Why Samsung Phones are not My Choice
Samsung Galaxies. One of the world's number one smartphone brand. It provides a lot of choices from top to bottom. Expensive to affordable. Flagships to Mid-ranger. Bad sadly, those options still can't fulfil my destiny on smartphones.
Quality is not missing in Samsung's dictionary. They always put that word in the first page. Hardwares are solid. Display technology from Samsung is the best in class that other companies rely on Samsung to make the display for them. Starting from the original Galaxy S, they continue to innovate and now the most advanced Samsung's flagship is called the Galaxy S9 and the Note 9. I'm very excited to put my hands on it and using it as my daily driver. But after I used the Galaxy S8 last year, I'm starting to change my mind.
I move to the Galaxy S8 from the iPhone 7 Plus. One year of using Apple's phone are enough to make me bored. Yes my iPhone is still very fast, very reliable, nothing wrong. But nothing wrong just cannot make me stay as my curiosity on the bezel-less trend is grinding my ear. And I also needed Android for one of my project recently.
So in a nutshell, my experience on using Samsung's flagship wasn't that great. I admire the form factor of the S series. Compact and easy to hold yet the screen is bigger than my 7 plus. But sadly that is the only thing I can admire, aside from the display.
Starting from the OS. I would say that Samsung's Software is the most stable one among Androids (that is why they don't send a software update because it is already very stable. Lol). I won't talk about benchmark or something numerics like that, but frustratingly enough that I cannot even play a game comfortably on a Flagship. Laggy, a hard framedrops that makes the game unplayable. I looked up for the problem on the Internet, it turns out that the 7.0 Nougat version on my S8 is the problem and I was being asked to update my phone to the Android 8.0 Oreo which wasn't provided unless I flash it manually from odin. It's not me being too lazy to update. But really Samsung?! Shouldn't the game be compatible with the smartphone's firmware? Why the game is running smoothly on other devices running Android 7.0? And why I don't get the update but my friend with the same region got it? I just cannot understand why. At the end I ended up updating my phone with Odin which was not very practical.
That was about the game which is not enough to represent the stability of Samsung's phone. The smoothness of overall experience is also inconsistent. The only way to feel the power of my S8 is by playing some HD games like Asphalt 9 and Fortnite. At least it runs smoothly. But the experience of changing apps, opening the apps, opening camera, recording a video and other tasks are just not that good. Don't get me wrong, it was okay. But wait, is that so important? Why do I care so much about smoothness? Because I know Samsung with this kind of high quality hardware can do better than this! Can't even compare to the cheaper phone like OnePlus or Asus Zenfone 5z. I actually don't put Android's software update at number one priority since companies are putting a heavy skin on their devices and a lot of newest Android's features are already exist in the company's custom skin. But please at least make it stable.
And the last thing, the value of the phone itself. When you look at Samsung phones, the value of Samsung phones are decreasing badly over time. See this statistic by decluttr.com. What I'm trying to say is, Samsung phones doesn't have philosophy. There are too many of them. The galaxy S series, the A series, the J series, the Note series, the Active series, the series that doesn't come to your country, the Snapdragon series, the Exynos series, the Pro and the Prime series, the new Color series. Is that all? The good thing is you got a lot of choices. The bad thing is, the gap is so narrow between those phones. You want a good performance, all of them are considerably good. The newest A series is comparable to the last year's flagship in term of performance (not the benchmark) and price. The J series even has dual camera and the A series will come with the latest technology instead of the flagship, Samsung's CEO said, which actually a good strategy and cost friendly. So, why bother buying the flagship? The Note 9 is just the S9 Plus with an S-Pen. S8 and S8 Plus is just size difference. The flagship features are coming to the mid-ranger and it makes the age of the flagships shorter. Iris scanner is coming to the A series. Leaving only the curve edge screen and wireless charging that until now is still exclusive on the flagship. Samsung Kills the flagships. And it makes the price drops so fast when I want to sell it. It is just not worth my money at the first time.
So I ended up selling my S8 and went back to the 7 Plus. And the only thing I miss from the S8 is just the same with the only thing they do the best. The hardware, form factor. Looking at the 7 Plus is so old school with thick bezels. But other than that, it is better.
In case you wonder, what is the point of having Samsung phones? For me because it is still better than the competitor that are now dominated by the Chinese company. Camera quality is very good. It is also easier to get in many countries. For example in my country, Samsung is the safest brand to buy. There is no competitor other than Chinese smartphone leaving Apple as the only competitor, but it is only in the flagship level. Asus failed to bring their latest flagship on time, OnePlus and Pixel are not officially sold here, Xiaomi still dominates in entry level, Oppo and Vivo are a bit higher, doing nowadays method on selling smartphone, "cheaper better". General people don't want to spend much money on buying Chinese phones. At least for now. So Xiaomi launches Pocophone. Oppo with Realme. But non of them gain people's trust on smartphone better than Samsung even though many tech enthusiasts are complaining about how Samsung performs on their phones. Some people also says Samsung is overprice.
Verdict, Samsung is just a big okay. Nothing generally wrong, but I just hope that they don't kill their flagships and somehow they can manage to maximise their potential on their flagship because I believe they can do better. But for now, I'm just gonna stick with my 7 Plus.
Thanks for reading :)
@harrismaulana
Quality is not missing in Samsung's dictionary. They always put that word in the first page. Hardwares are solid. Display technology from Samsung is the best in class that other companies rely on Samsung to make the display for them. Starting from the original Galaxy S, they continue to innovate and now the most advanced Samsung's flagship is called the Galaxy S9 and the Note 9. I'm very excited to put my hands on it and using it as my daily driver. But after I used the Galaxy S8 last year, I'm starting to change my mind.
I move to the Galaxy S8 from the iPhone 7 Plus. One year of using Apple's phone are enough to make me bored. Yes my iPhone is still very fast, very reliable, nothing wrong. But nothing wrong just cannot make me stay as my curiosity on the bezel-less trend is grinding my ear. And I also needed Android for one of my project recently.
So in a nutshell, my experience on using Samsung's flagship wasn't that great. I admire the form factor of the S series. Compact and easy to hold yet the screen is bigger than my 7 plus. But sadly that is the only thing I can admire, aside from the display.
Starting from the OS. I would say that Samsung's Software is the most stable one among Androids (that is why they don't send a software update because it is already very stable. Lol). I won't talk about benchmark or something numerics like that, but frustratingly enough that I cannot even play a game comfortably on a Flagship. Laggy, a hard framedrops that makes the game unplayable. I looked up for the problem on the Internet, it turns out that the 7.0 Nougat version on my S8 is the problem and I was being asked to update my phone to the Android 8.0 Oreo which wasn't provided unless I flash it manually from odin. It's not me being too lazy to update. But really Samsung?! Shouldn't the game be compatible with the smartphone's firmware? Why the game is running smoothly on other devices running Android 7.0? And why I don't get the update but my friend with the same region got it? I just cannot understand why. At the end I ended up updating my phone with Odin which was not very practical.
That was about the game which is not enough to represent the stability of Samsung's phone. The smoothness of overall experience is also inconsistent. The only way to feel the power of my S8 is by playing some HD games like Asphalt 9 and Fortnite. At least it runs smoothly. But the experience of changing apps, opening the apps, opening camera, recording a video and other tasks are just not that good. Don't get me wrong, it was okay. But wait, is that so important? Why do I care so much about smoothness? Because I know Samsung with this kind of high quality hardware can do better than this! Can't even compare to the cheaper phone like OnePlus or Asus Zenfone 5z. I actually don't put Android's software update at number one priority since companies are putting a heavy skin on their devices and a lot of newest Android's features are already exist in the company's custom skin. But please at least make it stable.
And the last thing, the value of the phone itself. When you look at Samsung phones, the value of Samsung phones are decreasing badly over time. See this statistic by decluttr.com. What I'm trying to say is, Samsung phones doesn't have philosophy. There are too many of them. The galaxy S series, the A series, the J series, the Note series, the Active series, the series that doesn't come to your country, the Snapdragon series, the Exynos series, the Pro and the Prime series, the new Color series. Is that all? The good thing is you got a lot of choices. The bad thing is, the gap is so narrow between those phones. You want a good performance, all of them are considerably good. The newest A series is comparable to the last year's flagship in term of performance (not the benchmark) and price. The J series even has dual camera and the A series will come with the latest technology instead of the flagship, Samsung's CEO said, which actually a good strategy and cost friendly. So, why bother buying the flagship? The Note 9 is just the S9 Plus with an S-Pen. S8 and S8 Plus is just size difference. The flagship features are coming to the mid-ranger and it makes the age of the flagships shorter. Iris scanner is coming to the A series. Leaving only the curve edge screen and wireless charging that until now is still exclusive on the flagship. Samsung Kills the flagships. And it makes the price drops so fast when I want to sell it. It is just not worth my money at the first time.
So I ended up selling my S8 and went back to the 7 Plus. And the only thing I miss from the S8 is just the same with the only thing they do the best. The hardware, form factor. Looking at the 7 Plus is so old school with thick bezels. But other than that, it is better.
In case you wonder, what is the point of having Samsung phones? For me because it is still better than the competitor that are now dominated by the Chinese company. Camera quality is very good. It is also easier to get in many countries. For example in my country, Samsung is the safest brand to buy. There is no competitor other than Chinese smartphone leaving Apple as the only competitor, but it is only in the flagship level. Asus failed to bring their latest flagship on time, OnePlus and Pixel are not officially sold here, Xiaomi still dominates in entry level, Oppo and Vivo are a bit higher, doing nowadays method on selling smartphone, "cheaper better". General people don't want to spend much money on buying Chinese phones. At least for now. So Xiaomi launches Pocophone. Oppo with Realme. But non of them gain people's trust on smartphone better than Samsung even though many tech enthusiasts are complaining about how Samsung performs on their phones. Some people also says Samsung is overprice.
Verdict, Samsung is just a big okay. Nothing generally wrong, but I just hope that they don't kill their flagships and somehow they can manage to maximise their potential on their flagship because I believe they can do better. But for now, I'm just gonna stick with my 7 Plus.
Thanks for reading :)
@harrismaulana
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