Phones Am I the only one that thinks Samsung phones are crap?

[jamezr]

It would be great if Samsung went to Tizen. But ONLY if it has large enough app support, which the lack of usually kills a platform.

I tried Tizen years ago on a Samsung phone that was made for the India market. It worked quite well.

yep....apps is what would keep them from going to Tizen on their phones. I think they would have done it by now if it weren't for apps. Imagine trying to convince all the app devs to write another version just for Samsung phones running Tizen.

 

[LIVEFRMNYC]

yep....apps is what would keep them from going to Tizen on their phones. I think they would have done it by now if it weren't for apps. Imagine trying to convince all the app devs to write another version just for Samsung phones running Tizen.

Samsung has been good at having plenty of popular offical cross platform apps on Tizen. Something that MS couldn't even achieve with WP. So I don't think it's an impossible feat for Samsung. I think Samsung just needs to be in a more comfortable position before they put much focus on that.

 

[Breaking Good]

Samsung has been good at having plenty of popular offical cross platform apps on Tizen. Something that MS couldn't even achieve with WP. So I don't think it's an impossible feat for Samsung. I think Samsung just needs to be in a more comfortable position before they put much focus on that.

I know many would hate this, but I would love to see Samsung and Microsoft form a partnership to develop a Windows Phone targeted at business/enterprise users.

In my opinion, the biggest issue with Android in an enterprise environment is security. I personally feel that the security issue is wrapped around the inability of Android O.E.M.'s to provide timely patches to their software (at least in the United States).

This is just me, but I could see a Microsoft/Samsung/Blackberry/T-Mo/Sprint arrangement providing excellent 5G-capable mobile tools for business.

 

[Vegastouch]

You can turn Bixby off you know. I did as i didnt want it. I also dont use the stock launcher so it never come into any contact with Bixby. I like them, no phone is perfect but for everything it does, they are keepers for me.

 

[Tig Bitties]

I have had my fair share of Galaxy phones over the years. Never impressed.

Even the mighty S8+ had Lagwiz still. And the duplicate of Google apps from Samsung is ridiculous and pointless. And then the bloatware, wow so much crap apps preinstalled. And the curved edge screen is not comfortable and more of a gimick to me.

I'll take Pixel phones first, OnePlus second.

 

[Macalicious2011]

Speaking of Samsung, I wouldn't be surprised if they finally ditched Android all together and went with their own ecosystem. They have pretty much everything they need including the customer base.

It took years for Android to grow the same quality of apps as Apple and Microsoft struggled to get developers to build apps for Windows Phone.

In a world when people expect apps to be free, fragmented OS versions and different screen size phones, developers lack resources to develop and manage apps for a third OS.

 

[Shanghaichica]

I like Samsung phones but something I dislike about them is how they don’t prioritise the UK as a first wave launch country. It took almost 3 years for Samsung Pay to launch here. It even launched in places like Mexico, Brazil and Russia before it came to the UK.

Now the Bixby home speaker not that I have an interest in it, will be US, China and Korea at launch. It’s ridiculous when Samsung have a large market share in the UK. We never get any tade in deals or pre order gifts like the US.

 

[Ffosse]

Nope, I think they're crap, too.

 

[840quadra]

yep....apps is what would keep them from going to Tizen on their phones. I think they would have done it by now if it weren't for apps. Imagine trying to convince all the app devs to write another version just for Samsung phones running Tizen.

They are both linux based, with Tizen being a lighter flavor. Tizen has the ACL (Application compatibility Layer) to make it even more simple to run applications from Android, but the reverse is not as simple. From what I read, this is less of an issue now (as opposed to 2017 versions) but we will have to wait and see what Samsung has been working on, and if they improved the compatibility layer if they do switch.

A switch off Android would be a bit of a slap in the face to Google, but not unexpected. But in the end, competition does make the entire smartphone market interesting, and it would be good to have more than 2 (Mainstream) operating systems to chose from.

 

[lowendlinux]

The only thing that would make me buy a Samsung phone would be a switch to Tizen or Sailfish with an unlocked bootloader

 

[HoenyBunny]

It's not just you. I have an S4. I bought it when it was a top device to replace an unfortunately broken after 2 weeks Lenovo K900 I had (on an Intel Atom cpu - that thing was snappy af). Because I used a really fast phone just before that samsung piece of **** I was noticing and completely aware how laggy and slow it was. Btw, the S4 I have is on the Exynos chipset. They used to say the snapdragon version was great. I really don't believe that. They're just reinforcing their beliefs/making excuses for their poor choices, imo. I believe that, because until recently I thought it's just because S4 is old. A week or so ago I used an S8 and it's almost exactly as slow and laggy as the S4 I have, only it costs like ten times the price of S4, lol. The owner said it's slow because they need to clean it etc. (lol, of course). Further, my bff, a fan of Sony, just about a month ago bought a new Xperia to replace his old one. His older one was the direct competitor to the S4 - and it was blazingly fast (like, you wouldn't believe, it's just the Grand Canyon wide performance gap between the two) until its very end. He only replaced it because of mechanical damages (his arms grow out of his ass lol). Curiously though, their tablets are fine. My brother has a 4 series tablet that has lower specs than the S4 but it's so much faster than the latter.

 

[AustinIllini]

I can't imagine Samsung moving off of Android. There are just too many options for the more casual Samsung owners. Switching ecosystems is expensive. A typical Samsung user would be better off switching to a different Android OEM or, if they are going to buy apps anyway, iOS.

 

[Ffosse]

No, I think they're crap, too.

 

[torana355]

I had a Galaxy S7 that was a chronically overheating glitchy piece of garbage. But I had a replacement one that is excellent and that I still have and use for VR.

I had the S8+ and so did my husband and they both are laggy and unpleasant to use now. We each also both have a S9+ and those have been great. If we weren’t using Apple Watches and iMessage we could use them as our only phones.

So I guess the answer is it’s the luck of the draw with Samsung. But we also increasingly see that with iPhones. My Max that I just returned had some of the major issues covered on the various forum threads. It had “charge-gate” and connectivity problems galore.

Anyway my husband’s iPhone Max seems to be a lot better and doesn’t give him any problems. He had a few connectivity bugs the first few days but those smoothed out and his phone has passed every test he’s put it through against his S9+ and Huawei.

What you need to concern yourself with on any phone purchase is the ease of returning a lemon and the reputation for honoring warranty service.

I missed this when you first wrote it but as always you are one of the few people on MR who can comment without bias. Always a pleasure reading your posts!

 

[Suckfest 9001]

Nope, not the only one. I've owned pretty much all their flagships and scoffed my way back to an iPhone every time.

 

[Ffosse]

I briefly had an S8 and managed to disable Bixby; the trouble was, what to do with that lacuna of an empty button - it couldn't even be mapped to another app.

But iOs just felt so much smoother and with better apps that it didn't take me long to switch back.

 

[AustinIllini]

Samsung has whatever "it" is when it comes to hardware design. The problem is they simply can't stop tripping over themselves in software. Samsung is SO much better than it was with the water interface from the GS3, GS4 days, but now with the stupid default Bixby and all that crap. Too bad.

 

[jamezr]

Samsung has whatever "it" is when it comes to hardware design. The problem is they simply can't stop tripping over themselves in software. Samsung is SO much better than it was with the water interface from the GS3, GS4 days, but now with the stupid default Bixby and all that crap. Too bad.

I would say they have bee pre-occupied with a folding phone and lost a little bit of their way in the current smartphone space.
I like a lot of their apps over stock Android for sure though...email and messaging to name a quick 2.
But totally agree with you on Bixby....like trying to solve a problem that did not exist....Google Assistant is still the best out there. So why not embrace that for the button if they needed to add that functionality.
Then I would love to see them offer flat display phones as a an option in their offerings.

 

[5105973]

I missed this when you first wrote it but as always you are one of the few people on MR who can comment without bias. Always a pleasure reading your posts!

Thank you. That’s very kind of you.

I wish everyone a very Happy New Year!

And I hope for some excellent hardware and software for 2019!