‘Most Android phones are crap’

“The worst thing about Android phones isn’t the crapware, though. It’s the ‘skins’ – the modifications that phone companies make to Android’s most basic features, including the dialing app, contacts, email, the calendar, the notification system, and the layout of the home screen. If you get the Play edition of these phones, you’ll see Google’s version of each of these apps, and you’ll come away impressed by Google’s tasteful, restrained, utilitarian design sense. But if, like most people, you get your phone for $199 from a carrier, you’ll find everything in it is a frightful mess.” Android’s biggest problem (lack of updates is part of this). I got my Oppo Find 5 yesterday, and after only a few hours with the official, skinned firmware, I ran crying to the officially supported CyanogenMod 10.1 (Android 4.2.2). Stock (CM is mostly stock) is such a beautiful and elegant operating system – OEM skins are like screaming kids eating popcicles in front of you on a line to a theme park ride. Whenever someone hands me a stock Samsung or HTC, I die a little inside. Those guys simply have zero clue about software.

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