Samsung has really been dropping the ball and has basically reduced themselves to a "No kids, we have Apple at home" clones outside of their fold line ups. Their OneUI updates have borrowed heavily from liquid glass.
The S series have had the same camera hardware since the S22, and the upcoming S26 is no different. That's 5 years of the same exact hardware, and borderline the same display since the S21.
People like to give Apple shit for releasing the same phone year after year, but Samsung has literally been releasing the same exact phone for 4+ years now.
Now, they scrapped the edge late, brought back the plus, delayed the S26 because Apple forced them to put 256GB as the base storage instead of 128, and there's rumours of a wider aspect ratio fold on top of the regular fold. They're just throwing spaghetti at the wall trying to see what sticks.
I entirely agree with you, and profoundly dislike them, but it's clearly working for them if their financials don't lie. While most other manufacturers bleed money, Samsung had healthy profits on smartphones last time I checked. It still puzzles me that anyone would buy them at all, but I've long accepted that I'm not a representative sample.
So given that, I don't see why they would bother coming up with a vision after all this time.
I managed to purge myself of Apple as of a couple of years back by getting an s24 ultra.
Main things that stand out over apple:
- Much higher resolution camera w/ pretty incredible zoom. Though overall picture quality is a far closer comparison.
- S-pen, mostly used for its remote capability, shame they dropped that for the s25...
- Samsung Dex. I use my phone as my laptop daily, I've also used it as a dumb terminal for remote gaming while travelling which works exceptionally well
- Access to alternative browsers, ad blocking, alternate stores, side loading apps etc
While Google is no angel Apple actively works against open systems and control of your own devices, I'm glad to be out of that ecosystem.
Samsung seems to be targetting a sweet spot. "Costs less than Apple, superficially looks like an iPhone, product lineup includes smaller form factors, good enough."
It doesn't work for me, but that's because I courageously use my headphone jack.
I personally don't see the appeal of a premium product that includes bloatware when you can now get premium products without bloatware. I tolerated it in the early days of smartphones when there were fewer options and even fewer good options, but their "improvements" always felt gimmicky.
I've owned the SII, Note 4 (and a few Pixels in between) and now the S24. The S24 is by far the worst Android phone I've used. Massive battery drain on stand-by, even with AOD off. It has about half the battery live of a Pixel 5. Many accidental touches when in your pocket which will screw up all sorts of settings. Annoying push for their AI. Sub-par fingerprint sensor. The only reason I bought this phone was because it is one of the last compact phones around.
Samsung had been kind of side grading their flagships and offering worse SOCs depending on location, paired with there plainly being more options for Android there'll be more variety spread out over the different manufacturers
Samsung has really fallen behind the last couple years IMO. They use very different chips in different regions, and refuse for some reason to embrace bigger batteries.
Phones out of China these days are all sporting ~7000mah batteries, even in smaller form factors. Samsung's biggest phone only has 5000, and that's not a small difference in battery life.
Maybe they're still reeling from the Note 7 fiasco?
To this day my S6 was the phone I was actually happiest with. Mostly just because of its durability, fit and feel (and the screen of course) rather than any particular tech spec.
I am stuck on the (still working) S7. The physical home, back and application view button just feel so nice, that and the size, it actually fits in my hand, and pants pocket too.
I loved the feel and size of the S3. The rounded and smooth back felt great in the hand and you could throw that thing around without a case and it took it like a champ. If anyone make a modern phone like that again I'd buy it in a heartbeat.
Oh god. I had a S3 as a teenager. I didn't know how to handle my anger properly yet, so whenever I got pissed off I'd just chuck the phone at the nearest wall.
It somehow never got any damage worse than a fucked up chassis, but it was still fully functional up until it got lost a little while after it got replaced.
The Samsung A-series are way too good for the price. I'm not surprised people aren't willing to pay twice the price (a Galaxy S) for incredibly marginal gains.
If you're not trying to use your phone as a gaming PC, or taking pictures in the dark, cheap Android phones are all you need.
That "bloatware" is just alternatives to Google's software and systems, and much of it isn't bad, if not better.
I prefer the Gallery app over Google Photos, the Samsung My Files app is cleaner than Google Files, Studio is a decent video editor, Samsung Notes is a capable rich text editor with pen support, Dex is a usable desktop shell, and more. Anything I don't like - like Bixby, Store, Keyboard, Wallet, Pass and Internet - I can easily replace and even hide them in the Settings. Combined they take up minimal storage.
I'm not sure what people expect Samsung to do, just use whatever Google says to use and not try to innovate?
No I think when people speak of bloatware, they think more about, for instance, the 3 preinstalled Facebook app. Of which 2 of them are systemized, effectively hidden and can’t be uninstalled.
Huh! I had no idea about those services. I just checked my S21 Ultra and yep, they were there. It took like 20 seconds to force stop and disable them, though I'm sure they'll be re-enabled during the next update.
Honestly, I'm not sure I care enough to worry about it. If I've never noticed in the past 5 years, then they weren't adding much "bloat".
When I think of that sort of useless software, I imagine all the OEM crap that Windows laptops come with that usually cause instability and hog resources.
> I'm not sure what people expect Samsung to do, just use whatever Google says to use and not try to innovate?
To me, the benefit of the S series was "Android on decent hardware". I would have preferred as close to stock Android as possible. I mostly use F-Droid stuff anyway, though of course that means I am far from the average consumer.
They are primarily a hardware company - it seems reasonable to expect them to innovate there, and leave innovation in software to the software companies.
Can you really be "just" a hardware company and still compete with Apple, which is both a software and hardware company? Samsung has its own ecosystem of products and services to manage and unify.
If I'm Samsung and I'm trying to compete in the market against Apple, I want to provide as much as possible to my customers, without needing to rely completely on a third party.
Also, when the OS or app on a Samsung has problems, customers don't blame Google, they blame the company that sold them the phone. If I worked there as a product manager, I'd make the same choices to help the company maintain as much control as possible.
>>Samsung annoy me with all the bloatware etc but the hardware is decent
I used to buy every S Ultra phone every year, thinking the same - this year I bought the latest Oppo instead and wow, what a bubble I used to live in. The battery alone blows the Ultras out of the water, the chip is just as fast but stays cool, the camera and the screen are just better. The only thing that Samsung had over this was the anti reflective coating. Oh and it actually charges like a modern phone not something from 2015.
I used to buy Samsung from S1 to S21, then I got a pixel and now the Oppo Find X9 Pro and wow, I forget to charge it. I've had days when I go to sleep with almost 80% battery. The pixel lasted me half day
I've been a pixel guy since HTC was making them for google, and honestly jumping from the 6 to the 9 has made me think that pastures are greener someplace else.
Yeah I had it for 2 months now and I haven't had a single day finished with less than 50%. My S24 Ultra I usually had to charge around 3-4pm or it would be going into power saving mode by 8-9pm
It's amazing that all those other companies have not figured out that their apps are generally bloat, and they release all sorts of models to Apple's fairly tight lineup.
The winning example of tight product management is right there for them, but they continue to act like 'feature factories' without any concious 'whole product' design philosophy.
Probably many people within these organizations are aware, but they don't have the power to resist ingrained operational culture.
There is a possible winning strategy in trying to cover bases Apple isn’t interested in. Apple has shown that they’ll make phones that seem to be successful to some degree (the mini) but just aren’t successful enough by whatever internal metric Apple is using. And there are some things they just don’t have right now like foldable phones.
(I’m aware of the rumors)
That doesn’t mean you can’t go overboard. I don’t know Samsung’s current lineup, but I think we’ve all seen PC manufacturers who make 75 different models that are all just ever so slightly different for seemingly no reason.
They make them for channels, not consumers, and, it's partly 'an east Asian' supply chain business culture thing. They're not thinking about how the brand/product appears as simple form in consumers minds, but about deliveries, parts, channel customers, optimizations, national differentiations.
It takes an incredible amount of organizational discipline to do what Apple does and without that ingrained into culture it has zero chance of working.
And yes - they are trying to fill a lot of holes - all sorts of holes, in all sorts of different ways.
It may be true that this is actually an optimal 2cnd place strategy. Samsung may possibly be dong the right thing and consumer confusion is the price we pay for not paying a few extra $ for an iPhone.
I disagree. Samsung Notes has always been more useful and better designed than Google Keep, especially the way it works with the S-pen. GoodLock makes it possible to customize your Galaxy phone in ways that are impossible even with developer mode on the Pixel series.
Which apps are the bloatware I keep hearing about? I use an S20 for several years, and the only custom (non-vanilla Android) apps I seem to be using are the camera, and the photo gallery in connection to it. Both are fine, do not require a Samsung account, etc.
The last Samsung phone I owned had a hardware button for launching Bixby. I've never wanted to use Bixby in my life. To this day I have no interest in learning what it actually does. You could not change the function of this button. It was just a button that I would press accidentally that would begin the apparently laborious process of starting up Bixby.
I'll probably never buy another Samsung.
Edit: Just thought of another one. I remember reading the news about how Android SMS was getting upgraded to have emojis or reactions or something. I don't remember the details. But it didn't work on my phone. A year later, I realized it was because I was using the Samsung messages app, instead of the Google one. I didn't even realize it.
The one I had didn't have any obvious way to remap the button. Across several years of ownership, I probably spent a total of an hour looking for such a capability. Certainly more than I did investigating what "Bixby" is.
Now I have a ulefone, a budget brand with no particular name recognition. It has a button in the same place, with an easy way to map it. And it cost a quarter of the Samsung. shrug
It's so bad that phones come with a "Samsung Global Goals" app to push the UN ideology.
>The Samsung Global Goals app is a, CSR initiative partnering with the UNDP to promote 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, fight inequality, and fix climate change by 2030.
I don't know why you rightoids have fixated on the UN 2030 thing. I had to do endless projects about it (SDGs and similar) in college and it was just the most milquetoast, unrealistically hopeful thing ever.
> This is why it never has been and will never be considered a premium android phone.
You are entitled to your opinion, but the S series is objectively considered a premium android phone by basically everyone. By your standard, the only possible contender is Google’s Pixel lineup, but I get the feeling you might consider Google’s forced 1st party apps as intrusive too.
gApps and its stipulations are forced on all downstream android partners too. That's just part of how the capital-A Android ecosystem works. Generally google's apps are decent though and people refer to their minimal distribution as being "not bloatware".
I held on to my 13 Pro until the 17 pro came out, so I wouldnt be surprised if a lot of this is people finally going "ok maybe now" and the 16 just lands on the biggest group.
I found myself using both phones as I transitioned off the old one and barely noticing the difference mind you, which is a good sign in my eyes. I think Smartphones for the last 6 to 8 years are finally very stable. More stable than a Windows 11 laptop on Hardware people in the 2000s could only dream of.
I recently upgraded from an iPhone 12 to an iPhone 16 because I couldn't figure out how to free enough storage on the 12. The battery was still more than good enough to go a full day.
I don't notice any difference other than now I have a pile of useless lightning cables (good riddance). Honestly kind of a relief as I liked the 12 just fine. Phones kind of seem like a Solved tech these days. About as exciting to upgrade them as upgrading my Brother Laser Printer.
Not sure if it was the same bug, but I had a storage issue where System Data ballooned to like 200GB.
It had the most bizarre solution; airplane mode, set time to one year in the future, reboot, wait a few minutes, set time to 6mo in the future, reboot, wait a few minutes, set time to now, reboot. Went from 200GB to like 15GB. Was ridiculous.
(For anyone looking at this and considering doing it, you also need to ensure iMessage retention is forever, otherwise the iPhone will think it's a year old and delete the messages)
> Not sure if it was the same bug, but I had a storage issue where System Data ballooned to like 200GB.
> It had the most bizarre solution; airplane mode, set time to one year in the future, reboot, wait a few minutes, set time to 6mo in the future, reboot, wait a few minutes, set time to now, reboot. Went from 200GB to like 15GB. Was ridiculous.
I've had the same problem on my iPhone 14 Pro with iOS 17, but the "set time to the future" trick didn't work. I'd already deleted plenty of apps, and was almost considering getting a new iPhone with more storage.
I had to install Filza, write a script to figure out what was consuming the most storage, and delete a few directories:
I just checked again, and uuidtext and coresymbolicationd still seem to be bloating up in size. But the problems could also have been fixed in iOS 18/26 — I'm just not upgrading yet, because I like my semi-jailbreak.
Not sure why you're being downvoted, that was my exact issue. I only had a 128 GB iPhone 12 though and System Data had eaten up over 60 GB. As I cleared off more apps and data it would just eat up the excess.
The internet seems full of various wild fixes, but I could afford an upgrade so saved myself the hassle of futzing.
Interesting. I made the same jump and noticed a huge increase in speed and decrease in memory pressure (the likelihood that iOS will kill an app I've switched away from). I miss the physical silent mode button though.
The new button was driving me a little crazy I hit it now and then when I think I'm doing volume up. I wish they had moved that button literally anywhere else.
I honestly never noticed memory pressure. I am not a heavy app user. Chat, browsing, and pictures of my kids are the vast majority of my phone usage. Not exactly intensive stuff.
The camera button on the 16 seems to have been perfectly engineered to be exactly where I grab my phone. I'm sure I'll get used to it, but in the mean time I have so many blurry photos of desktops and pants to enjoy.
If Apple ever implements SMS anti-spam that actually works, I'll buy the upgrade it a heartbeat. It's been a solved problem on the google side for years so it's clearly not impossible.
I saw a setting to detect some spam that I toggled on sometime back. I don't know if I'm just getting less spam period, but I feel like maybe it helps? It's hard to tell.
The new OS (with Liquid Glass) has SMS message categorization that works fine to filter spam IME. You still have to delete them if you don’t want the red dot, but at least I don’t get alerts any more.
I upgraded iOS just for this feature and am glad I did. Not a fan of Liquid Glass, though.
Besides Touch ID I'd be really hard pressed to tell you something my current iPhone can do that the iPhone 8+ couldn't, let alone something it can do that I use.
Honestly the biggest thing I notice is the 5x zoom camera, everything else is a "wow that's nice" when I do a direct comparison, but I promptly forget about it (similar to looking at 4K HD vs 480i and then promptly forgetting about it when actually watching the movie; so many times I've realized it was using the older smaller file).
Battery life, I guess, if I had to pick something else.
It sounds silly, but I've got an iPhone 14 Pro and have been eyeing that action button on the side of the new iPhones. I'll probably upgrade just for that little button once they announce an iPhone 18 later this summer.
I haven't enjoyed the iPhone since it could sit flat on a table. (5S)
I can't tell you that I use the phone differently than I did then, because I don't. The camera on a phone, for me, is a nice to have in the moment, I'm not a photographer and I have never felt the need to have such an incredible camera at my disposal (except that my eyes are failing so using the zoom to see the distance has been nice... twice).
I've been thinking of dumping the phone entirely, except I have my cards on there (yes, cards are smaller) and, crucially, my online banking.
I thought about going to a 5SE, which isn't supported but would still kinda work, but my own one is bricked somehow and Apple doesn't allow it to be restored via Finder anymore. :(
Bear in mind, I still have an iPhone 17 for work, and a 15 Pro for home...
I got one of those MagSafe PopSockets and now I can set the phone on its back and it will be horizontal and doesn't have the camera being on the table.
I'm in no place to judge how other people live their lives, but sometimes I'm still in awe that smartphone companies can create the customer behavior of changing their phone every year just for slightly better cameras.
Apple is usually pretty good at keeping older phones performant enough but,
This is the first upgrade cycle that I upgraded in anger over an unusably slow and energy inefficient OS on an “older” model
I was traveling in south / south east Asia and my iPhone 15 Pro was dying twice a day despite minimal use besides maps and taking some photos. My battery health was 86% so not perfect but surely it shouldn’t die twice a day.
That coupled with the keyboard constantly lagging with every letter I typed made me realize Apple no longer cares about older models.
They threw that out with Liquid Glass.
I wish Android wasn’t also closing off their ecosystem.
The 15 Pro was an especially poor model as the cooling wasn't up to snuff. She be a throttlin'.
My 14 Pro Max has been a champ (though I never upgraded to Liquid Ass, iOS 18 for life on this thing). I have almost zero real reason to upgrade, esp since it'll only cost me $100 or so to have the battery replaced in a few months (I'm at 84% and treating it poorly to get it to a point I can justify the expense).
It helps that the major cell carriers have convinced people to pay multiple times more than the budget carriers, to offer free phone upgrades every few years or when switching carriers. Makes me wonder how much cheaper phone plans could be
> Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP) shares more data on smartphone lifespan by brand. According to their research, people who use iPhones keep their devices longer: 61% of Apple smartphone users and 43% of Android users have owned their previous devices for two years or more.
>Notably, 29% of iPhone users held onto their phones for more than three years, compared to 21% of Android users. Additionally, CIRP found that over a third of iPhone buyers (both those who previously used iPhones and Androids) have owned their devices for over three years, while fewer than a third have owned them for less than two years.
Lots of people spend money on luxuries. Nails, leased cars, restaurants, etc. I am not seeing a measurable difference in the occurrence of people spending unnecessarily on phones vs other luxuries, such that Apple could be credited with an abnormal level of success.
Most people are using their devices as long as they can.
I'm still using an iPhone 12, and given I have a proper camera, see no reason to (ever?) upgrade. After a battery replacement, it still runs perfectly well. That seems like a problem for Apple.
It's a problem Apple could easily fix: put out another small phone. I'm in the "cold dead hands" camp with our 13 Minis: when the battery dies, get a new one and hope Apple comes to their senses in four years.
OTOH, maybe the iPhone Fold will turn out to not be two giant slabs of glass that still won't fit in your pocket. Maybe it'll be a reasonable size folded up, and big when unfolded. A person can dream...
I think the 12 was great, and the main driver when I upgraded to a 14 was much better stabilisation when shooting video. Otherwise I probably would've stuck with it.
Apple makes a sizeable sum through the App store and accessories. I don't think low churn on their flagship hardware is keeping their executives awake at night.
Still much worse than what could have been. Compare to for example Fairphone, remove some screws and you can replace the battery. Same for the screen and other components. No glue.
It's a bit like the car market, where there are only a few Tesla models, and hundreds of models from other manufacturers. Google is hamstrung in not wanting to compete too fiercely against other Android phone manufacturing partners.
Does Google have the hardware design expertise needed to compete? If they don't already posses that then it is quite a dilemma because they would need to either buy a top notch handset maker and hope that can be competive with the other Android makers. Or build it up themselves. And all this has to happen while competing with other Android makers, who will be very wary of Google. I also don't know that Google needs specific Android phones to be the best or most popular to win the things they care about. Phones are just platforms for them. Android ensures no one has a chokepoint on that.
I have had recent iPhones, Pixels, and a Samsung phone, all high end. I'm a bit biased, but I do honestly think that Pixels are better or the same build quality compared to Samsung. The software is better for me too, but I accept that's a lot of personal preference.
I think the iPhones are out in front a little, but in a way that I'm not sure really matters. I loved the iPhone hardware I've owned, but the difference in build quality isn't noticeable unless you look carefully and isn't noticeable in a case. The only way I'd say it's noticeable is if you're a hardware nerd who knows how the things are manufactured, or if you get a repair bill. What Apple have done with iPhone hardware is a huge achievement, but said as someone who likes owning nice things, I'd happily take a Pixel 10.
Google bought out HTC 8 years ago to the day, and if I recall correctly that exacerbated a lot of the tension in the Android OEM space that the original Google Pixel rollout caused in the first place.
20% of all phones sold are iPhones, and 80% are Android (or not 80%? Some small percentage is probably neither). Yeah, considering the iPhone has maybe 3-5 models, and across all the Android brands, maybe 500 models?
32% are other brands... interestingly Google belongs in said "other".
I upgraded to a 16 pro from an iPhone SE 2. Things I noticed:
Pros:
Better screen, cameras and build quality. Like way better. The glass on this phone is durable enough to not use a case and I don't. After beating it up for a year, its looks and works great. The build quality of this device is bordering alien.
Face ID is very nice. Touch ID does not like my skin.
I like the magnetic accessories and MagSafe.
Visual intelligence is actual quite useful for helping to identify stuff. I’m a curious person and actually use it.
Having flashlight on the action button makes it feel like a tool. I use the flashlight virtually every day.
It’s nice to not have my phone lag, which was a problem for the SE2. This phone is very capable, battery life is much better too.
Cons:
I have had more camera crashes on this iPhone than any I’ve ever had on a new flagship. Less than on my dying SE2, but the camera should not crash on a new flagship. It’s mission critical equipment in my book.
I switched to iPhone from Android six months ago and still can't handle this iPhone keyboard. The iPhone keyboard aggravates me literally every single second that I use it. I hate it passionately. The iPhone keyboard is so bad that even though I love the rest of the phone, I'm considering switching back to Android.
> Samsung’s S series secured a spot in the list for the second consecutive year, reflecting the brand’s continued focus on its flagship lineup.
I'm kind of surprised the latest S series phone isn't on there every year. I've always thought of it as the premium non-Apple phone.
Samsung annoy me with all the bloatware etc but the hardware is decent. I am in, I think, my seventh year with my S10 and it's going strong.
Samsung has really been dropping the ball and has basically reduced themselves to a "No kids, we have Apple at home" clones outside of their fold line ups. Their OneUI updates have borrowed heavily from liquid glass.
The S series have had the same camera hardware since the S22, and the upcoming S26 is no different. That's 5 years of the same exact hardware, and borderline the same display since the S21.
People like to give Apple shit for releasing the same phone year after year, but Samsung has literally been releasing the same exact phone for 4+ years now.
Now, they scrapped the edge late, brought back the plus, delayed the S26 because Apple forced them to put 256GB as the base storage instead of 128, and there's rumours of a wider aspect ratio fold on top of the regular fold. They're just throwing spaghetti at the wall trying to see what sticks.
Samsung has no vision.
> Samsung has no vision.
I entirely agree with you, and profoundly dislike them, but it's clearly working for them if their financials don't lie. While most other manufacturers bleed money, Samsung had healthy profits on smartphones last time I checked. It still puzzles me that anyone would buy them at all, but I've long accepted that I'm not a representative sample.
So given that, I don't see why they would bother coming up with a vision after all this time.
I managed to purge myself of Apple as of a couple of years back by getting an s24 ultra.
Main things that stand out over apple:
- Much higher resolution camera w/ pretty incredible zoom. Though overall picture quality is a far closer comparison.
- S-pen, mostly used for its remote capability, shame they dropped that for the s25...
- Samsung Dex. I use my phone as my laptop daily, I've also used it as a dumb terminal for remote gaming while travelling which works exceptionally well
- Access to alternative browsers, ad blocking, alternate stores, side loading apps etc
While Google is no angel Apple actively works against open systems and control of your own devices, I'm glad to be out of that ecosystem.
Samsung seems to be targetting a sweet spot. "Costs less than Apple, superficially looks like an iPhone, product lineup includes smaller form factors, good enough."
It doesn't work for me, but that's because I courageously use my headphone jack.
I personally don't see the appeal of a premium product that includes bloatware when you can now get premium products without bloatware. I tolerated it in the early days of smartphones when there were fewer options and even fewer good options, but their "improvements" always felt gimmicky.
I've owned the SII, Note 4 (and a few Pixels in between) and now the S24. The S24 is by far the worst Android phone I've used. Massive battery drain on stand-by, even with AOD off. It has about half the battery live of a Pixel 5. Many accidental touches when in your pocket which will screw up all sorts of settings. Annoying push for their AI. Sub-par fingerprint sensor. The only reason I bought this phone was because it is one of the last compact phones around.
Samsung had been kind of side grading their flagships and offering worse SOCs depending on location, paired with there plainly being more options for Android there'll be more variety spread out over the different manufacturers
Samsung has really fallen behind the last couple years IMO. They use very different chips in different regions, and refuse for some reason to embrace bigger batteries.
Phones out of China these days are all sporting ~7000mah batteries, even in smaller form factors. Samsung's biggest phone only has 5000, and that's not a small difference in battery life.
Maybe they're still reeling from the Note 7 fiasco?
To this day my S6 was the phone I was actually happiest with. Mostly just because of its durability, fit and feel (and the screen of course) rather than any particular tech spec.
I am stuck on the (still working) S7. The physical home, back and application view button just feel so nice, that and the size, it actually fits in my hand, and pants pocket too.
I loved the feel and size of the S3. The rounded and smooth back felt great in the hand and you could throw that thing around without a case and it took it like a champ. If anyone make a modern phone like that again I'd buy it in a heartbeat.
Oh god. I had a S3 as a teenager. I didn't know how to handle my anger properly yet, so whenever I got pissed off I'd just chuck the phone at the nearest wall.
It somehow never got any damage worse than a fucked up chassis, but it was still fully functional up until it got lost a little while after it got replaced.
The Samsung A-series are way too good for the price. I'm not surprised people aren't willing to pay twice the price (a Galaxy S) for incredibly marginal gains.
If you're not trying to use your phone as a gaming PC, or taking pictures in the dark, cheap Android phones are all you need.
That "bloatware" is just alternatives to Google's software and systems, and much of it isn't bad, if not better.
I prefer the Gallery app over Google Photos, the Samsung My Files app is cleaner than Google Files, Studio is a decent video editor, Samsung Notes is a capable rich text editor with pen support, Dex is a usable desktop shell, and more. Anything I don't like - like Bixby, Store, Keyboard, Wallet, Pass and Internet - I can easily replace and even hide them in the Settings. Combined they take up minimal storage.
I'm not sure what people expect Samsung to do, just use whatever Google says to use and not try to innovate?
No I think when people speak of bloatware, they think more about, for instance, the 3 preinstalled Facebook app. Of which 2 of them are systemized, effectively hidden and can’t be uninstalled.
Huh! I had no idea about those services. I just checked my S21 Ultra and yep, they were there. It took like 20 seconds to force stop and disable them, though I'm sure they'll be re-enabled during the next update.
Honestly, I'm not sure I care enough to worry about it. If I've never noticed in the past 5 years, then they weren't adding much "bloat".
When I think of that sort of useless software, I imagine all the OEM crap that Windows laptops come with that usually cause instability and hog resources.
> I'm not sure what people expect Samsung to do, just use whatever Google says to use and not try to innovate?
To me, the benefit of the S series was "Android on decent hardware". I would have preferred as close to stock Android as possible. I mostly use F-Droid stuff anyway, though of course that means I am far from the average consumer.
They are primarily a hardware company - it seems reasonable to expect them to innovate there, and leave innovation in software to the software companies.
Can you really be "just" a hardware company and still compete with Apple, which is both a software and hardware company? Samsung has its own ecosystem of products and services to manage and unify.
If I'm Samsung and I'm trying to compete in the market against Apple, I want to provide as much as possible to my customers, without needing to rely completely on a third party.
Also, when the OS or app on a Samsung has problems, customers don't blame Google, they blame the company that sold them the phone. If I worked there as a product manager, I'd make the same choices to help the company maintain as much control as possible.
>>Samsung annoy me with all the bloatware etc but the hardware is decent
I used to buy every S Ultra phone every year, thinking the same - this year I bought the latest Oppo instead and wow, what a bubble I used to live in. The battery alone blows the Ultras out of the water, the chip is just as fast but stays cool, the camera and the screen are just better. The only thing that Samsung had over this was the anti reflective coating. Oh and it actually charges like a modern phone not something from 2015.
I used to buy Samsung from S1 to S21, then I got a pixel and now the Oppo Find X9 Pro and wow, I forget to charge it. I've had days when I go to sleep with almost 80% battery. The pixel lasted me half day
I've been a pixel guy since HTC was making them for google, and honestly jumping from the 6 to the 9 has made me think that pastures are greener someplace else.
Pixel 8 Pro was my only pixel and I've been very disappointed about it.
Anything keeping you from Graphene?
Yeah I had it for 2 months now and I haven't had a single day finished with less than 50%. My S24 Ultra I usually had to charge around 3-4pm or it would be going into power saving mode by 8-9pm
>Samsung annoy me with all the bloatware etc
This is why it never has been and will never be considered a premium android phone. Samsung's apps are awful.
It's amazing that all those other companies have not figured out that their apps are generally bloat, and they release all sorts of models to Apple's fairly tight lineup.
The winning example of tight product management is right there for them, but they continue to act like 'feature factories' without any concious 'whole product' design philosophy.
Probably many people within these organizations are aware, but they don't have the power to resist ingrained operational culture.
There is a possible winning strategy in trying to cover bases Apple isn’t interested in. Apple has shown that they’ll make phones that seem to be successful to some degree (the mini) but just aren’t successful enough by whatever internal metric Apple is using. And there are some things they just don’t have right now like foldable phones.
(I’m aware of the rumors)
That doesn’t mean you can’t go overboard. I don’t know Samsung’s current lineup, but I think we’ve all seen PC manufacturers who make 75 different models that are all just ever so slightly different for seemingly no reason.
They make them for channels, not consumers, and, it's partly 'an east Asian' supply chain business culture thing. They're not thinking about how the brand/product appears as simple form in consumers minds, but about deliveries, parts, channel customers, optimizations, national differentiations.
It takes an incredible amount of organizational discipline to do what Apple does and without that ingrained into culture it has zero chance of working.
And yes - they are trying to fill a lot of holes - all sorts of holes, in all sorts of different ways.
It may be true that this is actually an optimal 2cnd place strategy. Samsung may possibly be dong the right thing and consumer confusion is the price we pay for not paying a few extra $ for an iPhone.
I disagree. Samsung Notes has always been more useful and better designed than Google Keep, especially the way it works with the S-pen. GoodLock makes it possible to customize your Galaxy phone in ways that are impossible even with developer mode on the Pixel series.
GoodLock is one of the best apps on Android. I wish it were part of the OS and available on every device.
Which apps are the bloatware I keep hearing about? I use an S20 for several years, and the only custom (non-vanilla Android) apps I seem to be using are the camera, and the photo gallery in connection to it. Both are fine, do not require a Samsung account, etc.
The last Samsung phone I owned had a hardware button for launching Bixby. I've never wanted to use Bixby in my life. To this day I have no interest in learning what it actually does. You could not change the function of this button. It was just a button that I would press accidentally that would begin the apparently laborious process of starting up Bixby.
I'll probably never buy another Samsung.
Edit: Just thought of another one. I remember reading the news about how Android SMS was getting upgraded to have emojis or reactions or something. I don't remember the details. But it didn't work on my phone. A year later, I realized it was because I was using the Samsung messages app, instead of the Google one. I didn't even realize it.
I had a phone with a Bixby button too. I remapped it to other apps, and never used Bixby. I wish phones had more hardware buttons again.
The one I had didn't have any obvious way to remap the button. Across several years of ownership, I probably spent a total of an hour looking for such a capability. Certainly more than I did investigating what "Bixby" is.
Now I have a ulefone, a budget brand with no particular name recognition. It has a button in the same place, with an easy way to map it. And it cost a quarter of the Samsung. shrug
It's so bad that phones come with a "Samsung Global Goals" app to push the UN ideology.
>The Samsung Global Goals app is a, CSR initiative partnering with the UNDP to promote 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, fight inequality, and fix climate change by 2030.
I don't know why you rightoids have fixated on the UN 2030 thing. I had to do endless projects about it (SDGs and similar) in college and it was just the most milquetoast, unrealistically hopeful thing ever.
I don't really know what the big deal is.
>to push the UN ideology
I think you fell into the wrong rabbithole somewhere
Such virtue signaling by app is lame and hypocritical, but the UN is far too divided to be pushing anything.
The wrong rabbit hole of finding a pre installed app pushing politics to be icky.
> This is why it never has been and will never be considered a premium android phone.
You are entitled to your opinion, but the S series is objectively considered a premium android phone by basically everyone. By your standard, the only possible contender is Google’s Pixel lineup, but I get the feeling you might consider Google’s forced 1st party apps as intrusive too.
gApps and its stipulations are forced on all downstream android partners too. That's just part of how the capital-A Android ecosystem works. Generally google's apps are decent though and people refer to their minimal distribution as being "not bloatware".
>the S series is objectively considered a premium android phone by basically everyone
Not by anyone I know
>I get the feeling you might consider Google’s forced 1st party apps as intrusive too.
You'd be incorrect
Come on, don't you just love Bixby?
I held on to my 13 Pro until the 17 pro came out, so I wouldnt be surprised if a lot of this is people finally going "ok maybe now" and the 16 just lands on the biggest group.
I found myself using both phones as I transitioned off the old one and barely noticing the difference mind you, which is a good sign in my eyes. I think Smartphones for the last 6 to 8 years are finally very stable. More stable than a Windows 11 laptop on Hardware people in the 2000s could only dream of.
I recently upgraded from an iPhone 12 to an iPhone 16 because I couldn't figure out how to free enough storage on the 12. The battery was still more than good enough to go a full day.
I don't notice any difference other than now I have a pile of useless lightning cables (good riddance). Honestly kind of a relief as I liked the 12 just fine. Phones kind of seem like a Solved tech these days. About as exciting to upgrade them as upgrading my Brother Laser Printer.
Not sure if it was the same bug, but I had a storage issue where System Data ballooned to like 200GB.
It had the most bizarre solution; airplane mode, set time to one year in the future, reboot, wait a few minutes, set time to 6mo in the future, reboot, wait a few minutes, set time to now, reboot. Went from 200GB to like 15GB. Was ridiculous.
(For anyone looking at this and considering doing it, you also need to ensure iMessage retention is forever, otherwise the iPhone will think it's a year old and delete the messages)
> Not sure if it was the same bug, but I had a storage issue where System Data ballooned to like 200GB.
> It had the most bizarre solution; airplane mode, set time to one year in the future, reboot, wait a few minutes, set time to 6mo in the future, reboot, wait a few minutes, set time to now, reboot. Went from 200GB to like 15GB. Was ridiculous.
I've had the same problem on my iPhone 14 Pro with iOS 17, but the "set time to the future" trick didn't work. I'd already deleted plenty of apps, and was almost considering getting a new iPhone with more storage.
I had to install Filza, write a script to figure out what was consuming the most storage, and delete a few directories:
- /var/mobile/Library/Caches/com.apple/geod/MapTiles
- /var/db/uuidtext
- /var/root/Library/Caches/com.apple.coresymbolicationd
Deleting these helped a lot.
I just checked again, and uuidtext and coresymbolicationd still seem to be bloating up in size. But the problems could also have been fixed in iOS 18/26 — I'm just not upgrading yet, because I like my semi-jailbreak.
Not sure why you're being downvoted, that was my exact issue. I only had a 128 GB iPhone 12 though and System Data had eaten up over 60 GB. As I cleared off more apps and data it would just eat up the excess.
The internet seems full of various wild fixes, but I could afford an upgrade so saved myself the hassle of futzing.
Interesting. I made the same jump and noticed a huge increase in speed and decrease in memory pressure (the likelihood that iOS will kill an app I've switched away from). I miss the physical silent mode button though.
The new button was driving me a little crazy I hit it now and then when I think I'm doing volume up. I wish they had moved that button literally anywhere else.
I honestly never noticed memory pressure. I am not a heavy app user. Chat, browsing, and pictures of my kids are the vast majority of my phone usage. Not exactly intensive stuff.
The camera button on the 16 seems to have been perfectly engineered to be exactly where I grab my phone. I'm sure I'll get used to it, but in the mean time I have so many blurry photos of desktops and pants to enjoy.
If Apple ever implements SMS anti-spam that actually works, I'll buy the upgrade it a heartbeat. It's been a solved problem on the google side for years so it's clearly not impossible.
I saw a setting to detect some spam that I toggled on sometime back. I don't know if I'm just getting less spam period, but I feel like maybe it helps? It's hard to tell.
The new OS (with Liquid Glass) has SMS message categorization that works fine to filter spam IME. You still have to delete them if you don’t want the red dot, but at least I don’t get alerts any more.
I upgraded iOS just for this feature and am glad I did. Not a fan of Liquid Glass, though.
Besides Touch ID I'd be really hard pressed to tell you something my current iPhone can do that the iPhone 8+ couldn't, let alone something it can do that I use.
The cameras have had leaps if you're talking about that kind of timescale. Otherwise, I mostly agree.
I'd probably be fine still using my iPhone 3G were it not for the camera. An upgrade every 2-3 years feels practically mandatory for better photos.
Honestly the biggest thing I notice is the 5x zoom camera, everything else is a "wow that's nice" when I do a direct comparison, but I promptly forget about it (similar to looking at 4K HD vs 480i and then promptly forgetting about it when actually watching the movie; so many times I've realized it was using the older smaller file).
Battery life, I guess, if I had to pick something else.
Have they started becoming better again? I had the X before the current 13 and am still regularly disappointed by the camera.
It sounds silly, but I've got an iPhone 14 Pro and have been eyeing that action button on the side of the new iPhones. I'll probably upgrade just for that little button once they announce an iPhone 18 later this summer.
I have that button and never use it - wish I could lend it to you haha!
I haven't enjoyed the iPhone since it could sit flat on a table. (5S)
I can't tell you that I use the phone differently than I did then, because I don't. The camera on a phone, for me, is a nice to have in the moment, I'm not a photographer and I have never felt the need to have such an incredible camera at my disposal (except that my eyes are failing so using the zoom to see the distance has been nice... twice).
I've been thinking of dumping the phone entirely, except I have my cards on there (yes, cards are smaller) and, crucially, my online banking.
I thought about going to a 5SE, which isn't supported but would still kinda work, but my own one is bricked somehow and Apple doesn't allow it to be restored via Finder anymore. :(
Bear in mind, I still have an iPhone 17 for work, and a 15 Pro for home...
I hate this duopoly.
I got one of those MagSafe PopSockets and now I can set the phone on its back and it will be horizontal and doesn't have the camera being on the table.
2025 and 2024 look identical for the top five spots, just with each number +1, so it's not any sort of one-off thing.
I'm in no place to judge how other people live their lives, but sometimes I'm still in awe that smartphone companies can create the customer behavior of changing their phone every year just for slightly better cameras.
Apple is usually pretty good at keeping older phones performant enough but,
This is the first upgrade cycle that I upgraded in anger over an unusably slow and energy inefficient OS on an “older” model
I was traveling in south / south east Asia and my iPhone 15 Pro was dying twice a day despite minimal use besides maps and taking some photos. My battery health was 86% so not perfect but surely it shouldn’t die twice a day.
That coupled with the keyboard constantly lagging with every letter I typed made me realize Apple no longer cares about older models.
They threw that out with Liquid Glass.
I wish Android wasn’t also closing off their ecosystem.
The 15 Pro was an especially poor model as the cooling wasn't up to snuff. She be a throttlin'.
My 14 Pro Max has been a champ (though I never upgraded to Liquid Ass, iOS 18 for life on this thing). I have almost zero real reason to upgrade, esp since it'll only cost me $100 or so to have the battery replaced in a few months (I'm at 84% and treating it poorly to get it to a point I can justify the expense).
It helps that the major cell carriers have convinced people to pay multiple times more than the budget carriers, to offer free phone upgrades every few years or when switching carriers. Makes me wonder how much cheaper phone plans could be
Perhaps your assumption is wrong. In a high income cohort, I know zero people that buy new phones every year.
https://nsysgroup.com/blog/average-device-lifespan-how-long-...
> Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP) shares more data on smartphone lifespan by brand. According to their research, people who use iPhones keep their devices longer: 61% of Apple smartphone users and 43% of Android users have owned their previous devices for two years or more.
>Notably, 29% of iPhone users held onto their phones for more than three years, compared to 21% of Android users. Additionally, CIRP found that over a third of iPhone buyers (both those who previously used iPhones and Androids) have owned their devices for over three years, while fewer than a third have owned them for less than two years.
https://www.consumeraffairs.com/cell_phones/cell-phone-stati...
> A shocking number of people (12%) upgrade their phones every year
That's about 40 million people in the US, btw.
Lots of people spend money on luxuries. Nails, leased cars, restaurants, etc. I am not seeing a measurable difference in the occurrence of people spending unnecessarily on phones vs other luxuries, such that Apple could be credited with an abnormal level of success.
Most people are using their devices as long as they can.
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I'm still using an iPhone 12, and given I have a proper camera, see no reason to (ever?) upgrade. After a battery replacement, it still runs perfectly well. That seems like a problem for Apple.
It's a problem Apple could easily fix: put out another small phone. I'm in the "cold dead hands" camp with our 13 Minis: when the battery dies, get a new one and hope Apple comes to their senses in four years.
OTOH, maybe the iPhone Fold will turn out to not be two giant slabs of glass that still won't fit in your pocket. Maybe it'll be a reasonable size folded up, and big when unfolded. A person can dream...
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I think the 12 was great, and the main driver when I upgraded to a 14 was much better stabilisation when shooting video. Otherwise I probably would've stuck with it.
Apple makes a sizeable sum through the App store and accessories. I don't think low churn on their flagship hardware is keeping their executives awake at night.
Somewhere far away, Eric Raymond is explaining that "Apple’s hopes of retaining market share above 10% will vanish."
According to ifixit, the 16 is also the most repairable iphone ever
If it wasn't concerned on how nice it play with linux, I would already have one
https://www.ifixit.com/News/101397/an-update-on-iphone-repai...
Still much worse than what could have been. Compare to for example Fairphone, remove some screws and you can replace the battery. Same for the screen and other components. No glue.
Have they managed that with waterproofing?
It's a bit like the car market, where there are only a few Tesla models, and hundreds of models from other manufacturers. Google is hamstrung in not wanting to compete too fiercely against other Android phone manufacturing partners.
Does Google have the hardware design expertise needed to compete? If they don't already posses that then it is quite a dilemma because they would need to either buy a top notch handset maker and hope that can be competive with the other Android makers. Or build it up themselves. And all this has to happen while competing with other Android makers, who will be very wary of Google. I also don't know that Google needs specific Android phones to be the best or most popular to win the things they care about. Phones are just platforms for them. Android ensures no one has a chokepoint on that.
I have had recent iPhones, Pixels, and a Samsung phone, all high end. I'm a bit biased, but I do honestly think that Pixels are better or the same build quality compared to Samsung. The software is better for me too, but I accept that's a lot of personal preference.
I think the iPhones are out in front a little, but in a way that I'm not sure really matters. I loved the iPhone hardware I've owned, but the difference in build quality isn't noticeable unless you look carefully and isn't noticeable in a case. The only way I'd say it's noticeable is if you're a hardware nerd who knows how the things are manufactured, or if you get a repair bill. What Apple have done with iPhone hardware is a huge achievement, but said as someone who likes owning nice things, I'd happily take a Pixel 10.
> Does Google have the hardware design expertise needed to compete?
Yes
Google Pixel devices are well made and took 4 out of 10 Editor's Choice picks here: https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/best-android-phone/
I only buy pixel phones for my family now. Never had any issues with them, plus I can run Graphene OS
Google bought out HTC 8 years ago to the day, and if I recall correctly that exacerbated a lot of the tension in the Android OEM space that the original Google Pixel rollout caused in the first place.
They also bought (and sold!) Motorola.
From the same site: https://counterpointresearch.com/en/insights/global-smartpho...
20% of all phones sold are iPhones, and 80% are Android (or not 80%? Some small percentage is probably neither). Yeah, considering the iPhone has maybe 3-5 models, and across all the Android brands, maybe 500 models?
32% are other brands... interestingly Google belongs in said "other".
Are they? Or are they just not willing to put in the resources to fight to get a bigger share?
It’s been more than long enough that I suspect no one could launch a third phone. If it doesn’t have iOS or Android it probably just won’t fly.
So I’m not sure how much they have to worry about.
I can think of one company that could launch a phone with some success, if they wanted to. Nintendo.
Nintendo Switchphone2 - it is a Switch that can make phone calls.
Microsoft could do it if they wanted to, and didn't bungle it like the last three times. (lol)
The key in my mind is to NOT compete for the high-end, but as a feature phone.
Bring back sidetalkin'!
Well it’s certainly an untapped market.
If it even has 1 person in it.
The number of models they sell is so small, of course it's going to be best-selling.
Yes everybody and their grandmother has one.
I upgraded to a 16 pro from an iPhone SE 2. Things I noticed:
Pros:
Better screen, cameras and build quality. Like way better. The glass on this phone is durable enough to not use a case and I don't. After beating it up for a year, its looks and works great. The build quality of this device is bordering alien.
Face ID is very nice. Touch ID does not like my skin.
I like the magnetic accessories and MagSafe.
Visual intelligence is actual quite useful for helping to identify stuff. I’m a curious person and actually use it.
Having flashlight on the action button makes it feel like a tool. I use the flashlight virtually every day.
It’s nice to not have my phone lag, which was a problem for the SE2. This phone is very capable, battery life is much better too.
Cons:
I have had more camera crashes on this iPhone than any I’ve ever had on a new flagship. Less than on my dying SE2, but the camera should not crash on a new flagship. It’s mission critical equipment in my book.
Camera crashes? Never seen one. How did you do that?
I switched to iPhone from Android six months ago and still can't handle this iPhone keyboard. The iPhone keyboard aggravates me literally every single second that I use it. I hate it passionately. The iPhone keyboard is so bad that even though I love the rest of the phone, I'm considering switching back to Android.