The iOS-ification of Android is ruining my favorite phones

There’s arguably never been a better time to be an Android fan. There’s a wide range of brands, each with something unique to offer; long-term software updates are now the norm, and high-end hardware even eclipses what the ever-popular iPhone has to offer. Whether you’re looking for a powerhouse gaming smartphone, one with the best battery life, the most cutting-edge AI tools, or the most versatile camera setup on the market, there’s an Android phone for you.

I’ve recently had the pleasure of running the OPPO Find X10 Pro Max for a few weeks, a brilliant phone by virtually every metric you can throw at it. Multi-day battery life, silky smooth performance, a top-notch camera, and even some brilliant first-party software. OPPO’s unique aesthetic also ensures this isn’t a phone you’d easily confuse for a Galaxy or iPhone knock-off. It looks and feels like something very unique, a compliment you could pay quite a few Android brands these days, at least when looking at the back of the handsets.

Finally, it seems each Android brand has carved out a little niche of its own, readily identifiable by the phone’s look, if not by its features alone. However, this hard work in building a solid identity is substantially undermined by the shameless imitation of Apple’s iOS, especially the current Liquid Glass fad. OPPO, vivo, HONOR, and others (particularly Chinese brands) have all rushed to embrace Apple’s latest look, and it’s ruining my Android experience.

Just, ewww…

It’s no secret I’m not a lover of Liquid Glass. It was garish and impractical when it debuted, and time hasn’t endeared me to Apple’s Windows Vista rip-off any more. Transparency is the antithesis of simplicity, yet clarity of features and ease of navigation remain the cornerstone of a universally great UI.

Having spent countless hours in the company of iOS and its Android imitators, I can state unequivocally that I find Liquid Glass to be the worst thing to happen to smartphones since the end of replaceable batteries. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve ended up squinting at my display in vain to discern tiny white icons and text against a vaguely blurred background. Even Apple has acknowledged this gaffe, it now asks you how transparent its UI should be when you first start iOS 27.

Still, no matter how much brands tweak and twist Apple’s formula, Liquid Glass’s unfixable problem is that buttons and icons that are meant to be quick and easy to spot are consistently muddled into the background. The muscle memory that comes with quickly tapping Android’s pastel-colored bubbles and scrolling through simple menus has given way to dithering and delay amid the clutter. Whether it’s trying to add widgets to the home screen or find settings in the photo gallery, overly aggressive transparency regularly gets in the way.

Perhaps these are the gripes of a man who simply can’t deal with needless change being forced upon him. But for the record, I was never a huge fan of Android’s squircle obsession, but now I’m clamoring to go back. Worse, perhaps, is that some Android brands have really half-arsed their implementation, producing cheap-looking transparency, faking the refraction effect, and embracing even more overzealous curved edges. For every decent-ish take on Liquid Glass, there’s another brand making a complete hash of it.

Thankfully, I found how to disable the worst aspects of OPPO’s Liquid Glass copycat under Settings > Home screen, lock screen & style > More > Textured visual effects, and disable Visual Blur. Other brands, such as vivo, also offer a few options to tweak the UI to make it feel a little more like your own, but you often can’t escape it entirely. And none of this feels very, well, Android.

Be Together. Not the Same

I’ve been around the Android versus iOS rivalry long enough to know that the two constantly borrow from each other. Features that Android had years ago now regularly appear in “new” iOS versions, while Apple has inspired our phones with Dynamic Island, greater Control Center customization, and more in recent years. This imitation game can be beneficial at times. But with Liquid Glass, we’re not gaining a new tool or vastly improved way of navigating our phones; it only serves to make handsets look like an iPhone. Maybe some people want that, but not me.

Android brands are already ultra-premium; they need to stop assuming consumers buy only because it looks like an iPhone. Android has the industry’s best cameras, best battery life, and is still the place to buy cutting-edge tech first. It’s still the only place to grab a clamshell foldable, despite Apple’s launch of the iPhone Duo. Yes, yes, Apple may still be the world’s beloved premium tech brand, especially in the US, but no one will ever prove it’s better by resorting to cloning it.

We know for a fact that it doesn’t have to be this way. Android brands have long stood out for their unique and sought-after UIs; HTC’s Sense UI, OnePlus’ OxygenOS, and Sony’s enduring Xperia UI, for example. Nothing is perhaps the pinnacle of brand building through aesthetics today. From its phones and software to its headphones and accessories, everything is instantly identifiable as a Nothing product. The dots and fonts might not be to everyone’s taste, but you know you’re buying into the look as much as the hardware when you hand over your cash, and it certainly ensures that the brand stands out.

Pixels probably qualify here too, though it’s not quite as eyecatchingly distinctive. Not only has Google carved out a unique camera bar for its flagship series, but it continues to lean into its bubble-and-pastel software aesthetic for a distinctly Pixel experience. Even OnePlus’ OxygenOS and OPPO’s ColorOS had their charms not so long ago. I can only hope that more of this iOS nonsense doesn’t leak its way into One UI 9.5, after Samsung’s One UI 8.5 and 9 already started taking more serious inspiration from its biggest rival.

Android’s greatest strength has always been customization, and I want it to remain that way. Brands that want to embrace UI trends should ideally offer these new looks through their optional theming engines rather than locking consumers into something as controversial as a new aesthetic. Not to mention that brand identity should evolve gradually over time to build a sense of continuity, rather than throwing years of work out the window just because Apple has a new vision for something. For me, at least, I don’t want my expensive, bleeding-edge Android flagship to look like a cheaper iPhone.