Stock Android or customized? New survey reveals what people really prefer.

Phones running stock Android are a dying breed. Sure, phones from Google, Motorola, and a few other brands have a stock-like aesthetic, but they add plenty of features you won’t find in a pure, unfettered version of Android.

Colleague Ryan Haines recently wrote that a light Android skin isn’t the same thing as stock Android. He added that you’d have to strip out loads of Pixel-only features if you wanted a Pixel running truly pure Android. We also used the article to ask readers whether they’d use a phone with stock Android, and here are the results.

Would you actually use a phone with stock Android?

Over 10,300 votes were cast in this poll, and close to two-thirds of polled readers said they would use a phone with stock Android. IThis question was asked in the context of Ryan saying that most phones with “stock” Android merely have the stock aesthetic but aren’t actually stock as in the Android Open-Source Project (AOSP). We’re guessing that many respondents still thought of Nothing, Pixel, and Motorola devices as stock.

“I need a browser and terminal, nothing else,” said user Tamás Bendó, suggesting that a truly basic version of Android might be enough for them.

User John Dallman also noted one use for pure, unfettered Android:

There’s still a good use for stock Android. App vendors need something to test with which doesn’t risk them making something specific to a manufacturer’s skin.

Just over a third of respondents said they wouldn’t use a phone with stock Android, though. We saw plenty of comments from these readers too.

Reader Mihir Shetye felt that pure Android was too basic for most people:

Stock Android would be just too bare bones nowadays, as people have become dependent on many Google apps and many distinct features offered by the various OEMs. Still, having said that, from an aesthetic and functional viewpoint, I would prefer a “stockish” looking UI like the Pixel UI and Motorola’s skin over something heavier like One UI or Color OS or MIUI etc.

A couple of readers, like Yudi Wibowo, also noted that they tried phones with stock-like software and were left disappointed:

Using asus zenfone 10 UI with some asus improvement (sic) and i still hate it, i hate stock UI so much that this phone will be the last stock UI phone i will use.

User Jose Alberto Morales Nery also pointed out that AOSP has become less useful over the years due to Google abandoning open-source system apps such as the dialer, messages, and more. So we can understand if you liked proper stock Android years ago but aren’t happy now.

In any event, I wonder how these poll results would change if people actually used phones running full-blown stock Android instead of Google, Nothing, and Motorola phones that merely have lightweight skins.