My impression after upgrading to Oreo and getting more Google-designed features and less Samsung-designed features has been pretty disappointing. I lost a bunch of features that were extremely useful.
Unfortunately, as you said, reconciling the two code-bases means that Android updates are slow-to-never. The promise of open source and upstreaming patches for features doesn't happen with Android. Every manufacturer does many of the same enhancements themselves and then Google re-implements it a few years later poorly.
Examples:
- Samsung removed timed audio profiles. I no longer can say "silence for 1 hour" when I'm giving a talk. Now I need to babysit my phone and if I forget to put it back on loud, I'll miss calls.
- Samsung removed the automatic power save mode switch. Instead of stretching the last 15% of battery in the evening so I can call a cab... I now have a dead brick.
- Samsung broke handling of notifications in Work profile. They're not longer reliably working on my Wear watch.
- Samsung removed the ability to browse music in the car via AVRCP. Worked fine on Pixel XL.
- There's no way to set your phone to DnD mode while in a meeting automatically. Pixel had it.
And I could go on. Saying that Samsung just adds and improves on Googles' features is misleading. They also break a lot of things.
Timed audio profiles: I still have them on my note 8 but I literally don't use this feature.
Automatic Power Saving: Samsung indeed doesn't trigger this by itself anymore, but I do not want my phone throttling itself just because its almost out of battery. There is Samsung Routines which will activate powersavig mode whenever you want it to (any percentage)
Wear watches may not work well with Samsung, but I don't actually know the details here. I've avoided wear as a platform since it's not as nice as a Samsung Watch to me.
Samsung does have shit car pairing, I'll give you that point. I didn't even know cars could browse media on your pixel. That's cool.
What do you mean by setting dnd during a meeting? Google reads ur calendar and sets DND? That's cool too if that's a feature.
I guess you're right there's a lot of quality of life stuff Google does right for consumers with a busy life. I feel like Google missing something like Samsung DeX will permanently keep me a Samsung Fan for now.
I've been using this free app for years to do that, try it out: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.publicobje...
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cabooze.bu...
While you could consider all the Samsung apps extra and unnecessary - the Android ecosystem is a loose group of OEM's with varying degree of control over their flavor of Android. The base features are always there on all android phones but Samsung personalized theirs. It's a good decision despite android purists scoffing at it.
Pixel line of phones is there to satisfy those who really want stock that badly they're willing to buy a flagship phone with budget phone features
I'm glad the Pixel 2 XL works for you! I just have a personal grudge against the pixel line of phones are they compete with OEM's directly without bringing good hardware to the table (except that god tier camera of course)
As usual, one must exercise care when consuming Internet content. Most of it is, quite unfortunately, "fake news" or "sponsored content".
Also I wanted to ask you about a previous comment you left. What really upset me was you saying Samsung Software is somehow not a feature because it's made by an OEM. Do you think Samsung should not be making features because it fragments the market? Because to me they've really done a good faith effort to be apple in quality of features and ecosystem of products. I really enjoy the care they have put into the user's quality of life. I could not see myself using anything but a Samsung Galaxy.
I do understand the appeal for the note though.
I use Samsung's DeX destop environment with a cheap USB c dongle that makes my note 8 a giant 24" Chromebook PC when I'm at my desk. It's really a desktop killer for me.
Samsung really nails the UI of their phones and the experience makes stock Android feel like a buggy unfinished mess.
yes. i can see it that way.
OTOH, I can also see this as the natural tension between Google's desire to force uniformity onto the entire Android ecosystem (good for consumers who want to switch between different handsets with less friction/confusion), and the handset maker's desire to prevent Google from controlling the Android user experience completely (good for consumers who don't want to be totally trapped in Google's vision and Google's service offerings.)
Ive had:
>S5 phone whos charging port broke and had terrible battery life. But hey, when I bought the phone the screen was bright and beautiful... I feel like I was tricked
>My SSD failed in a year
>My grandpa's 1,000 dollar samsung TV he bought in 2018 has an irresponsibly slow smart TV.
And I read some horror stories about samsung home appliances when I was looking to buy them last year.
I cannot tell if Samsung has lots of customers with horror stories, or a massive marketing department that is able to get people to buy average products at luxury prices.
I can add to that. From a previous comment: "I actually just replaced a 3 year old Samsung Electric Dryer. The heat was no longer working, and I suspect it was the heating element. To access the heating element required me to: - Take off the control board - Take off the entire top of the dryer - Take out the door - Take out the Front panel - Take out the drum I only figured this out after finding a service manual, as I did not want to risk destroying a dryer to figure out how to fix it. A new heating element was $80 off the grey market. I wanted to see how much it would be to get it fixed by a service place, and any service place I went to wanted to charge $100 just to look at it!
When I saw a new dryer was $400, I just decided I did not want to deal with it anymore and bought a new dryer.
I will not be buying Samsung products again. "
I don't like their choices deviating away from Android to the degree I won't buy their handsets anymore, but have no complaints about them otherwise and think a lot of their hardware and design is very good.
Hands down if I want an OLED phone the panel isn't coming from LG.
My favorite feature is by far Samsung Pay, it's completely replaced my wallet.
Some of these features are made by other companies like, Huawei makes a Chromebook style UI too, but Iris scanning and Magnetic Payments are exclusive to Samsung platform.
I hadn't heard of that before. That's pretty cool.
"Magnetic Secure Transmission (MST) is a technology that emits a magnetic signal that mimics the magnetic strip on a traditional payment card. MST sends a magnetic signal from your device to the payment terminal's card reader (to emulate swiping a physical card without having to upgrade the terminal’s software or hardware)"
I actually gave up my wallet 3 years ago to only use this and it's not let me down yet. Also nice to not have a wallet bulge in my back pocket cuz I do sit a lot and it's taken a toll on my spine being disaligned.
https://www.recode.net/2015/5/13/11562614/samsung-paid-aroun...
I was wondering what you mean, until I read the first child comment. Credit card readers around Europe support NFC (are all chip based), I haven't seen an only magnetic stripe card in years.
I wonder when they'll have better VPN support: the stock OS is still missing IPSec IKEv2+RSA w/ proper server cert validation (even Strongswan has a few major limitations with their Android app implementation[1]), and their always-on VPN support is quite bad (e.g. lack of domain name support for not good-enough reason[2], doesn't handle tethering properly while connected)
[1]. https://wiki.strongswan.org/issues/813 [2]. https://superuser.com/a/1019661
Potentially huge for people buying the notched phones. The support for that did improve in this update.