Confused? Here’s a short primer

Cherry Mobile’s renewed push on both the entry-level and mid-range markets was made sweeter by the company’s commitment to ship out devices that have stock Android inside, a big change from their previous phones that were powered by Cherry OS. But is having stock Android better over a phone that has a UI layered on top of it?

What is stock Android?

Before we begin, let’s define what stock Android is. Stock Android is basically just that – the most basic or vanilla variant of whatever version Android is currently. On Cherry Mobile’s new phones, that’s Android 9 Pie. A phone with stock Android comes with all of the features that Google shipped on whatever version that’s running on your phone – nothing more, nothing less.

What’re the advantages of having stock Android?

The biggest advantage we can think of is faster updates to the next version of the OS. Theoretically, since the phone has the same code that Google has, whatever company that made the phone will be able to quickly push OS updates since they don’t have to modify anything in the code to do so.

Now obviously that also depends a lot on the company that sells the phone, and it’s still unclear how quickly Cherry Mobile will be able to push out Android Q when it becomes available.

The most important part of having stock Android is that the lack of a pre-installed UI overlay, like MIUI, EMUI, Color OS, etc. Those skins drastically change the look of Android and put enhancements and other features that you may or may not like.

There’s a lot of arguments for and against using a UI or a manufacturer skin, but here’s the gist of it: these enhancements take up additional space on your phone, they use additional resources and come with many features that you may or may not use (AKA bloatware).

In exchange, you’re getting features that aren’t usually supported on stock Android. I for one love the rolling screenshot feature that’s present on EMUI, MIUI, and others but isn’t currently available on stock Android devices.

Having stock Android at least gives you a choice of whether to put additional skins or enhancements on your phone rather than having the manufacturer put them there for you, without the ability to remove them completely from your phone. In the context of Cherry Mobile’s new phones, having stock Android is a HUGE deal since many users have complained about Cherry OS as being slow, in addition to eating up valuable space in budget phones where storage is already at a premium.

The addition of stock Android on Cherry Mobile’s budget phones means you’re not getting bloatware (Cherry Mobile says that they’re only installing four apps on new phones, which are Chums Live, Opera Mini, Facebook, and Instagram) that will slow down your phone when you buy their devices.