Lenovo has decided to ditch its Vibe Pure UI, the skin which it customized for its Android devices, in favour of stock Android. The news comes via an interview for Gadgets 360, where Anuj Sharma, Head of Product Marketing, Smartphones at Lenovo MBG India.
According to the report the Chinese OEM, has been researching on how to improve the software on its devices for nearly a year. And according to user feedback, Vibe Pure UI was not well received, and now the company has agreed to give the users what they want, stock Android.
This is not entirely surprising for several reasons. When Lenovo launched the K6 Power in India, many users felt it was a big improvement over its previous Vibe Pure UI. It had less of bloatware.
Second, we have to consider the company which Lenovo owns, and has continued to prove to be a hit, Motorola. Moto phones with stock Android are extremely popular. So, it only makes sense that Lenovo is following suit.
And third, during the recent launch of the Moto E4 Plus, Anuj Sharma had criticized OEMs who ship their devices with confusing skins, and highlighted why stock Android is better. This seemed ironical coming from Lenovo's Head of Marketing, but now it makes sense.
The Lenovo K8 Note, which will be launched on August 9th, will run on stock Android 7.1 Nougat, and will be updated to Android O in the future.
All of Lenovo's K series phones launched in 2017, will be updated to Android O as well, but the time for the update to be released will differ as chipset manufacturers (Qualcomm and MediaTek), need to test the SoC for the new OS after which the company will develop and test the updates.