Hold on tight, we are almost back...
Previously on Lemmy: Sony
Past Discussions:
I thought we should restart the brand discussion with something more popular to give this community relaunch a bit more oomph. So, Samsung it is.
I've never really used a Samsung phone much before, despite them being so popular in the States. Have friends who used them, they usually look nice and high quality, and the Galaxy S Active are the only high-end phones I know that doesn't shatter when you look at them wrong without a case, so, props to Samsung.
There are may reasons I don't like Samsung phones: Hardware fuse disabling Knox on bootloader unlock, Exynos vs Snapdragon models, the mandatory Bixby button, the Galaxy Note 7 that really blew up. To me, Samsung phones are trying so hard to go against what makes Android good, which is the customizability to do whatever you wanted. Android is everything; Samsung is just Samsung.
Personally, I think Samsung is only worth buying at the very high end for the Galaxy S series. I've heard that A series have gotten better, but there always seems to be better choices from Moto/Pixel/Chinese brands on Amazon that it's not worth considering their low tier offering.
What should we do next week? I'm thinking Microsoft, just to make fun of them for the very idea of making a Surface Duo 2.
FAQ:
As someone who exclusively used Samsung flagships as their daily driver (GS2 > Note 4 > Note 8 > Note 20 Ultra), I was a Samsung absolutist and fanboy. But their decisions since the N20U has been frustrating, and has had me eyeing other brands for the first time.
To start about what I love about them: fantastic hardware with solid software. I don't mind their excessive features, because they become so useful, Android/Google adds them to stock 2-3 years later. So it's like a decent beta test for some awesome utilities, like saying "smile" to take a photo with the camera when you can't reach the shutter button. I think several phones now offer this.
What has me eyeing something else for my next phone: shitting on their hardcore power users and greedily taking away options. The removal of the SD card (critical for my usage), the dilution of their features across different models (base, plus, ultra), removing the magstripe, etc. are all anti-consumer with NO benefit to their customers. Even if your typical customer doesn't use a specific feature, it strips the option away from those who do, and it's not like the savings go towards the consumer. If not for these decisions (among other, smaller infractions), I wouldn't be contemplating other brands.
Still loving my N20U. Not feeling any huge urge to upgrade; we'll see if lack of new versions of Android changes my mind
I'm going to jump to Samsung's defense here as I think your anti-consumer belief is misguided:
Each to their own but these are just my views based on 11 years in the mobile phone retail business.
I respectfully disagree, and I know this is a hot button topic. But isn't the fact that it IS a controversial topic that has trawled for 3+ years on various tech forums not evidence that it's a popular enough feature(s) to warrant consideration?
SD Card: If companies are so afraid of liability, they could simply have an initial warning dialogue about potential hardware failures. Why cripple a portion of your userbase because of the fault of others? I know it's anecdotal, but I have used 9 SD cards across various devices (including my current N20U and Tab S8 Ultra) without ever encountering an issue. I also back up my data as is proper data management. And just as the car company in your example would say to the idiot who filled it up with the wrong gas, they would refer them to the user manual (warning dialogue in this case), and dust their hands of the matter. And let's be honest, this is just a blatant cash grab to force customers to buy the larger storage sizes.
Mag-Stripe: There are still more shops that don't have the standard contactless payment where I live than there are that do. And I'm in Southern CA. Big box stores are not an issue, but the mom and pop shops that I frequent don't have it set up. I'm sure this is an issue that will eventually be solved, but it's just frustrating that the option was taken away from us.
Dilution of Features: Samsung already makes a huge range of phones. From $120 semi-disposable ones to $2K Folds. The consumer is confused enough. From A series, J, S, M, Fold, and Flip, every price is covered. And yet, what's the flagship (mainstream) phone? The S23U? For $1400, you get an extra camera compared to the S23+. You get a larger screen - which used to be the Note's job - plus another camera from the base 23. That $400-600 difference adds up to 1 camera (plus some sensors) and a larger screen and battery. Point being, the reason why I gravitated to the Note series before was because of all the jammed packed features in a single phone. I didn't have to decide if I wanted to feel FOMO for saving $400 and losing an extra camera. What I paid was what I got, and I knew I got the most bang for my buck.
I know this is controversial, but this is the hill I'm dying on. Samsung's reputation was built on "everything but the kitchen sink" when they were competing with LG, HTC, etc. Now? They're a naming convention from Pro and Pro Max away from another lawsuit with Apple. Who, by the way, brought SD cards back onto their flagship laptop series!
Re. the Mag-Stripe. Bare in mind the US is <10% of the market for the Samsung phones. And then you'd need to break down of the Samsung phones sold in North America - how many of those were S-series vs. the others which don't support the mag-stripe. Even if 50-50, that's now <5% of phones which have mag-stripe support in a country that uses it. Then rough guess of 20% of users actually pay by phone? You're now <1%. A small pale blue dot in the vast cosmic arena...
SD cards - there's also the point of user data security. Data stored on an SD card can't be easily guarenteed safe by Knox. Yes, you can encrypt it, but remove that SD card and the card itself can't protect the data from brute forcing encyption keys.
Asus Zenfone 10 looks quite feature complete before the break, maybe you should consider it.
It doesn't have a SD card slot, unfortunately. At the moment, only Sony Xperia still carries it on the flagship level, so I'm eyeing that one for now. Fortunately, my N20U is still going strong, so I'll see what the field looks like when I upgrade. I guess whichever OEM decides to include a $0.50 piece of hardware will probably get my $1K+.