Many years ago, when the operating system Android had just appeared and smartphones began to appear on it, there was no talk about the convenience of the interface and some such things. The first device on the new OS was a smartphone from HTC on a clean OS, the second – already with a proprietary Sense shell, in fact, this moment can be considered a starting point for shells and interfaces from manufacturers. Since that time, each brand has tried to make its own interface under Android, with its own features, chips, details and little things. Literally everyone: Samsung, LG, Huawei, Lenovo, HTC, Sony, MEIZU, Xiaomi, ZTE , Oppo, Vivo, OnePlus, all these brands and many others have their own skins. In the early years, having a convenient shell was a matter of principle, because a clean system Android was disheartening and, frankly, was not user-oriented, especially if you take a very early stage and compare the conditional Android with the first versions with the first versions of Sense from HTC. However, time passed, and Google gradually brought its 'operating system' to mind.
So that after many years of development, many versions, smartphones of the Nexus series with a clean system without third-party skins and add-ons to present Google Pixel with Pixel Launcher skin. The curtain.
In fact, there is nothing wrong with that. For most people, a detail like 'stock', in fact, a model smartphone on Android with a shell instead of a pure OS, even if it was also developed in-house by Google, will go unnoticed. But if you have been following the development of 'android' all these years, then most likely you understand what this means.
Several years ago, a turning point came in the development of the system. Google began to pay attention not only to technical aspects and those parts of the system that affect performance, autonomy, and so on, but also its appearance. Simply put, from some point on, development Android in terms of usability began to go up sharply, the system became beautiful and convenient in a couple of years, which it lacked for so long. And then, it would seem, the moment has come, just about the manufacturers must begin to abandon individual elements of their shells, and then completely switch to a stock, clean system. Actually, it was so, some brands, Sony and HTC, for example, began to replace branded applications with standard ones from the basic set Android, and in general, the appearance of the shells began to change and converge with the basic look and feel of the system from Google.
It would seem that another year, and Google will finally bring the matter to mind, persuading brands to use a clean system or minimally different versions of shells. However, in 2016 the Google Pixel comes out, where instead of the stock 'android' it uses its special version called Pixel Launcher, and at the same time updates to Android 7.0 from most brands for their devices appear. And we see that there are steps towards convergence Android and shells, but they are still just as timid and neat, and the gap between a clean system and separate shells is still great. And I'm talking about only some of the largest brands like Samsung, if you take the 'Chinese' – Huawei, ZTE, Lenovo, and especially MEIZU and Xiaomi, then there there is no movement towards a pure OS Android or its style is not even close.
What does it mean? This means that the manufacturers of smartphones on Android won, but Google lost (if there was some kind of struggle between them and I did not invent all this). At a time when Google itself introduced a smartphone under its own brand with a proprietary shell, the company publicly said 'OK' to the long-term practice of creating branded shells by manufacturers. So there is no need to wait for more convergence of OS Android and shells, I suppose.