Lenovo to abandon its Vibe Pure UI in favor of stock Android

[William Gayde]

Lenovo has confirmed that it is dropping its Vibe Pure UI on all future smartphones and will be switching back to vanilla Android. This is a big change coming from their custom overlay that ran on top of Android.

According to Lenovo's head of smartphone product marketing Anuj Sharma in an interview with Gadgets360, the first phone to ship with stock Android will be the K8 Note (it'll feature Android 7.1.1 Nougat). The decision comes after seeking customer feedback and a nearly yearlong internal review process.

Moving away from their custom Android skin means Lenovo can offer OS updates directly from Google much faster. For example, all "K Series" smartphones launched this year will receive the Android O update.

Other brands like Samsung and LG that use heavily modified versions of Android are typically very slow to receive updates since they must be modified to work with the custom skin.

The move will put Lenovo more in line with Motorola (which it purchased in 2014 for $2.91 billion) as well as help reduce technical support costs and extend product life cycles.

Lenovo's first smartphones shipped with Vibe UI, a heavily bloated skin that ran on top of Android. After some incremental improvements, Lenovo released Vibe Pure UI in an attempt to reduce bloatware.

Since Lenovo sells phones in many international markets, coming to this standardized decision was a bit difficult. In China for example, Android isn't very popular when compared to custom skins but in the Indian market, stock Android is preferred.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/70441-lenovo-abandon-vibe-pure-ui-favor-stock-android.html

 

[McMurdeR]

Pure Android is great to use kudos to Lenovo. Lets hope they can speed up updates on both the Lenovo and Moto product lines. I'm typing on a Lenovo Moto G5, an incredible phone for the money.

 

[Uncle Al]

Another one bites the dust .....

 

[mattfrompa]

I will consider any phone with stock android. Keep the phones updated for a reasonable amount of time and they will have a winner in IMO.

 

[Nobina]

I definetely won't complain. This should become a trend.

 

[MoeJoe]

Le-nono.
Terrible R&D ... even worse support.

So this news is immaterial to me and people I know ...

 

[petert]

I wish the rest of the industry takes the hint and starts following this trend. Why did it took them years to understand that adding crap to the phone is unnecessary and hinders the user experience is beyond me.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

Now just give us removable batteries and I am sold.

 

[Danny101]

Google should require this. Not only will we have timely updates and better security, there would be less of a need to root or customization. Also, Google would have to bear more responsibility for the quality of Android.