14 DAY TRIAL // It looks like Lenovo has a hard time managing three smartphone brands that are more or less known to the world: Moto, Vibe and ZUK. While some of them are well-established globally, others like Vibe and ZUK are only recognized in some Asian markets.
Lenovo has already confirmed that it will maintain the Moto brand and will allow the US-based company to innovate and launch new products without mingling in the development process.
In some markets, Vibe and Moto brands are competing with each other, so Lenovo is probably thinking of a way to unify these brands under a single banner, probably that of the US-based company, which is more popular among customers.
However, in a surprising move, Lenovo crippled one of the major features of the Moto smartphones, that of being bloat-free.
It's a common fact that Moto smartphones don't come with bloatware pre-installed, which is one of the reasons Motorola can provide major Android OS updates ahead of many other handset makers.
Apparently, Moto Z and Moto Z Play smartphones sold in China have been updated to ZUI 2.5 in the beta test program. ZUI 2.5 is the latest user interface that comes with ZUK Edge, the new flagship smartphone launched by the Chinese company last month.
ZUI 2.5 is based on the Android 7.0 Nougat operating system, but comes with quite a lot of bloatware, which might not be on everyone's taste.
The folks over at Phoneradar report that, for the time being, the switch to ZUI is only available for Moto smartphones in China. It's unclear whether or not the Vibe smartphones will be given the same treatment.
We believe that the chance of ZUI being rolled out to Moto smartphones all over the globe is pretty slim, as the move seems to be market-driven. It may be that Chinese customers are not so desperate after bloat-free smartphones after all.