This is interesting, to say the absolute least. Google will be requiring OEMs of market-enabled Android 4.0 devices to include the OS’s “Holo” theme in their ROM. This doesn’t mean that custom skins are going away, though. Instead, the mandatory theme and framework will allow market developers to create applications that take advantage of Android 4.0’s new style.

Simply put, developers can create applications for the default Android 4.0 environment without having to worry about an OEM’s custom skin mucking up the design they dreamt up. This is a great measure to ensure that developers can take full control of their user experiences.

It reminds me of the problems I had with the old Facebook app on HTC Sense devices. The green color when selecting an item would often clash with the text on any given status update. It not only made the application look bad but hard to read, as well.

Of course, we’d much rather prefer the option of disabling an entire custom skin ourselves but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We can at least rest easy knowing that the applications we download won’t look bad if the developers don’t want them to, and I appreciate that more than anything. [Google via Engadget]