Lenovo’s sub-brand, ZUK ships out its smartphones with its own custom user interface dubbed ZUI. But what if the UI made it onboard of Motorola’s upcoming devices? Would you still buy a new Moto device?
The information comes to us via Lenovo’s Vice President, Alex Chen Yu who posted this info on his Weibo account a few days ago. But since then the blog post has been deleted. Still, it’s not the first time we’re hearing Lenovo is considering porting ZUK’s ZUI onboard of a select host of Motorola devices. An older rumor claimed Lenovo was beta testing ZUI on the Moto Z and now it seems ZUK’s custom firmware might make an appearance on some of Motorola’s new products.
Still don’t get alarmed. As a user on Reddit pointed out, the since-deleted Weibo post contained a character which means “in the country”. Luckily for Motorola fans who love the nearly stock Android experience Moto devices bring to the table, it’s quite possible Lenovo’s VP meant to say the ZUK ZUI-equipped devices will only be marketed in China. Which makes sense, since the Chinese market is very welcoming to customized Android skins like the ZUI. Only to name a few, there’s Xiaomi’s MIUI, Meizu’s Flyme UI or Huawei’s EMUI.
Motorola is expected to launch a full host of new Moto devices in the upcoming months including the low-end Moto C and Moto C Plus, the slightly better-specced Moto E4 and Moto E4 Plus, the resurrected Moto X (2017) and naturally the flagship Moto Z2 and related products, like the recently leaked Moto Z2 Play. At this point, we don’t have any info related to which new Moto devices will get ZUK ZUI treatment in China.
It depends. If it adds to the experience, yes. But I’ve used Nova Launcher now for 4 years so it would have to dethrone it as my launcher of choice. That’s a steep requirement. It means that I would have to be able to customize it, with notification badges, a 3×5 dock, customizable folders, and app list. Oh yeah, and it has to be able to restore my launcher layout from the backup I have in Google Drive, the backup / restore that has followed me through 3 phones now. If I can’t do all that, I probably won’t use it and Moto had better let me delete it from my phone – not disable – delete, as in free up any and all space taken by it.
I have the MotoZ, I previously had the last three MotoX phones and I’ve been very happy with all of them, but I will not buy ANY Android device that uses a heavily modified or skinned version of Android. The modifications are always inferior to the functionality they replace and the OS updates are always slower. Absolutely not interested in a skinned Motorola phone.
I have a Lenovo Zuk Z2, actually with Dirty Unicorns AOSP 7.1.2, but when it came new from china I used the ZUI interface and it is good, and if you like other launcher as nova you can also install it.
As mainstream people buy phone brands / models and do not care about the OS, and ZUI is a good launcher Lenovo and its brands can have it, as Samsung (the 1st phone seller) has its own one Isn’t it?. And probably their sells will be the same or perhaps better.