[WrkInProgress]

I've used maybe 15 Android devices since it's inception. HTC, Samsung, Sony, Motorola, and "Google" (two Nexus devices and 1 Pixel).

If I had to choose I would take stock Android in terms of aesthetics, ten times out of ten.

However, over time Android has indeed taken MANY features from HTC, Motrola, Samsung and other OEMS and added them to vanilla android.

I know I'm forgetting a lot more but off the top of my head:

- multi-app support - always on displays - readibility - night mode - smart gestures - Stamina mode which is now Doze on stock Android - voice commands - even things like Google Now (minus the smart assistant) to the left of the home screen, were actually provided earlier by OEMs (as a method to differentiate) like HTC's blinkfeed - heck, the first stock Android devices, didn't even have smart dialers (HTC added that as part of their Sense dialer)

Samsung's Touchwiz looked terrible until the most recent incarnation (it's now called the Samsung Experience) and it did contain some bloat, namely with duplicate apps but it's always been much more feature packed than stock Android. Some of the features were not so great but a lot of them were and eventually Google copied them. You can say the same to a lesser extent for HTC, Sony and Motorola.

[Akujin]

Yea... but how much of those features are really from HTC, Samsung, et al and not duplicates of features from iOS or even custom roms from XDA?

[endorphone]

None of them? There is absolutely no question that these vendors tried some novel things that were later integrated within Android.

And if we need to talk about experience, I started with a G1 on Android 1.0, then G2, HTC Hero, Galaxy Nexus, Galaxy Glide, GS2, Nexus 4, GS3, Nexus 5, one other HTC that I can't remember the name of, Nexus 6p, GS8. I've tried a lot of devices, and I've rocked them all.

And through those with unique vendor additions, it was always a mix of ups and downs, and later to see many of those innovations being swept into the Android base.

I also question any claim that Android is "without frills, without skins". Android is 98% frills. With each iteration we have a new laundry list of frills. At the same time the core OS took until about version 7 to finally get basics like smooth scrolling down (something that vendor skins got to a much better state much earlier).