Comment by barbazoo
Comment by barbazoo 19 hours ago
Not because Apple made a jump in sales but mostly because Samsung has been on a decade long decline.
Comment by barbazoo 19 hours ago
Not because Apple made a jump in sales but mostly because Samsung has been on a decade long decline.
Samsung makes a lot of cheap and mid-tier devices with little RAM and not so powerful SoCs. Google also uses slow SoCs, but at least they compensate in hardware.
If you just buy a high-end phone, Samsung is generally fine. If you buy anything cheaper than that, or god forbid buy a phone through a carrier that pumps it full of crap, you're gonna have a terrible time when apps get slower and bulkier and shittier and the hardware shows its age.
I have the Z Fold 4 (EU) and it performs well to this day. It even got the Android 16 upgrade.
Z Fold 3 here, going happily on 4-5 years.
Samsung has nice hardware quality, but no sense of UX, and that goes for their software and hardware.
The status bar icons on the top right of One UI (Samsung's firmware skin) aren't even aligned or the same size. It's only just been fixed in One UI 8.5, years from the problem first happening.
You're welcome if you can't unsee it now.
It's nothing major, but it's one example of how inconsistent and disorganised their software is, there's so much low hanging fruit that you'd think their software division was under duress, along with year long delays to software updates.
Samsung hardware is not what it used to be.
They have been shipping the same camera block for something like three or four models. Compared to what Chinese competitors like Xiaomi or Oppo offer, it doesn't look that great anymore.
The poor software is just the cherry on top.
On top of buggy software they just have user hostile design choices. Like forcing agreements to sell health data if you want a step counter, or shoving ads in your face that you can't disable without hamstringing functionality.
Makes me think about switching if alternative markets really do come to iOS and they get a real firefox
And on top of that, you can't unlock One UI 8 and above.
As much as I wish it wasn't the case, not being able to bootloader unlock is not a cause of any meaningful reduction in sales. The Android ROM community has been on life support for a few years now.
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.
I'm in the same boat. Although I would also be willing to go back to Apple if they release a truly small phone. But I'm forced to carry one of these gigantic beasts I want to be able to take (handwritten) notes with it.
The 17 series has some upgrade-worthy features at least, unlike 16 where I'm not sure where the improvements were.
The base 17 got always on display, while the 17 Pro got a huge camera upgrade. Both 17s got the much-improved selfie camera.
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