Hold on tight, we are almost back…
Previously on Lemmy: Sony
Past Discussions:
I thought we should restart the brand discussion with something more popular to give this community relaunch a bit more oomph. So, Samsung it is.
I’ve never really used a Samsung phone much before, despite them being so popular in the States. Have friends who used them, they usually look nice and high quality, and the Galaxy S Active are the only high-end phones I know that doesn’t shatter when you look at them wrong without a case, so, props to Samsung.
There are may reasons I don’t like Samsung phones: Hardware fuse disabling Knox on bootloader unlock, Exynos vs Snapdragon models, the mandatory Bixby button, the Galaxy Note 7 that really blew up. To me, Samsung phones are trying so hard to go against what makes Android good, which is the customizability to do whatever you wanted. Android is everything; Samsung is just Samsung.
Personally, I think Samsung is only worth buying at the very high end for the Galaxy S series. I’ve heard that A series have gotten better, but there always seems to be better choices from Moto/Pixel/Chinese brands on Amazon that it’s not worth considering their low tier offering.
What should we do next week? I’m thinking Microsoft, just to make fun of them for the very idea of making a Surface Duo 2.
FAQ:
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Hardware great, software garbage. They really want to be like Apple but aren’t even half as competent (which is more an insult to Samsung than praise to Apple). It comes bloated with all kind of garbage alot of which you can’t uninstall (like Facebook). They have their own app store next to the Google Store which is annoying. It has no reason to be there other than distributing their shitty apps that I don’t want in the first place.
I currently have an S21 and can’t wait to have the spare income to replace it.
Facebook does not come on their unlocked phones. I’ve set up my S8 and S23, as well as Note 9 and Note 22 for family and none of them came with bloatware aside from Samsung’s apps. However I got a used Galaxy tablet on AT&T and it had so much crap on it. At least it’s removable using ADB.
It does however include meta services, meta app manager, and meta app installer which you have to either disable after enabling view of system apps or use adb to remove it.
I bought a Samsung phone years ago and had to return it. I remember feeling really conflicted when I decided to return it. Hardware wise it was the best there was at the time and the phone itself looked beautiful. On paper it was a monster. Yet it dropped frames like crazy and stuttered doing the most basic tasks. I just couldn’t justify spending that much money for a mediocre experience. Such a pity.
Bold of them to assume people who buy expensive Android phones still use Facebook in 2023.
It’s okay. Not bad, not great. Gonna get a Google phone with a headphone jack on it. Don’t really need my phone for anything other than basic tasks.
Samsung phones have great hardware, but all the Samsung bloatware ruins the phone. Good if you can get one with only stock android
Samsung has great hardware but my OG galaxy S2 was peak Samsung for me. I still love their build quality but I don’t like curved screens, lack of sd slots and 3.5mm jack and so on. Neither do I want all the Samsung social etc. apps.
If Samsung made a clean phone like the pixel with their build quality, that would be a game changer.
Samsung social eh? Maybe they should just make their own Lemmy instance. That’d be pretty cool.
Lol, from my limited amount of reading, Samsung seems to be a company that unduly tries to influence the SK government, much more so that Google/Apple in the US. So I have no clue how this will shape up.
P.S The actual app is called Samsung Members or something.
Mixed opinions.
Things I like about Samsung:
- Feature-rich hardware and software
- 4 years of OS updates compared to 3 by Google
- S Pen in Note/Ultra
- Foldables
- Keeping Android tablets and Android-compatible smartwatches alive when Google abandoned them. Huge props for that.
Things I dislike:
- Making fun of Apple and then doing the exact same things they did: removing the headphone jack, display notch, removing the charger in the box.
- They even got rid of expandable storage in the S series despite being a major manufacturer of micro SDs.
- Samsung’s software is notorious for being slow, generally inferior compared to Google’s and not the most well-designed out there.
- I tried both the Galaxy A52 and a Pixel 6a at Best Buy. The A52 was lagging. I bought the 6a.
- They’re edging towards anti-repair.
- Certain Samsung smartwatch features only work if you have a Samsung phone.
It just seems like every brand does the make fun of Apple then doing the exact thing they did thing.
As someone who exclusively used Samsung flagships as their daily driver (GS2 > Note 4 > Note 8 > Note 20 Ultra), I was a Samsung absolutist and fanboy. But their decisions since the N20U has been frustrating, and has had me eyeing other brands for the first time.
To start about what I love about them: fantastic hardware with solid software. I don’t mind their excessive features, because they become so useful, Android/Google adds them to stock 2-3 years later. So it’s like a decent beta test for some awesome utilities, like saying “smile” to take a photo with the camera when you can’t reach the shutter button. I think several phones now offer this.
What has me eyeing something else for my next phone: shitting on their hardcore power users and greedily taking away options. The removal of the SD card (critical for my usage), the dilution of their features across different models (base, plus, ultra), removing the magstripe, etc. are all anti-consumer with NO benefit to their customers. Even if your typical customer doesn’t use a specific feature, it strips the option away from those who do, and it’s not like the savings go towards the consumer. If not for these decisions (among other, smaller infractions), I wouldn’t be contemplating other brands.
Asus Zenfone 10 looks quite feature complete before the break, maybe you should consider it.
It doesn’t have a SD card slot, unfortunately. At the moment, only Sony Xperia still carries it on the flagship level, so I’m eyeing that one for now. Fortunately, my N20U is still going strong, so I’ll see what the field looks like when I upgrade. I guess whichever OEM decides to include a $0.50 piece of hardware will probably get my $1K+.
Still loving my N20U. Not feeling any huge urge to upgrade; we’ll see if lack of new versions of Android changes my mind
Samsung phones are the worst android phones you can buy, except for all the others.
As frustrating as Samsung is, I always find myself going back to them. Displays, build quality, cameras, performance, storage capacity, speakers, software features (Dex!), they’re just ahead of the curve across the board.
The only legitimate advantage of Chinese phones is the super fast charging, but I’m in the better safe than sorry camp on that one.
I’ve had the Fold 3 and now Fold 4, and I really don’t see myself getting anything other than a Fold 6 down the line, unless something major changes.
Those sliding/expandable screen models looked pretty slick. I hope by the time they get to the Fold 6 it’ll just be an expandable stick phone rather than actually folding.
Typing from a Samsung Galaxy A50 right now, as a long time Samsung user. I’ve always hated TouchWiz from the older days, but I really love One UI. I’d even go as far as to say that One UI is the best Android skin (controversial opinion, lol)!
Same. I don’t get so this hate. It’s like people still think it’s touchwiz and have never used one ui. I actually prefer one ui far more than stock android.
Flagship has no headphone jack or even micro SD card. Absolute joke.
If they had those I would strongly consider buying. I was an LG person until they stopped making phones.
I hear you. I was using a OnePlus6 until a couple of years ago when changes at my mobile provider requires that I change. Ended up getting an LG Velvet that I’m still using.
I have never used a Samsung phone either, though it’s looking more and more likely that one of them will be my next phone.
Crap phones that don’t last, bad UI, filled with bloat and ads, don’t play nice with the other Android kids, and steal their homework.
I mean, on the one hand I’ve had two Samsung phones last me the past decade (and the older one still fires up when I want to use it). But on the other hand, I’ve decided I’ll never buy a Samsung phone again. Their great hardware is marred by the Samsung software experience. The ad experience hasn’t been bad actually, probably because I’m on a flagship model.
But I hate the button they force to be associated with their feature that I don’t want. Every single time I’ve hit that button was either by accident or experimenting with how it works. Even though I have set up one of the alternative presses to launch an app of my choice, I never think of the button other than when I accidentally hit it and need to swear at it and Samsung.
Unpopular opinion, but I love my Samsung phone - upgraded from an S9 to S21 not that long ago. I’m not a brand (or even OS) loyalist by any means, and Samsung has its flaws, but it’s the phone that suits my needs the most.
Firstly, I need a “small-ish” phone for one-handed use during my commute in the subway. Of all the flagships, Samsung’s is one of the few that has the triple-camera setup in a small form factor. Every other major phone maker puts the regular and ultrawide camera in the smaller flagship, and the zoom only comes in the bigger version.
Secondly, I’ve absolutely hated the new Android UI since… 12? The quick toggles are ridiculously big, and it makes me feel like i’m using kids’ mode on my phone. And who thought it was a good idea to put the Wifi/data toggles behind a second layer of menu options? Samsung’s UI fixes this right out of the box without a need for root.
As for the cons… I remember my S4 used to have horrible preinstalled software that came in the root partition and couldn’t be uninstalled. But the newest Samsungs aren’t that bad. It came with a few extra things, almost all of which could be uninstalled easily. Samsung also installs their own version of Calculator, Notes etc - some of them aren’t bad at all, and the only annoying thing about their own utilities are that they force you to update them through Samsung’s own app store. Their camera also tends to oversaturate colors, but it’s a one-time effort to dial down the default saturation in the camera settings.
So yeah, the software has a few issues, but they’re all a one-off fix, whereas my issue with other Android phones (no triple-camera setup in a smaller form factor + horrible quick toggles) are not fixable or require root.
Oh yeah. and Samsung DeX is amazing. I’m surprised Android doesn’t have an equivalent feature. I love it when I can plug my phone into a monitor or TV at a hotel or a friend’s house and play movies/games off my phone.
Good photos and the battery lasts quite a while too compared to my other phones I’ve had.
Overall it’s great hardware with good photos and terrible software for me. I’ll probably never buy it on a phone again because they’re evolving in the way I’d rather not have them evolve.
They have their own unremovable:
- contacts
- calendar
- browser
- phone
- messages
- app store
Makes me feel like they’re stealing all my info if I would use it. Besides a Google account they also want you to use a Samsung account which ( honestly ) makes the whole phone more confusing ( especially to older people like my parents ).
But yeah. Good photos and great battery life. I’ve got no real complaints of the tab s5 tablet which I use when travelling and streaming shows to the tv otherwise. Though I’d have to see if the newer tablets are as much of a dumpster fire software wise like their phones.
Side note: I even had somebody come up to me with their phone “because I work in IT”. The default setting of a Samsung phone was to have the lock button activate bigsby rather than lock the phone. There’s a setting somewhere to change that. But it definitely felt agressive pushing of bigsby that nobody ( at least around here ) uses/wants to use… Maybe it’s different in other countries?
Great hardware, especially as far as the screens. Questionable software environment. Last I had one, there were duplicates of most Google apps in inferior Samsung form, which was really useless, and they couldn’t be deleted (I think). While the display was s beautiful, another thing I didn’t like was I had one of the ones with curved glass on the sides, a Galaxy S9, which looked cool, was useless, and it ended up getting cracked on the side, so it was useless and fragile.
Have you tried the Active series? I think they have the same spec, just… bulkier, great for butterfingers like me.
I don’t think they’ve had an “Active” phone since S7 though? I know there’s the Xcover series, but it isn’t tied to the S line, I wonder if it’s targetting the same niche
I looked it up. The last one is the S8 Active.
Xcover is a silly name though.
I’ve only had a Galaxy S3 and the S9.
Hardware:
They make high-quality hardware and I like that they’re trying to do something new and interesting with foldable tech, but I’ve never been a fan of their Exynos processors and foldables (imo) have proven to be little more than a gimmick that sacrifices far too much on durability for minimal benefit to most people.
Software:
I hate bloatware, and I’m not a fan of their crusade against open bootloaders.
I will only purchase a Samsung again when they let me unlock the damn bootloader
I want the pure Android experience, not a phone coming with his package of uninstallable bloatware. Also, a phone is just a phone, I want to take pictures, use GPS, call and text. The Pixel are doing the same thing for half or 3times cheaper.
I also dislike Samsung repairability policy and how they care about their employees.
Fuck Samsung
I feel exactly the same way. Samsung peaked with the S4 or S5 I think.
The S10+ has been slightly upsetting. Good specs, shit bloat, shit durability, bad design.
Nokia had a couple of good models with Android One… but have failed to release anything recent with good specs.
Motorola might get looked at, or Asus for my next phone.
