Devices that run stock Android or something VERY close

Domingo

Domingo

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Just curious, which devices run a stock (or really, really close to stock) version of Android? I'm looking for as little bloat and custom apps/launchers as possible.

Obviously the Nexus and Pixel phones do.
The Essential Phone is supposed to be really close.
Lenovo/Moto devices are pretty close as long as you don't buy them from Verizon directly.

What are some others? If the device IS using a mildly custom launcher or apps - I'd also be curious to know how far they deviate from stock and what the differences are.
 
Do you absolutely HAVE to have a brand new top of the line device?

If you want the best device on the market - as of today - that can and does and will allow you to run custom ROMs (and note that what I just said is basically true and I'm not pointing out every specific component in the device itself aka the camera, the display, etc etc), look no further than the OnePlus 5 because out of the box it'll have an unlockable bootloader - and unlocking the bootloader doesn't even void the warranty by doing so either unlike every other manufacturer on the planet does with their devices - and there will be a community of custom ROMs and all sorts of customization very fast indeed. It's already started:

https://forum.xda-developers.com/oneplus-5

and it will not take long to see AOSP/Lineage/etc ROMs with custom recoveries, themes, basically everything possible. If you don't necessarily need the very best hardware on the market today but still want something very current then the OnePlus 3T would fit the bill I suppose, there are other devices as well but basically anything from OnePlus works since they offer out of the box potential to unlock the bootloader and that's like the #1 concern with respect to running proper custom ROMs and other aspects. Sure rooting devices can get you places but without that unlockable bootloader you'd be forced to using the stock kernel forever and that's not really a great thing overall, it's functional but still pretty limited in scope for potential.

Essential phone is like $350+ too much by comparison, and just not something I personally would ever bother with myself. Nothing wrong with the Pixel devices except a rather lame form factor and physical design (personal opinion) and of course they're too expensive for what they bring to the table (not just my own opinion but shared by many many people). Motorola devices aren't all that bad, just a tad bit too expensive for most of them and because of their pretty much guaranteed locked bootloaders they're not going to be worth much - yes some of them can be bootloader unlocked but doing so voids the warranty instantly so it has to be a consideration.

LG devices are still a potential I suppose but most folks avoid them nowadays because of past issues with bootloops, etc, and that's understandable. The G4 is still my fave smartphone ever and I'm always on the lookout for another one at a great price, last one I had was $12.50 and was the T-Mobile variant with an unlockable bootloader and I sold it for a pretty damned good profit but I miss it big time already. :D

There's tons of almost no-name devices out there from tons of various Chinese manufacturers, one I saw the other day was this one:

http://www.mazemobile.com/maze-alpha.html

Now, at first glance it looks awesome, has a "bezel-less" display (I hate that term because it's obvious there ARE bezels so I suppose saying it's got less than typical devices is acceptable), has moderately decent specs but some folks will balk at the MediaTek octa core SoC on it (really it works fine in comparison to Qualcomm Snapdragon hardware, it's not that bad overall), 4000 mAh battery (very nice but no idea on the actual battery life), 4/6GB of DDR4 (nice), 64GB/128GB storage (nice for the pricing), 1920x1080 display panel (because 1080p is a video format), USB-C (using USB 2.0), Gorilla Glass 4, yada yada yada bing bang boom all in a package for $179.99 (4GB/64GB model) till June 30th then regularly priced at $219.99. No idea if a community for support and custom ROMs will appear for it but I'd say more than likely it'll happen. It appears to be running a fairly lightly skinned AOSP build but there's no confirmation of that just yet.

There's hundreds of potential devices out there nowadays and later today there'll be a dozen more, tomorrow another dozen, etc. It's tough to keep up for sure but if you spend time doing research you'll find something that'll work for you.
 
Nokia uses stock Android. Considering how smooth even Nokia 3 is, I can't wait to see Nokia 7/8/9.
 
I love pure Android and there isn't anything outside of pixel with it that doesn't have some sort of major flaw. I use LG (currently G6) and it's pretty close, but still some bloat. Can be removed though with a little work last i looked.
 
HTC's Android is much better than stock Android in my opinion. I got much better battery life and smoothness out of HTC phones than I did in Pixel...
 
My opinion is that only the Moto phones meet the criteria of "almost stock Android".

Samsung is the heaviest skin, least like stock Android. And the most lag (controversial statement there).

LG somewhere in the middle.

OnePlus and HTC skins are lightweight and very good in terms of performance.
 
Imo one plus or moto phones are what you are after and they both offer phones in all $ segments
 
Vengance_01 said:
Imo one plus or moto phones are what you are after and they both offer phones in all $ segments
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Well, OnePlus only has one phone on the market today: the OnePlus 5 and because of the pricing at either $479 or $539 depending on the RAM/storage choice it's considered to be a mid-range device even in spite of having "flagship" specs on some aspects of the hardware so, not sure which $ segments you're speaking of whereas Lenovo has multiple models as usual from the low end budget Moto E models through the Moto G then the Moto G Play and the Moto Z Play up through the Moto X Play and Moto Z Force and then Moto Z Droid with pricing from the $150-ish to the $700 range so... well, you get the point, right? :D
 
Tiberian said:
Well, OnePlus only has one phone on the market today: the OnePlus 5 and because of the pricing at either $479 or $539 depending on the RAM/storage choice it's considered to be a mid-range device even in spite of having "flagship" specs on some aspects of the hardware so, not sure which $ segments you're speaking of whereas Lenovo has multiple models as usual from the low end budget Moto E models through the Moto G then the Moto G Play and the Moto Z Play up through the Moto X Play and Moto Z Force and then Moto Z Droid with pricing from the $150-ish to the $700 range so... well, you get the point, right? :D
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true but you can get there other phones on swappa :)
 
Yah, there's a mad rush of people dumping the OnePlus 3 and 3T right now to get the OnePlus 5, I can't really see why people are doing it to be honest. I mean I can, but I don't think the 5 is a big enough upgrade over the 3T which is not even that old and the funny part is the 5 is already getting a bit of negativity thrown at it for the camera so, it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest to see a OnePlus 5T or whatever aka "version 2.0" out within 6-8 months. They didn't even upgrade the display panel in the 5, it's not just another 1920x1080 panel (because 1080 is a video format, not a display resolution), it's the exact same Samsung panel as confirmed by a few review sites using AIDA64 to pull the device ID from the panel's controller.

OnePlus has shown they're willing to do that with the 3 to the 3T jump, I wouldn't put it past them to do this again. And the prices people are asking for the used 3 and 3T are a bit crazy, I don't care if it was protected by Adamantium and Vibranium laced cases and screen protectors, if it ain't brand spankin' new in the box never opened and never turned on since leaving the factory then it's used and it's worth about 66% of the original retail price for a given more or less.

Also, if DxO itself partnered with OnePlus to make that camera better, why isn't there a DxO review of it up yet? One would think if it was truly as good as they'd tried to say it would be that DxO would have had an absolutely fucking radioactively glowing review of it already posted, on the day it started selling even to boost the interest in the OnePlus 5, right?

That does make sense from a sales and marketing perspective, right? ;)

So far none of the reviews have really praised the camera in the OnePlus 5 so, it does make one wonder what exactly is going on with that aspect of that smartphone.
 
My Moto X Pure has been a total headache over the last 6 months and support has been terrible. Nothing but shills typing in broken English and radio silence from Lenovo themselves. I'm definitely not going in that direction again.

I have noticed a ton of new phones popping up and that was one reason I posted this. I'm not familiar with most of them or any of the brands that don't have a strong presence in the US.

Can't say I care much about custom ROMs or anything like that. My phone needs to be somewhat bulletproof as far as functionality goes, so I've got no motivation to tinker with that. Hence one more reason I'm interested in vanilla Android. I want regular updates and as little nonsense as possible. I'm pretty tightly integrated into the Google-verse at this point, so I don't want or need anything outside of that. I don't need this phone to last forever, but I don't want to be screwed in 18 months (like I am now) either.
 
If you truly want regular updates and you want a bulletproof rock steady stable device that isn't necessarily busting the damned wallet (aka the Google Pixel), I can't recommend anything but the BlackBerry KEYone at this point, or one of the DTEK models (which are slightly more expensive than the KEYone itself). Of course such a device is tired into the BlackBerry ecosphere very nicely but it's not 100% all BlackBerry all the time as it is an Android device with tight Google Play services integration as expected, and as soon as the monthly security patches are pushed out from Google they do tend to get pushed out by BlackBerry as well.

In terms of just plain old device security a KEYone or DTEK will be more secure by default than a Pixel would be, so that can matter to some people.

But if you just want plain old vanilla Android on a solid stable device and the actual dollar cost doesn't matter then sure, grab a Pixel, or at this point maybe wait and see what the Pixel 2 brings to the party in a few months, it's obviously up to you in the long run. The KEYone shares the same camera sensor the Pixels have, if it matters, so at least that aspect is something that's equal between them. ;)
 
Tiberian said:
If you truly want regular updates and you want a bulletproof rock steady stable device that isn't necessarily busting the damned wallet (aka the Google Pixel), I can't recommend anything but the BlackBerry KEYone at this point, or one of the DTEK models (which are slightly more expensive than the KEYone itself). Of course such a device is tired into the BlackBerry ecosphere very nicely but it's not 100% all BlackBerry all the time as it is an Android device with tight Google Play services integration as expected, and as soon as the monthly security patches are pushed out from Google they do tend to get pushed out by BlackBerry as well.

In terms of just plain old device security a KEYone or DTEK will be more secure by default than a Pixel would be, so that can matter to some people.

But if you just want plain old vanilla Android on a solid stable device and the actual dollar cost doesn't matter then sure, grab a Pixel, or at this point maybe wait and see what the Pixel 2 brings to the party in a few months, it's obviously up to you in the long run. The KEYone shares the same camera sensor the Pixels have, if it matters, so at least that aspect is something that's equal between them. ;)
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I have to second this. If you want regular security updates, the pixel and the keyone are your only phone choices for Android. If you want Android OS updates, there's only Pixel.

As for speed, I think Sense UI is slightly faster than ASOP. And TouchWiz, at least on the Qualcomm variants, is pretty much dead last. I dunno why it's that bad; it's not just the animations,which you could adjust from developer settings. I hear that the Exynos variants are better, but I've never used one; if that is true, I have to assume it's the awful coding.
 
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People always forget they can get a nice speed boost in UI performance by enabling Developer Options (7 taps on the build number) and then go into the windows animation/transition animation/animator duration options and either lower them (usually most devices offer .5 increments, some custom ROMs have .1 increments like Lineage) or turn them off entirely and wham, instant speed boost at least for the general UI functionality. I use .3 for my devices running Lineage and .5 for those that aren't that granular, always makes a big difference in device responsiveness.
 
Tiberian said:
People always forget they can get a nice speed boost in UI performance by enabling Developer Options (7 taps on the build number) and then go into the windows animation/transition animation/animator duration options and either lower them (usually most devices offer .5 increments, some custom ROMs have .1 increments like Lineage) or turn them off entirely and wham, instant speed boost at least for the general UI functionality. I use .3 for my devices running Lineage and .5 for those that aren't that granular, always makes a big difference in device responsiveness.
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First thing I do as well.
 
Yeah, the Developer Option animation settings made my old Galaxy S5 a lot more bearable. It didn't make the UI any less clunky looking, but it sped things up.

I think at this point I'm just going to go with a Pixel 2 (or Pixel 1 if the 2 disappoints). Not a fan of the Blackberry devices I played with at the store, especially not the one with the physical keyboard.
 
Tiberian said:
People always forget they can get a nice speed boost in UI performance by enabling Developer Options (7 taps on the build number) and then go into the windows animation/transition animation/animator duration options and either lower them (usually most devices offer .5 increments, some custom ROMs have .1 increments like Lineage) or turn them off entirely and wham, instant speed boost at least for the general UI functionality. I use .3 for my devices running Lineage and .5 for those that aren't that granular, always makes a big difference in device responsiveness.
Click to expand...

Yup, I do the same. Whenever anyone hands me their phone for anything, I'll do it for them as well and they're always like "whoa, that's a lot faster." Hah
 
It's a sad state of affairs out there if you want stock Android and can't/won't go with Pixel.

I wouldn't ever buy Moto/Lenovo again after the experience with my current MXPE. Support has been totally abandoned post-acquisition. The handoff to Lenovo was already known when I purchased, and my expectations weren't high, but it's sad to see things head down about the worst road I could've imagined. Still waiting for Nougat 10 months after its release on a carrier-free phone with no extra skin or framework to add in...

That pretty much leaves OnePlus as the only other OEM selling stock-ish Android devices in any quantity. I think the 3/3T/5 are all fine options if you have no need for or interest in CDMA networks. But if you want a phone that's truly carrier-agnostic in the U.S., that rules out OP devices. At that point, it's basically Pixel or bust.

If Pixels' resale value drops a lot after the second gen is released this fall, I'll probably be all over an XL. It's the only phone left on the entire market that seems remotely appealing to me, and even it has its flaws (i.e., no microSD). I hate what smartphones have become.
 
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