Besides the fact that Xiaomi devices are completely untrustworthy, they are usually great pieces of hardware. I bought a Xiaomi vacuum years ago. Everything was in Chinese and I had to watch a youtube video to figure out how to set it up. Besides that, the whole unboxing and setup experience felt like an Apple product. That vacuum was light years ahead of the iRobot it replaced. Incredible product and cheaper than just about everything else available at the time. That's when I realized American tech was toast.
I agree with you 100% about Samsung. They make nice hardware, but the software experience is among the worst in the industry. I don't know how they can be considered a premium product. I would never use one of their phones again. Straight up adware. I'm surprised they don't inject ads into the photos you take. They have ads everywhere else - even in the phone dialing app. Their TV's are still good as long as you don't connect them to the internet. Once they start putting LTE radios in them to download ads without wifi, I will be done with those too.
Out of the cheap phones I bought over the years, Xiaomi was the only manufacturer that didn't load up their phones with crapware backdoors. Samsung and Oppo was shiped with one of those crapware backdoors that installed apps beyond your back.
Eventually I got fed up, and started using hand-me-down iPhones for second phones.
> Eventually I got fed up, and started using hand-me-down iPhones for second phones.
Wonder how it would be if you tried a hand-me-down Galaxy flagship for comparison - that would be a more fair comparison. Cheap Androids are not in the same category as iPhones.
>I would never use one of their phones again. Straight up adware.
I was reading this thinking "that sounds awful, I'm never getting a Samsung phone" before snapping back to reality and realising that I'm staring at one.
I've never seen the issues you're talking about. I don't see any ads on my phone. I'm not using the default launcher, but aside from that it's stock. I would've turned off Bixby and whatever other rubbish it has when I first got it.
Ads in the dialing app!? I agree wholeheartedly that Samsung is being enshittified, but on my phone I can't see ads anywhere, least of all when I'm dialing a number.
Right. Ads in the dialer? I saw that once, with one of the Chinese brands. Samsung? Never.
In fact, I've been exclusively on Samsung phones for over a decade now, never had any experience remotely similar to what GP describes. My greatest annoyances are 1) Bixby, and 2) apps being pretty basic and missing obvious functionality (but then it's not like any other vendor offers better apps...).
I'm going to guess GP is in the US; I'm in the EU, and maybe phones for EU market come with less of this kind of bullshit.
I agree with you 100% about Samsung. They make nice hardware, but the software experience is among the worst in the industry. I don't know how they can be considered a premium product. I would never use one of their phones again. Straight up adware. I'm surprised they don't inject ads into the photos you take. They have ads everywhere else - even in the phone dialing app. Their TV's are still good as long as you don't connect them to the internet. Once they start putting LTE radios in them to download ads without wifi, I will be done with those too.