I’ve preferred Pixel phones for the last few years but I’ve heard that Pixel 6/7 had 5G connection problems (Pixel 8 apparently has a better modem, but I think I’d rather stick to a Qualcomm design for now).
So onto looking for my next phone.
I haven’t considered a Samsung smartphone in years because I hated their TouchWiz stuff. But apparently they got rid of that like 8 years ago and have had multiple versions of updates. Can anyone comment on how good “One UI” is compared to stock Android? How much bloatware does it feel like? And what kind of customizations did Samsung do to the UI exactly?
I’m also looking at Asus Zenfone 11, but I figure the “mainstream” choice today is Samsung, so I’ll also have to seriously consider Samsung phones.
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Hated TouchWiz, love One UI. I just wish I could uninstall Google and Facebook bloat.
@Melonpoly You can use ADB for that, there’s even a GUI for that called Universal Android Debloater
You can uninstall with Canta and Shizuku, both on the F-Droid store.
If you have android 11+ (which has support for wireless debug), this is the best way.
Tutorial for the uninitiated. Looks complicated at first but after you’ve done it once you’ll breeze through it from that time on
It’s great IMO, combined with Samsungs GoodLock suite you can stylize anything about the phone, I used to root my phone for this level of customization.
Edit: I would buy the zenphone because of the size and package, but OneUI is genuinely good
I used both Touchwiz and One UI. Touchwiz came with a lot of bells and whistles, wasn’t optimised, and generally ran on old phones that had limited power compared to phones nowadays.
Current One UI phones feel snappy to be honest. Also, compared to pixel phones these days, pixel phones to be less customisable out of the box with a lot of big bulky widgets, and UI wasted space. I prefer Samsung’s implementation on android where it follows a more traditional UX.
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I wasn’t a fan on the S10, just felt wrong, and chose to hide OneUI with a customer launcher non-Samsung apps.
Now, with S22/23, OneUI feels just right. It’s still a Samsung with their own apps, but the overall experience is very pleasant.
I used to be pretty stubborn about wanting a stock experience especially after the bloated sluggish mess that was TouchWiz but they’ve really turned things around.
There’s a lot of One UI features that I take for granted now (same thing I also hear from friends who switched to a Pixel) and it also looks way better than stock after Google did the whole Material 3 change. The main annoyance I have is with the default launcher and keyboard but those can easily be changed to third party alternatives anyways.
Seconding everything you said. Rocking a third party launcher and surprised at all the useful features. I don’t think I’d want to give up Routines if I were to ditch Samsung next phone.
There’s a lot of One UI features that I take for granted now (same thing I also hear from friends who switched to a Pixel)
As someone who has only ever used Samsung and is thinking about getting a pixel this worries me a bit. Could you elaborate?
Biggest one for me would be the paged app drawer. I hate scrollig ones like you get on a Pixel and with recent Android versions and most 3rd party launchers don’t work that great. Also the AOD on Samsung phones is much better, the app quicklaunch and clipboard history sidepannels are really great, bixby routines can be useful and the whole quicksettings area is so much better with waaaay less padding and more useful toggles.
Thank you! That is very informative.
I am missing good lock features going from a Samsung to a more google oriented phone, also the clock\alarm settings are so annoying, only allowed to touch either volume buttons or specific portion of the phone to snooze or stop an alarm. Samsung I could whip my hand at my phone and hit any portion and it knew what I wanted
I used Samsung until about a year ago and now use Pixel since that time. Pixel software experience is infinitely better for my tastes and needs.
I am the exact opposite, my last two devices have been Samsung and one plus before that, now I have a nothing phone with lots of google stuff and constantly am thwarted by Bluetooth, calls, home screen freezes and a clock/alarm setup with the worst ergonomics of any phone.
But Nothing Phone isn’t a Pixel, is it? Yeah, I think it’s probably closer to the Pixel’s clean software experience than Samsung’s bloated one, but still, this doesn’t seem to be fair comparison.
Bloated as usual.
Unlocked US devices don’t have bloat or easily uninstallable outside of adb/github help just commenting
Features out the wazoo and an insane amount of customisation available to the user via Goodlock, but also some quirks.
Here are my highlights: limit charge to 80% to conserve battery health; custom shortcuts when dragging from the side of the phone based on the angle of your swipe; not sure what app just woke the screen or sent a notification that disappeared? You can get a log of all of these activities; add a dedicated 2x crop button to the camera app; send audio from different apps to different sound outputs simultaneously; a whole stack of s-pen features ranging from useful to very niche (quick lock screen note, screen crop, use pen as camera shutter); and many more.
There are some annoyances also: you can’t have an infinite scrolling app drawer, it has to have pages; using icon packs from the play store is annoying and the Samsung theme store sucks.
Overall I like one UI 6 but there is always some room for improvement.
I was never a fan of TouchWiz. It was pretty slow, especially on most of the Samsung phones I had (it kinda made me miss my iPhone 4 before the flattening).
However, I really like One UI. Sure, it’s got some bloatware, but it’s pretty snappy and looks pretty nice.
Pretty good. I always liked the many features and customization options on Samsung phones and now at least I also really like the polished look and feel (certainly leagues better than the awful Material U design).
Also now the more expensive devices are easily fast enough to run everything without slowdown, however that can’t be said about their cheper phones. I think for those the skin is too heavy, still.
Pixels have GrapheneOS, that’s good enough for me.
How much did it affect the photo quality?
Doesn’t affect it at all if you use the Google camera app. You can restrict it’s access to the internet as well if you’re concerned about it sharing.
Oh, I thought the Google camera app lost the pixel-specific fine tuning. Nice to know, thanks.
It’s fantastic, they add so much useful stuff and it looks nice.
I use both a stock (Motorola) and a Samsung phone on a regular basis, and the Samsung phone looks and works way worse. The UI is off, there’s more restrictions and background data harvesting services…
Seems fine. I’ve always used Samsung phones since their first phone with a camera in the USA. I don’t have a lot of outside perspective other than I get really annoyed anytime I’m forced to use an Apple product. S24 is a little annoying how they turned off the vivid mode for the screen. There was an update but it still likes worse than my Note 8 or S21 Ultra.
