is material design going to matter for most people?

[RavenSword]

What I mean is, since the vast majority of users have a android phone with a OEM skin, how much does it matter that material design is so great? I honestly think its awesome from what I've used on a demo unit nexus 9, but since my HTC one M8 uses sense 6 and not stock android, I'm not going to see much, if any, of the new look. And I think that's the problem is that no matter how good material design and lollipop is from a look and UI standpoint, the OEMs are just going to completely cover it up with their own skins. So what's the point?

Honestly considering buying a nexus 5 or spend more and get a moto x 2014 just to get access to the material design look. Its not something I'm too happy to do though,but I'm just tired of these OEM skinned carrier phones.

 

[RavenSword]

There are some elements of the OS that are still present in OEM skins. An example is the notification area on my Note 4 follows Kit Kat with all white icons (ex. signal bars, 4G LTE, and battery), whereas my Note 2 followed Jelly Bean (some would argue Gingerbread) designs in that area. There's also OEM skin adaptations such as the recent apps option on my Note 4 that uses Material Design/Lollipop style cards despite it actually running Kit Kat. Then there's individual Google apps (ex. GMail, Maps, etc.) that if the user chooses to update to the latest versions have Material Design (I refuse until GMail at least provides an option for a color other than that hideous red. That speaks to another issue with Material Design, the use/overuse of bold colors and spacing with no user options to change it).

So while OEM skins may cover numerous parts of Google's OS, there are still many aspects of it that show through or are adopted. It's just the nature of Android's open source nature and its many options. I say thank goodness, because I'm not always a fan of things Google does (ex. not a big fan of Material Design).

It just seems that carrier/OEM phones are more of a liability than anything. You have then covering everything in a skin, you don't get fast updates, and get bloatware. Honestly kicking myself for not waiting for the nexus 6. But now I'm making the payments on the HTC ONE, so I don't know if it'll be dumb to also pay 650 for a nexus 6.