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.

  • HeavyRaptorEnglish
    3·
    2 months ago

    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.