Jimmy Westenberg / Android Authority
One of the best aspects of Android is the ability to customize the platform with different software skins. Android OEMs often overlay their own software skins over Android to differentiate the look of their phones compared to competing devices. Changing the appearance of your Android phone isn’t the only plus point of Android skins, however. They often come with exciting features that you wouldn’t otherwise get on stock Android. So we set out to find the Android skin that our readers like the most. We ran a poll on our website and asked people to vote for their favorite Android skin. Here are the results of that survey.
What’s your favorite Android skin?
Results
As you can see from the results shown above, Stock Android or the Pixel UI have captured the majority of the pie. 34.87% of the total of 13,438 voters chose it as their favorite Android skin. Samsung’s One UI received the second largest share of the vote (28.8%), followed by OnePlus’ Oxygen OS in third place with 13.9% of the vote.
Related: Here are the best smartphones with stock Android
Xiaomi’s MIUI was by far in fourth place, with just 8.6% of voters choosing it as their favorite Android skin. We wonder if ads in MIUI have anything to do with these numbers.
Elsewhere, Huawei’s EMUI and Sony’s Xperia UI defeated both Oppos Color OS and the Realme UI. Vivo’s FunTouch OS received a negligible number of votes. The “Other” category was actually chosen over all of these Android skins.
Let’s check out our reader comments to see why they voted that way.
What you had to say
EasyCare: I used to do a lot of tinkering and installing custom ROMs, but now I like simple software. I’m curious what the Pixel 6 will look like.
CR45H 0V3RR1D3: Clean and simple suits me much better than kitchen sink ROMs these days. And since buying a pixel, custom ROMs / kernels mean absolutely nothing to me.
JeremyPatrickMartin: I LOVE that pixels are boring and easy and fast. Android 12 Beta is still boring and easy and quick, but it has stuff for you now.
Konrad Uroda-Darłak: Pure Android doesn’t have many useful options, so good skin is a must. MIUI is not without its flaws, but I personally chose it.
oVaBilly: While I hate Exynos on Samsung models, I have to admit that the software is full of useful features and the best part is that I can turn my TV into a Samsung DEX computer.
stephan cevallos: I think the media really devalues One UI. A user interface is often years ahead of PixelUi / Android. Features like chat heads, dark mode, multitasking, desktop mode (Dex) and others have been on One UI for generations. Tech influencers go crazy when Google adds something like a voice recorder that transcribes, while One UI has been offering these (and more) features for a while.
006_Bill: I’ve tried Samsung, Motorola, LG over the years but kept coming back to Android with Pixel. No launcher. Feels best. Clean and simple with no complications, but just what I wanted to do solidly well. A confidante. That’s okay for me. Use Pixel 5 now and love it.
