One thing I noticed when I started playing with Cyanogenmod Android images on my phone was that the images felt much faster without Samsung’s TouchWiz interface. As most vendors do, Samsung has added quite a bit to the stock android images. Some of them are show-stoppers for me — I need to have the priority senders feature that Samsung’s apps have and other mods don’t.

TouchWiz is a front-end interface installed on Samsung devices, which can be customized using various themes. Some of the problems with TouchWiz is that it ships with many preinstalled applications that cannot be uninstalled and it consumes substantial amounts of memory. Now there are rumors that Samsung may partner with Google to optimize the TouchWiz interface.

The rumor about Google helping Samsung enhance TouchWiz comes at an interesting time. In the past, Google has worked with HTC, LG, Motorola, Huawei and Samsung to build Nexus devices. Now there are reports that Google is going to start building its own phones. Even though Android has a dominant share in the smartphone market, Apple AAPL +3.36%’s iPhone leads in profits. Plus Apple’s larger-sized smartphones like the iPhone 6 Plus and iPhone 6S Plus are convincing Android users to switch over. By creating its own hardware, Google could ensure higher quality products powered by stock versions of Android.