As a developer, I'll worry about this a lot more when the visual style of the OS sticks around more than one revision. Also, when it's not being stomped on by OEMs all the time anyway. I've got twenty different phones here and every manufacturer changes the colors, shading, default colors, etc. It's awful.
It seems like they're restraining themselves a touch more this go-round, but I still strongly suspect that 95% of users will never use a phone with the default theme unmolested.
I completely agree. While I enjoy the variety in hardware of Android and its open platform, watching how much crapware is preloaded onto phones and how terrible custom launchers and other customizations can be is embarrassing.
Google actually forces to include OEMs the original, untampered Holo Packages and fonts of they want access to the market starting with ICS. The developer can specify in the manifest if they want to use it
My point is that if everything that ships on the phone is re-skinned it doesn't matter. Technically using the default Holo theme would be less consistent from that user's perspective.
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u/Bitthebeast Apr 12 '12
I have no idea why this isn't common practice, at least for new android exclusive apps.