On an iPhone 13 pro right now but miss a few things about Samsung/Note series phones: Stylus. Better web browser options. Dex. 360 support. knox/secure secondary area. ability to install multiple versions of same app (eg for two diff whatsapp numbers). fingerprint sensor. custom launchers with better widgets. better youtube clients. chromecast receiving. windows and side-by-side displays. And I actually really liked the ability to remap the bixby button on older devices as a dedicated back button. I fully suspect future iPhones will have more hardware (ish) buttons on the sides of phones. or dedicated touch points on the phone rim for certain functions/programability. Especially since 'Shortcuts' are a thing in ios.

iphone wins hands down for battery life, processor speed (especially video/processing), and arguably for some aspects of camera.

2017 called and wants your comment back. Samsung is best Android manufacturer in class regarding OS upgrades and security updates, Bixby can be switched off and actually performs well in tests. Visible bloatware has been reduced significantly and most of the visible apps you can uninstall or deactivate.

2023 calling - According to this Ars article from 3 days ago the Galaxy S23 install size is 4x that of stock Android.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/02/the-samsung-galaxy-s...

It's not that comforting just being able to uninstall/disable things after paying ~$1000 for hardware loaded with apps that benefit everyone but the customer.

That's because Ars didn't do proper investigation into how storage is computed. One UI reports storage conversion losses associated with representing 1,024 bytes per KB as 1,000 bytes per KB. For example, a device advertised with 512 GB of storage actually has closer to 476 GB (GiB) of usable space. Likewise, a 128 GB model has approximately 119 GB of storage, with 256 GB yielding 238 GB of space.

Basically, higher the storage size, more the inaccuracies and more number of ghost storage will appear in system. It does this because [Android basically computes](https://twitter.com/MishaalRahman/status/1622706823940698114...) all files 'f' and empty size 'e' separately and finds the difference of given total size and (f+e) and assigns that to system.

https://twitter.com/Golden_Reviewer/status/16228515345634713...

https://www.notebookcheck.net/One-UI-5-1-bloatware-is-not-co...

SIXTY GIGABYTES?

Holy moly that’s crazy.

That’s three full 64bit win10 installs!

It doesn’t even have the a/b partitions! Which is just as well at 60GB!

That's because the article is wrong, as the sibling comment shows.

lol, you can't tell iPhone zealots that their antiquated mocks are out of date. They're still using the same old stuff because they can't handle the fact that iPhone hasn't added a new feature that wasn't present on Android first in 5+ years.

> they can't handle the fact that iPhone hasn't added a new feature that wasn't present on Android first in 5+ years.

What about Emergency SOS?

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2022/11/emergency-sos-via-sat...

I have an S21 FE, which despite its name is only a year old.

Updates are not timely. We often get updates a month behind, sometimes even two. I remember in early Jan we were still on the Nov security patch. Google is faster, and often Oneplus is faster. They are probably 2nd or 3rd for update timeliness. Better than Moto, at least.

Bloatware...depends on your definition. I consider their stupid Google app copies of everything bloatware, but maybe not everyone does. Most cannot be uninstalled.

Other bloatware...I seem to remember it had FB, LinkedIn, and some Microsoft apps. Last time they also wanted to install TikTok.

That said, I was able to disable everything via adb and got it to a state I like, so it is possible. But it would be nice to be able to do so without resorting to adb.

I like the phone fine, but my next phone will not be a Samsung.

hahaha, fair. My most recent experience definitely was with an older phone, probably from that era.

I think on my Samsung A51 there was maybe 5 preinstalled Samsung apps? And for some there's no good AOSP alternative like Music anyways. I ended up grabbing the Samsung e-mail client from the Samsung Store because it's halfway decent unlike the Gmail also pre-installed one which is crap for everything but Gmail. I kinda like OneUI and updates are faster than other phones like Motorola despite them using basically stock Android. And it was several hundred cheaper than a Pixel 4a or whatever was comparable at the time.

It is beyond you because of the blinding Apple does to its customers :)

Coming to some facts, there's no bloatware these days besides Facebook and a couple other apps, which you can disable for good. If you look at the total number of features, you'll quickly notice that there are a lot of them missing on iPhone for more than a decade (Searching contacts using dialer numpad as one example). There are other features like having multiple apps open in split-screen, secure folder, S Pen, and more importantly, compatibility with 3rd party wearables like Garmin and Fitbit which I found on iPhone was so horribly bad.

You are right about Bixby, but you can disable that too.

Beyond comical is Samsung's insistence on running a type-1 hypervisor (real time kernel protection, aka RKP) for security purposes: https://archive.is/6ClWm

A52s was cheap and it had good specs, but software side is awful. You can uninstall more apps with adb, but they come back when you upgrade.

Can you uninstall Siri and replace with google assistant?

> Why anyone would get a Samsung is beyond me.

The fact that Samsung is the de facto standard manufacturer in the Android world is very depressing.