They've made a lot of progress for sure. Perhaps they'll follow Apple / Google in a few years and refine their own Exynos CPU to the point where it is actually competitive. I paid $1300 for mine which hurts, but it'll be softened by ~$750+ from selling my OP13. Assuming I keep the phone, as of now I don't see any reason not to, I'll take advantage of pre-order deals on the S26 next year.
I've had the phone since last Friday and still haven't used the camera, there's that much else to tinker with on this phone! I've never used a phone with two telephoto lenses and have no idea on when to use this, so there's a learning curve here as well.
Wow - on multiple fronts.
I'll be out of pocket ~$200 USD total... coming from S24+ with trade-in, all the discounts and applying ~$250 more in extra credit card points.
I started messing with the camera and lenses 1st thing and haven't used the S Pen more than a few times as of yet.
I've been quite impressed with the device, camera improvements over S24+ and a much more polished "1st rev" software release.