Back in Android's early days, the system's open-source generosity offered a huge advantage to phone manufacturers. In the Android Eclair and Froyo eras, there was palatable whimsy in interface design. Owning an Android phone was fun, and manufacturers developed identity by interpreting the system in their own special ways.
But the modern Android experience is a mess of unnecessary customizations, ugly designs, and bloated app drawers. In short, Android’s biggest problem in 2018 may be Android itself.
But it never had to be that way. For years, Google has been trying to show phone makers that its pure vision of Android is best (anyone remember Google Play edition phones?), even going so far as to demonstrate stock Android’s superiority on its own Nexus and Pixel handsets. Yet still, nearly every Android phone uses a version of Android that is dramatically different than the one Google provides in the Android Open Source Project. And for the most part, that means slow updates, wonky performance, and an overall lousy experience.
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