For most of smartphone users who use Android get to enjoy them in various different flavors like Samsung’s Touchwiz UI, HTC’s Sense, Sony xPeria Launcher, Asus Zen UI etc.But most of these make some visual changes and add some default apps for phone dialer, contacts, message, mail, calendar, gallery. And for those who prefer the ‘vanilla’ or ‘pure’ android flavor get to use them in Nexus (now replaced by Pixel) branded phones, Moto and Android One based phones.
But nowadays the lower and middle segment smartphone market is saturated with Chinese manufacturers who have a complete different flavor of Android for you to experience preferring them to name it as a OS like Color OS, Fun Touch OS etc mimicking the User interface of Apple’s IOS with app drawer being removed and the colors / iconography resembling more of IOS than Android’s material UI. So I thought I would list some of them here with their official url’s so you can see and decide for yourself – is this the flavor of Android you like ??
- MIUI – Developed by Xiaomi and has support for other phones too. Currently based on Android Marshmallow (6.0)
- Color OS – Developed by OPPO.
- EMUI – Developed by Huawei for their range of smartphones including Honor branded phones.
- FunTouch OS – Developed by Vivo for their range of smartphones (The link leads to the chinese version of the page. You can use google translate to translate to your language)
- Amigo OS – Developed by Gionee for their range of smartphones (The link leads to the chinese version of the page. You can use google translate to translate to your language)
I’ve tried to cover the various brands available here in India. I would like to hear if there are other flavors of Android you like, please post in the comments section here.