I never found it to be true.
I owned a Samsung S7, it was atrocious, people said it was great, the bloatware was painful, the gesture to open the apps drawer was conflicted with the gesture to open Samsung pay (which didn't worked with my bank), you can't disable Samsung pay, if you switch the launcher, it's still there. Searching the settings took literally 10 seconds. It's default behavior is to stay on while charging, the whole screen have the lock screen burned in now.
My mom own a Samsung 10e, people also said "Samsung software isn't ad now", they rewrote their own clock app. It doesn't support having multiple timers?!? Worse, asking Google assistant to add a timer, reset the previous one. This is due to Samsung bloatware, the stock android clock doesn't have this issue.
> even work profile was first available on Samsung devices
Work profiles are available since Android 5.
To be fair that S7 from 2016 doesn't count as being from "these days" anymore, so your opinion is not up to date, as Samsung made pretty big strides in the last few years past 2020 compared to how it was when you last remember it with the nasty Touchwiz.
I'm in love with the new drop down settings screen especially.
For browser I'm Firefox all the way though!
This is a stock Android feature. I just plugged in my Pixel 6 and it indicated in the lockscreen it will be fully recharged in 21 minutes.
1. Some of their features are being offloaded to unknown 3rd party vendors (e.g call spam detection). 2. They really want you to install some sort of McAfee AV on your phone to get the "secure" tick. 3. They are usually about a month behind when it comes to Android security patches. 4. Phone comes pre-installed with crap.
But they're not really behind. I already got the 1 January Android security update a few days ago on my S23.
Considering they need to do testing and possible modifications I don't think this is very slow.
I wonder if it's your provider being difficult here. The problem with branded (or sometimes even sold with contract) phones is that the carrier wants to meddle in the updates because they're afraid of issues on their network or something. And this can cause huge delays.
I always buy my phones separately, mainly because I hate contracts so I'm on prepay always but having unrestricted updates is another big benefit.
Seems like anywhere between one to three weeks. I think the auto update is a bit lazy. Had to force update on mine just now to make it get January update.
It's not perfect but I like it now (In the TouchWiz days Samsung was really bad at updates, they've improved a lot)
And I have owned several S generation phones.
At least I was not able to find a way to do that. That was the main reason I switched back to Firefox on mobile despite actually liking Samsung Internet more.
I tend to use my phone for personal research stuff mainly and Firefox on my desktop/laptop for work. I use bookmark syncing in Firefox, and that works great! But I generally don't need to synch from phone to desktop.
Having said this, I also had Firefox installed on my phone and on checking, see that ublock origin is available there!
Will give it a shot now. :-)
Tried Firefox mobile, while I love the ublock origin, it kept constantly crashing that I eventually had to let go off. But yeah I'd definitely love to have a minimal android
It feels totally upside-down that Safari for iOS has a better extensions story than Chrome for Android. For this reason one of the first things I grab when setting up a new Android device is Firefox.
E: I also have a pixel 6a
They install plenty of bloatware on google devices, but since it’s all background surveillance stuff, it doesn’t clutter the UI.
Yeah, my previous Samsung I had to spend a half hour with adb to get all their junk disabled.
A long time Android user wouldn't have mistaken my Zenfone 9 for a Pixel at any more than a cursory glance, but you can get it pretty close, particularly in terms of feel.
it is the other way around.
They are not trying to do the right thing, they are maintaining a data stream, and the updates will continue to update that equation to their benefit.
I think of this like vizio, which makes more collecting data from your television than selling you the hardware.
Sure, the vendor apps often suck, but that is no reason to support monopolies.
What other vendors have that?
The fundamental problem in the android world is that OEMs have no market power, and that makes it impossible for them to do longterm investments like research and security updates.
What you see here is that using these "me too" apps, Samsung managed to acquire some market power, and so is able to do some of these longterm investments now.
Samsung's built in apps are not "cruft" by any means.
The Notes app has pen support for sketching and PDF import/annotate, which lets me use a printable calendar digitally. The Browser app has dark mode and adblock; good luck with that on Google Chrome. The Music app doesn't try to upsell me to a YouTube Music plan.
I also use Bixby routines to quickly set custom timers for exercise, cooking etc.
Given I’m more Power User than average user, I’m also in favor of vanilla as possible, but it’s not like an extra icon away from home and Edge Panels is really uncomfortable for me, I don’t even feel the presence of a lot of those extra applications I don’t use.