Back in the dawn of the smartphone era, the thing I hated most about iPhones was their lack of customizability. They were pretty good devices overall, and the company was paying for it, so I didn't jump to Android until the HTC Thunderbolt in early 2011. Customizability out the wazoo, and rooting made it even more fun. Ever since then, I've judged phones at least as much on their customizability as any other feature.
I fell hard for the Note 4 when it came along because I also dig big bright screens, and figured I'd be Sammy for life until the last few years of phones where the price was rising faster than my feelings of the value offered.
Along the way, I'd also fallen into Nova's grip, and found that between that and a few other apps, I wasn't finding the need to root anymore, but man oh man, did I love customizing my layouts with Nova! Icon packs, fonts, gestures, you name it, I customized it.
There was so much to love about the Pixel when I finally landed on it that I figured, what the hey, let's give the "pure Android" experience a whirl. Insert loud buzzer sound here. An absolute no go for me. Yes, a little nicer than Sammy's OneUI, but only a little....but whoa, soooooo little room to customize. I know that a lot of people pitch the Pixel stock Android experience as the most Apple-like experience you can get on Android, and I'm inclined to agree...but for all the things I hated about Apple as much as the things I liked.
My larger point isn't to speak ill of stock Android per se. I'd certainly gotten so used to peeling out and hiding all the unremovable Sammy and VZW redundant or outright garbage apps when setting up my phone that I forgot what a pleasure it was to go with first-class apps out of the box, and nothing else. I absolutely adore that, and certainly one of the things that Apple users are always pleased by too.
No icon packs in stock Android is a non-starter for me, and there are a bunch of gestures that I've customized in Nova that I hadn't found ways to edit in the stock launcher. I love the animations between pages in the app drawer more than is maybe rational, and have been known to spin them around just for the pleasure of it. That's what customizing is about, though -- moving beyond the bare bones of functionality to add things that are delightful for their own sakes.
More drawer styles, better UI for managing folders, easy invisibility, custom grid sizes, control over drop shadows for titles (which can also be turned on or off), multiple pages for docks, more shortcuts for common tasks, backup of saved layouts (a lifesaver that makes installing heavily customized designs in one click a BREEZE), all of it blazing fast....
I tried to give stock Android its best chance. I wanted to love it if for no other reason than that I love everything else about this phone so much. I read and watched and dug in this and other forums for tips and tutorials, and none of the best stuff I found relied on stock Android, and none of the rest came within miles of what Nova can do. There's really, truly no contest for me. Nova Prime all the way.
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