I was lamenting the death of the GPE program last night and something occurred to me

[G+_Duncan Jaffrey]

Originally shared by Duncan Jaffrey

 

I was lamenting the death of the GPE program last night and something occurred to me. GPE is dead (even if it’s not official) but there might be a middle of the road option sitting right in front of us, and no it’s not the mythical Android Silver (although that would have been awesome).

 

Both HTC and Samsung showed off their latest “Themes” at MWC.

It got me to thinking what if themes went a little deeper than wallpapers, icons and tones. What if themes could reach into the layout for the setting menu, or could change how the notification shade looked or even functioned?

 

In this world where I buy an “Imaginary Phone One2Six” with fully customisable themes I would pay, yes pay real hard currency, to buy a “Goggle Play Experience theme” if it gave me that near stock look and feel. Sure the phone would still have the tons of bloat/ crap ware that OEMs insist on bundling but I simply just disable every single scrap of that crap, and I’ll buy a 64gb or 128gb model to get storage space.

This middle of the road option would allow those of us who want to get the “pure goggle android experience” to significantly increase the range of phones we can buy. It would also open up the “pure” experience to more price points (traditionally GPE has been top tier and Nexus only, Motorola has slightly changed that). Where is the incentive to the OEM you say?

1 I bought their phone which I otherwise would never do.

2. I will pay them to release their strangle hold on said phone to sell me the Pure theme.

In 2015 if you want a stock or near stock Phone your options are: try and find a Nexus 5, get hand enlargement surgery and then buy a Nexus 6, but a Moto X or accept bottom of the road and buy a Moto E or G. Now maybe I’m picky but for me I want top tier, I don’t want another Nexus 5 I’ve had that, and N6 is just plain stupid, stupid large I say. So that Leaves the Moto X 2014 which unfortunately just missed it on a few points for me. So I’m stuck without a phone to buy.

Perhaps I’m designing a solution that only solves my problem, I know many of you would completely rule this out (that’s ok, be together. not the same. remember?) but I wonder if there are others out there that are open minded about which hardware they get if it just ran the right interface. Now if we could get our interface onto more hardware all of a sudden we would have choice, choice of OEM, choice of price point, choice of hardware configuration choice, choice, choice I say

I think themes is an interesting idea and I’d love Android 6.0 to include system level themes as a mandatory part of the build. I know I just transitioned from OEM inclusion to OHA enforcement but despite my assertions it is in the OEMs interests I’m not stupid enough to believe in unicorns or major OEMS seeing that.

I don’t see Google taking the necessary actions required to wrestle back control of “Google Play Services Android” and insist on strict design, skin and app policies. The whole “Android is open” rhetoric has been sung so hard for so long I’m not sure they can explain to the world that “ASOP Android” is open but if you want Google Play Services you follow these new stricter rules.  So including theming in the OHA conditions might be a middle of the road solution for Goggle to offer a pathway to a more consistent UI and UX for consumers and prosumers alike.

That’s my thoughts. anyway its medication time here at the institution, I better go take the red pill.

[G+_Joseph Cappellino]

Still, the only problem will be updates, but I like the idea.

[G+_Duncan Jaffrey]

Joseph Cappellino My real "solution" would see me assassinated by the faithful. I'd vote for google to "fork" android from a point in time and say if you want access to APIs vXX and above then welcome to the new controlled ecosystem. I'm putting that in the never going to happen pile