I've sworn off of Samsung after owning many Samsung flagship devices over the years. I now have OnePlus 7 Pro and it is the best phone I've ever owned. I'm never going back to Samsung. There are other manufacturers building much better Android phones than Samsung.
Better how? I just got an S10+ a few weeks ago and as far as I'm aware it's close to top-of-the-line all around. There were some other candidates like Google's but I wanted real FM radio and a headphone jack among other things that were hard to find a combination of. Extremely satisfied so far.
OnePlus is great, very close to Android stock. Samsung has so much crapware...
- when you search for an app and it's not on your phone, the first place it wants to take you to, before the Play Store, is the freaking Galaxy store (who uses that?!)
- the share panel contains a giant ad for some online storage service by Samsung
- the built-in system utility apps use a different version upgrade system than the play store, requiring you to approve some of them manually
Etc.
Feels like hardware is good but is used to peddle inferior services.
Not better objectively, Samsung is still the top of the line of android HW, but theres so many good phones that do all of the basics well, such as the Oneplus 7 Pro, Pixel 3A, Asus Zenphone and really quite a few even Huawei have excellent hardware and mostly caught up to the high bar set by samsung.
Samsung's only differentiation right now is their proprietary software, Samsung Pay, DeX, Linux on DeX and other toys they make for corporate clients and certain markets like USA
Not sure how's DeX on the phones, but my brother recently bought a new Samsung tablet and I'm thoroughly impressed by how DeX works. In fact, having no peripherals to connect it to, he still runs the tablet in DeX mode all the time - because that's how much it's better than regular Android experience.
I've been saying for years that Windows 10 is the only sane, productivity-oriented OS for tablets. DeX makes me want to reconsider Android in this role again.
DeX on phone presents the same interface but allows me to use a 27inch monitor which give me more room to use Premiere, Linux on DeX and other apps. I have completely replaced my macbook pro with this setup and like my tab s4 with DeX more than a surface pro.
Windows still has its upsides but I carry my damn computer in my pocket now. Can't beat my portable setup!
DeX allowed me to use android much more like a chromebook and less like an android phone, so liberating since all the mouse support and peripheral support is there. Enables me to be a very nimble and streamlined youtuber.
Tons of options for both recording and livestreaming games from DeX and editing footage in Premiere or Kinemaster is awesome. Can realistically film and edit just about anything with just my s10.
I personally replaced my wallet with Samsung Pay but many people find it hard to use/explain to cashiers that don't understand it works everywhere. In countries outside of USA the bank support is also pretty bad/contactless payments are more widely supported.
I dont find it to be a toy but some people don't believe its important to have a good mobile wallet. Apple could have adopted LoopPay before samsung aquired them but now I'm kinda stuck buying samsung phones/watches just so I can use MST haha
I'm quite fond of my Note 9 also. It has a Bixby button, but it's less annoying on this model, I guess; when I push it accidentally, I just get a little pop-up saying "To start Bixby, press and hold the Bixby key". Hasn't really gotten in my way.
This is my second Galaxy Note model; I've also had a Note 4. Pace Steve Jobs, I really do love having the stylus.
The screen is insanely good.
The software has very little bloat. Like none.
No always exposed front facing camera! It's a pop out, and so there's no way there's any software could be spying on you without you seeing the camera physically pop out. The hardware quality is superb, it handles and feels like an amazingly well built device, there's nothing cheap about it. It's less expensive than other flagship devices with similar specs. The camera app is very speedy and easy to use and the phone takes great pictures.
Getting used to no front facing camera takes getting used to. There's no autobrightness! The phone doesn't know when you put your ear up to it! I was able to get used to these things.
I have found the under the screen finger print reader taking some time to get used to. It was frustrating at first, but I eventually got it down. The key is to remember that the screen might be dirty if it fails to read your fingerprint.
> Getting used to no front facing camera takes getting used to. There's no autobrightness! The phone doesn't know when you put your ear up to it!
Technically, this is not because of the lack of front-facing camera; these things are handled by a separate front-facing sensors (that's why smartphones usually have more than one camera-like thingies on top). They could've retained those features while doing away with front-facing cam; I guess they wanted to go all in and stretch the screen all the way to the phone's top edge.
I'm curious about the problems did you encounter when on Samsung devices? Personally, I've thoroughly enjoyed the two Samsung phones I've owned so far: S7 Edge and S10+.
Briefly considered the OnePlus 7 Pro before purchasing my S10+, but the below par camera, lack of a headphone jack and other compromises was a deal breaker for me. They seemed to have improved the Camera performance since launch though.
The main problems I've had with Samsung devices have been due to the fact that Samsung so heavily customizes Android, it's virtually impossible for them to deliver Android updates on any kind of reasonable schedule.
At least now, Samsung delivers updates. At one point, not so long ago, any non-flagship Samsung device was stuck on the version of Android that it shipped with, unless you were willing to root it and install your own ROM.
Then, there's the fact that Samsung insists on shipping its own e-mail, messaging and contact management applications, which are very difficult to back up. There's nothing quite like having to tell someone who bought a new phone that they have to type out all of their contacts by hand, because they used Samsung's contacts app instead of Google's.
There are ways around any "difficulties" in backing up Galaxy phone data. I use essentialpim.com's EPIM windows application to manage my contacts, appointments, notes, etc on my Win10 PC. The free accompanying phone app syncs wirelessly with my PC, and the sync can be one-way either direction or both ways, user selectable. I've never hand typed any of that data into my phones, unless I did it voluntarily.
I'm pretty sure you can sync your contacts to a Samsung account pretty much the same way as you do with Google? I don't use it, but I see the option there on my S10+.
I had the original Galaxy, the GPS didn't work. At all. It was a minor scandal at the time.
I also owned a Galaxy S3, S5, S7 Edge and the S8 Edge.
I have had phones freeze when trying to answer a call. After an Android version upgrade, the phones usually got much slower, much worse performance. You know I don't really remember all the issues, but I remember that each time I upgraded to the next version I was hoping some horrible thing I was dealing with would be fixed in the next version only for the next version to have it's own horrible problem. I eventually gave up and switched to LG. I owned an LGv30 and LGv40 and now I'm using the OnePlus 7 Pro.
> I have had phones freeze when trying to answer a call. After an Android version upgrade, the phones usually got much slower, much worse performance.
Interesting. Because of those exact issues I abandoned LG and my wife abandoned Huawei, and we both run on Samsung flagships, on which we never had that happen.
I wonder if anyone ever published a root-cause analysis of problems like "otherwise seemingly stable Android freezes when trying to answer a call". It's a ridiculous thing to happen to a smartphone, and yet it keeps happening. I don't want to criticize too much as it's not as if I could write a better OS myself, but God I miss the old feature-phone experience, with soft-realtime OSes that had more-less stable delays on everything, so you could quickly learn to operate it without looking, as you knew how long doing any given thing would take.
It's ok to criticize them heavily: they're multi-billion dollar companies, you're the client and "As a user I want to use my phone to receive calls" is one of the most essential use cases.
The battery is excellent, the phone is water resistant, it's just not rated as water proof, I'm a large person and I don't need my phones to be as thin as paper, I don't mind large phones. It's not thick at all.
