How to save your Android phone from bad skins and crappy OEM software

by Ron Amadeo

Android skins seem to get more annoying every year. The skins themselves aren't getting worse, necessarily, but more and more third-party apps have adopted Google's unified Material Design aesthetic. Google has been pushing Material Design since 2014—it publishes comprehensive design guidelines, provides frameworks so developers can easily get consistent designs up and running, and continually has conferences and publishes videos explaining and promoting this design language. Google recently announced there were over 1 million Material apps in the Play Store.

OEMs tend to completely ignore Material Design, which leaves a user of a skinned phone with a bunch of Material Google apps, an increasing number of Material third-party apps, and a weird OEM-designed slate of core apps that clash with everything else. If you care about what the software you use looks like, it sucks.

If you bought a skinned Android phone and are looking for a more unified look, there are some things you can do to fix it, however. Android remains very customizable, and with a combination of apps, settings, and lots of crapware removal, it's possible to get something that at least looks like the Google-designed Android software.

While on some phones it's possible to root your device and blow everything away by flashing a different ROM, we're only going to cover the non-permanent user-space changes you can make to your device. We're also not here to debate if a random OEM's implementation of something is better than Google's. We're just here to get as close to the Nexus software experience as possible without going nuclear and flashing a new ROM.

Download all (or at least some of) the Google apps

OEMs frequently take the increasingly outdated AOSP versions of apps and twist them into their own versions. These versions usually have different layouts, custom colors, and different icons. Google counters this by making Google versions of most of its own core apps available via the Play Store. Google's page on the Play Store is a good place to start, but specifically you're probably going to want the following staples:

These are all apps that frequently get replaced by OEMs. In many cases, the OEMs make their skinned versions the default apps and might not even include the Google version. When OEMs license Google Play from Google, they are required to bundle in a lot of Google apps, but these apps are often not required.

The rest of the Google apps (Calendar, Keep, Drive, and any number of others) are pretty obvious cases of "I want to use this Google product, so I'll download the app." Browse away and pick what you want.

Sideload Google Dialer and Google Contacts

Not every Google app is available via the Play Store, though. The Google Dialer, for instance, is pretty awesome but a little hard to get. Besides handling the usual "phone app" duties like having a dial pad, showing call history, and accessing your contacts, it also has a search bar. When you need to call a business, you can search Google Maps' extensive phone listings for the right number. Rather than hunting down the local pizza joint's phone number in a separate app and copy/pasting, you instead just type "pizza" (or the name of the business) into the dialer and get direct phone number results.

The Google Dialer is available in the Play Store but you probably won't be able to install it. The listing is limited to Nexus devices, leaving everyone else out in the cold. Even if you hunt down the latest APK and try to sideload it, it probably won't work since this app requires a shared library that isn't included in the APK.

However, Google recently messed up and published a version of the Google Dialer that worked on most devices. The magic build—Google Phone 2.5.11_rc8—was quickly pulled from the Play Store, but you can still download the APK here. Since you're not going through the Play Store, you'll need to "sideload" the app, which just means directly installing an APK. First you'll have to enable the "Unknown sources" checkbox in Settings -> Security. From there, head to the Downloads app, tap on the APK you just downloaded, and hit install.

After sideloading it, you have to head to the system settings and set it as the default phone app. Every OEM likes to mess with the settings just enough to make it difficult to tell you where to go, but if your settings have a search feature, your best bet is to search for "Default applications." This should also be accessible through the Settings -> Apps (or Applications) screen somehow. On a Nexus, it's accessible via a gear button in the top right and then by pressing "default apps." On a Samsung phone, "default applications" is available as a list item in the "Applications" screen. Once you set the Google phone app as the default, you should be able to make and receive phone calls.

Sideloading the Google Dialer works great today, but as time goes by it gets more and more out of date. You might not be able to install future updates, but throughout the vast majority of Android's existence, the dialer hasn't even had the ability to be upgraded. As long as Google doesn't break anything on the server side of things, you should be fine. (And remember, we aren't doing anything permanent. If it stops working, just uninstall it.)

Google Contacts is the same story. It's available in the Play Store, but the listing is limited to Nexus devices. There are no real compatibility issues or default settings here, though, so sideload the latest APK and you're all set.

Remove (or disable) all that crapware

This app looks like one of those shady "RAM BOOSTER" scams but is actually quite good. Pick what you hate and you'll get a big stack of dialog boxes to press "OK" on.

1. 
   This app looks like one of those shady "RAM BOOSTER" scams but is actually quite good. Pick what you hate and you'll get a big stack of dialog boxes to press "OK" on.
   
2. 
   Then try to disable the remaining pieces of crapware. For some, you'll be able to, but others—like "Galaxy Apps" here—will have the disabled button grayed out.

There are two ways to get rid of crapware on Android. The first (and most preferable) is to uninstall the app. This will totally remove the app from your phone, freeing up space and killing any background processes. Often times OEMs or carriers will build crapware into the system partition, though, and those apps can't be uninstalled despite promises from Google to fix this behavior. At best you can "disable" them, which will kill any background processes, uninstall the updates, and remove the icon from your app drawer, but the originally loaded app will still be on your phone and take up space. If your OEM or carrier is feeling particularly customer-hostile, they can also disable disabling an app, meaning you're stuck with it forever.

If you're dealing with a lot of crapware you want to remove, this "Easy Uninstaller" app can save a lot of time. This will load up a list of apps, and you can just put a checkbox next to everything you want to try to remove. No user space apps have the permission to directly uninstall another app, but this will at least save a lot of taps by stacking up a bunch of "uninstall" dialog boxes.

Remember you can't uninstall everything, so for some apps the most Easy Uninstaller can do is uninstall the updates. For uninstallable apps, you'll want to "disable" the app, and, unfortunately, there is really no shortcut for this. Somewhere in the system settings there should be an "Apps" (or "Applications") screen, which should show you every app on your device. From there just tap on the app you want to disable and hit the "disable" button in the next screen.

Alternatively, on some launchers (which we're about to recommend some replacements for), you can drag an app icon out of the app drawer and into an "info" bucket, which will jump you right to the screen with the "disable" button. Either way, you'll have to do this for every individual app. It can be a long, tedious process.