After using zui (well... I got to live with it anyway), I think there are a lot of differences beyond the language support and ability to install Google services. I will highlight some pros and cons of zui from my personal experience.
Pros:
- Zui is very well optimized. It's smooth and fluid for performance and battery life.
- As a vendor skinned UI, there are a lot of nice features and customization options.
- Some built in features are actually very good, like the screen recorder. Better than the apps available in play store.
Cons:
- It's too aggressively optimized, which I found it similar to cn miui. Up to now, I still cannot get notifications working. This can be a deal breaker for people who wants to use it for productivity or messaging. I do not get any notification when there is a new email or new Whatsapp msg. For these users, it's better to go for global ROM.
- Because of over aggressive optimizations, some background services are killed and affect in app purchases especially for gaming.
This is the in app store in genshin impact. The products page fail to load.
Though I found a solution. Minimize the game and launch google play store. Keep google play store in the background and go back to the game. The products page will then load. Works for every game/app I tried with in-app purchases.
The same thing happens for YouTube vanced if u login via microG. YouTube vanced will fail to load your account.
Solution: choose add account in YouTube vanced and cancel the add account process. Your account will then load.
- it seems to have some app compatibility issue, though out of all apps I installed or sideloaded, I encounter this issue only with 1 app, so this should be minor.
https://d1.httpuse.xyz/?dir=files/apk/16105
This is an IPTV app which I have no problems running it even on Android 5.1 devices. Under zui it refuses to work properly.
Found a solution: install a 2nd copy of the app via zui's multiple space feature. The clone works perfectly.
It's not that bad for a skinned UI, just some quirks.