxy S2s, but it's not smooth at all on the GS4 so we left it as is this time around. I think she misses Launcher Pro though, anybody have any good alternatives?

Sense on the HTC One is pretty nice, I'll admit. I don't have any real complaints about it, I'm just a big fan of the stock look and feel.
 
My Galaxy S3 is fairly clunky right now, definitely not smooth and running 4.1.2 and I've finally decided I want to root it and put on a new ROM.

The problem is, there are so many choices out there... CM10 looks to be a solid option, but I've heard a lot of talk about AOKP, XperianZe, Sentinel etc being better options.

I've also just happened across this - http://en.miui.com/features.php - looks stunning (more iOS-like which is good for me) - any drawbacks to using Miui?

Thanks :)
 
I always thought the point of Android was so you didn't have a shitty 5x5 block of colored app tiles.

I put a launcher on every phone I've owned just so I can customize it so it doesn't look like anything else out there

Here's mine now:

Screenshot_2013-05-15-21-49-19_zps2ebd5f77.png
Click to expand...
 
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