Ever since Google acquired Motorola Mobility all Android users were hoping that Motorola would now churn out Android devices running Stock Android OS and ditch their MotoBlur UI for good but that didn’t happen, sadly. Many users were disappointed and wanted a complete stock Android experience from Moto as well because after all Google owned the company now. Recently, Moto’s SVP of Product, Rick Osterloh touched base on the whole Android customization and skinning, it seems that custom skins won’t be going away any soon. This is what Osterloh had to say about the situation.
“Going forward, we’re going to try to be as close to the base as we can be, because we think that’s the right thing for users. We think users also want fast upgrades and upgrades for their phones over the long haul, so we’re going to be focus on that as well. It’s a little bit different than what a lot of OEMs are doing and certainly what Motorola did in the past, but going forward that’s going to be our strategy.”
That’s not all, Osterloh also added the following answer.
“We are going to have to do some customization. Our partners sometimes want customizations. Our interest is to make [our UI] as close to Android as possible and generally we negotiate somewhere in the middle.”
Who are the partners? you might ask, well in this case we think Verizon is the one to blame as all Motorola devices are branded as “Droids” on Verizon wireless and come with a custom skin that according to Osterloh, is Verizon’s fault. The new RAZR devices all come with custom skin very close to Stock Android but still it comes filled with Verizon’s bloatware and customization by the Carrier as well.
Carriers also play an important role in delivering the updates to the devices because the updates are first tested thoroughly on the network. It’s about time Google got serious about the updates and took matters into their own hands to deliver updates in a timely fashion.
Consumers want to see at least an option in future Android devices that gives them a choice to choose either Custom skin or Stock Android UI to be used. This would be the perfect feature for future Android devices by different OEMs.
What do you think? Are Carriers actually responsible for bloating our devices with crap?
