Samsung has good hardware, but their software is really mediocre, at best. Many of their devices are laggy and slow down further after some updates.

This is the case even on high-end devices. Our 12-month-old Galaxy Tab is slower than a 7-year-old Pixel. Hard to understand.

Plus, they make really odd tweaks to the UI, such as adding a permanent button overlay that clashes with most hamburger icons in websites and apps. This drives novice users insane.

If you wanna ship a custom Android, at least get it right. Otherwise, just stick to stock. Sony does this really well: https://developerworld.wpp.developer.sony.com/open-source

I recently got a Samsung device for testing, and the experience was terrible. It took three hours to get the device into a usable state.

First, it essentially forces you to create both a Samsung account and a Google account, with numerous shady prompts for "improving services" and "allowing targeted ads."

Then it required nine system updates (apparently, it can only update incrementally), and worst of all, after a while, it automatically started downloading bloatware like "Kawai" and other questionable apps, and you cannot cancel the downloads.

I wonder how much Samsung gets paid to preinstall all that crap. The phone wasn't cheap, either. The company seems penny wise and pound foolish.

I don't disagree with Samsung's decline, but:

> Sales of the iPhone 17 series in the U.S. — including the iPhone Air — during the first four weeks after launch was 12% higher than that of the iPhone 16 series, excluding the iPhone 16e, the research firm said. In China, a critical market for Apple, sales of the iPhone 17 series during the same period were 18% higher than its predecessor.

So iPhone 17 is selling well. I think it's fair to call it a hit. Do they make another hit next year? Who knows (I'd bet against it), but they won this year's game I believe.

If it weren't for the S-Pen, I'd ditch Samsung in a heartbeat.

The day iPhone has a built-in EMR/AES stylus is the day I become a customer (despite being an Android lifer).

Don't think that will ever happen though, despite Apple shipping Pencil for iPads.

Samsung has definitely built a (small) moat being the only vendor with that offering.

True, thanks for that info. Changes the narrative entirely.

I don't call them Samdung for no reason