Vanilla Android, Touch Wiz, Motoblur, Sense? Help

[Jerrod6]

I will be able to upgrade my phone in a few months, but I don’t understand what these things exactly are. I have an orginal Moto Droid and I think it came with vanilla Andriod but I hear people complaining about Motoblur. Are these things nothing more than graphical UI’s that companies have installed over top of Android?

I am using ADW launcher, If I get a phone with one of these UI’s will I still be able to use a launcher? If I decide to customize the interface a bit will these UI's allow my own customizations?

 

[matt2783]

I will be able to upgrade my phone in a few months, but I don’t understand what these things exactly are. I have an orginal Moto Droid and I think it came with vanilla Andriod but I hear people complaining about Motoblur. Are these things nothing more than graphical UI’s that companies have installed over top of Android?

I am using ADW launcher, If I get a phone with one of these UI’s will I still be able to use a launcher? If I decide to customize the interface a bit will these UI's allow my own customizations?

That's it. And yes, you'd still be able to use ADW or other launchers but you'll never get rid of the overlay the manufacturer put on the phone without rooting and installing a custom ROM.

 

[Masamichi7]

Motoblur pertains to somewhat newer Moto devices, Sense to HTC phones, and Touchwiz is Samsung phones. The original Droid was untouched pure Google, otherwise known as Vanilla Android interface. However, the Droid 2 and such has Motoblur installed on top, and these are like somewhat custom ROMs over the original Android platform.
Personally, I'm a Sense fan, and Motoblur doesn't come with customization built in, but luckily for you, launcher apps like ADW and Launcher Pro still work, and yes you'll be able to customize several ways using them.

Sent from my DROID2 GLOBAL

 

[dezymond]

I personally like HTC Sense the most out of all those, Vanilla Android second.

 

[Xplorer4x4]

Motoblur is a custom ui yes, but its a little more to. It syncs your phone book contacts to your social networks and more. It will sync to facebook,myspace,twitter,yahoo,flickr,and more sites I cant recall. When you go through your contacts it will pull there profile pic from one of these sites. When you go to view the contact info, it will display these tatus/tweets/etc at the top of the page. Now certain roms and UIs have similar capabilities but not quite to the same extent as far as I know. Personally, I enjoyed motoblur for the most part. My biggest gripe was not being bale to hide contacts. Come facebook "friends" I just dont need or want in my contacts list.

Sense, as far as I know, is just a custom UI. Very popular but not to my liking.

Keep in mind though, alot of roms will end up removing motoblur. Sense, I am unsure about though, but I imagine there are atleast some non-sense(no pun intended) roms out there, and if you dont like the custom ui, depending on how embded it is, you can always get a simple home replacement app like ADW Launcher, Launcher Pro,etc to atleast hide the custom UI.

 

[jhumbo]

Motoblur is a custom ui yes, but its a little more to. It syncs your phone book contacts to your social networks and more. It will sync to facebook,myspace,twitter,yahoo,flickr,and more sites I cant recall. When you go through your contacts it will pull there profile pic from one of these sites. When you go to view the contact info, it will display these tatus/tweets/etc at the top of the page. Now certain roms and UIs have similar capabilities but not quite to the same extent as far as I know. Personally, I enjoyed motoblur for the most part.

Me too.

My biggest gripe was not being bale to hide contacts. Come facebook "friends" I just dont need or want in my contacts list.

Ummm... I can hide specific contacts. (Droid Pro with system version 3.8.7.XT610.Verizon.en.US.)