@GAThrawn: Saw your meta answer to the vanilla-android and stock-android. I commented on the excerpts there, but got some other small notes/suggestions:

- Not sure whether installing alternative interface or launcher should prevent me from calling it "stock android", as long as I don't modify the originally installed system apps

- The bit about the "Pure Google Experience" could be potentially confusing in stock-android

But I think you've done a great job summarizing which is which, and these are just some minor complaints attributed to my mild OCD. :-)

@MartinTapankov Firstly, saw your suggested Excerpt forStock-Android, and it does look better than (had been thinking mine was a bit long and repetitive, wasn't sure how to simplify it). I'll edit your suggestion into it in a few minutes if that's ok.

@MartinTapankov I've been going back and forward on this in my head, there's a lot of grey areas around how much you can change before you stop being "stock". My thinking here was that I wanted a short line that said that if you haven't done any of these things then you are definitely still "stock".

For things like Sense the launcher and UI is such a big part of what makes it their OS version, that if you change to another launcher you have made such a huge change to how you use the phone, is it still work the same?

Well, it kind of does, since you can always remove the third-party gizmo and restore the original stock look and feel.. as opposed to more invasive manipulations like installing custom ROMs and rooting

@MartinTapankov I see your point, and I'm still not sure whether I'm right, but for people asking questions here, the answers are potentially going to be very different if they're using a launcher that changes things around a lot from their built-in one.

Yeah, it's a gray area as you say, but we don't have to be 100% precise. I don't feel strongly about it anyway, so if others think it's fine this way, so be it.

@MartinTapankov Yeah the confusing thing is that way it's defined a stock pure Google Experience phone is both a Stock-OS and a Vanilla OS at the same time,where an HTC (for instance) will be Stock but not Vanilla, thought it was worth mentioning but you could be right that it is confusing

@GAThrawn Yeah, I'd rather not rely on new users to figure out which one they need, so an easier classification is : if it comes from straight from the device vendor, it's stock, regardless of its vanilla status.

If need be, mods and high-rep users can add vanilla-android to any stock-android questions if necessary. We won't be getting much of these anyway -- it's only a handful of devices (three so far?) with the "Pure Google Experience"

@MartinTapankov Yeah, additional apps I did mention as being ok in Vanilla. I think if your carrier adds their app for checking your data usage or something like that, it's still vanilla-enough. I was trying to draw a line between when they modify an already existing app (not ok for a vanilla definition), and when they add a couple of extra apps that do something specific (ok)

@GAThrawn In some cases "a couple of extra apps" equates to "holy f*** a crapload of %@##$^ apps".

@MartinTapankov While there's only a handful of Pure Google devices (all the Nexus's and the original Xoom) there's a crapload of vanilla devices. Think every cheap, no-name, budget tablet where they're working on such tight profit margins that they do absolutely no software customization at all beyond what's needed to get it to switch on and surf the web.

@GAThrawn ahhh yeah, I totally forgot about these. In that case, it should be as you suggested, and maybe mention those cheap devices somewhere as well

@MartinTapankov Don't really want to disqualify a stock Nexus where the carrier's put on a few of their own wallpapers and a billing app from being vanilla, but you're right some phone companies seem to make half their money from putting demo versions of every game and app under the sun on their device, which is definitely not vanilla

@MartinTapankov Made some small changes to the definitions (and used your simplified excerpt), changed the order of the paragraphs to hopefully reduce the PGE confusion, added a line on the fact that the selling point of some custom roms is them being vanilla, and mentioned the cheap, vanilla devices in a slightly more positive way.

@GAThrawn: Looks better now, thanks for the effort to put this discussion in words.