Young Koreans favor iPhones over Samsung Galaxy: survey
In South Korea, 69 percent of adult smartphone users use a Samsung device, while only 23 percent use iPhones, a Gallup survey of 1,001 adults found. But the survey reveals a starkly different trend in one demographic: younger millennials and Gen Z. Among the younger generation, aged 18 to 29, iPhone...
Samsung phones are about 50% bloatware and 50% bad Android Software nowadays.
Had Samsungs for 10 years watching them slowly get worse and worse. Switched to a Pixel last year and couldn't be happier.
Same, but I switched to an iPhone. It was an annoying adjustment for a few months but now I’d never go back. Great hardware, but Samsung’s software is an almost comical mess, and they seem to have zero awareness of how bad they are at it.
Here I am, on my first Samsung ever, being happy that stuff just works again. (like it did on my Huawei, long, long ago)
Ymmv.
The rule of thumb for comments like OP's is that either they've last used a Samsung phone back in TouchWiz days and still think that the software and hardware are the same, or they've never used a Samsung phone and just hopped on the Samsung-hating bandwagon for internet points.
Either way screams of Pixel fanboyism and gatekeeping
I've always been a Stock Android fanboi, but I really wanted to buy a foldable, so got myself a Galaxy Fold 4 last year. This is the first Samsung I've owned after decades - my last one being a Galaxy S2. I removed all bloat (including crap like Bixby) using Universal Android Debloater, and using a custom launcher, OneUI stays out of the way for the most part. I don't really miss stock Android. With my current setup, there's no performance issues, no TouchWiz bugs/annoyances like in the old days, everything's running pretty smoothly.
In saying that, ideally I'd love to unlock the bootloader and run LineageOS on it, but there's no build out for it yet (and unlikely there will be one for a long time), also, I'm not sure if I want to play the whole SafteyNet cat-and-mouse game again. Shizuku works great for apps that need higher privileges, I use Droidify and open-source apps where possible, life is good.
Agree I have a Samsung phone and hate the damn intrusive Samsung bloatware. I'm just going to buy a Google phone next time to get Android unadulterated. Though people still have their complaints with those Pixel phones and they're more expensive. Well at least maybe then I can tolerate my phone instead of downright loathe it.
HMD Nokia's are also pretty unbloated and work just fine, except mine got a shitty usb-c port that had to be replaced by warranty.
On the other hand, so did my 2 other previous phones, and they were Samsung.
That's my biggest problem with my s22u. Samsung is always launching a new app to annoy me.
No, I don't want Bixby, no I don't want your tips, just give me a nice android experience.
Pixels are actually quite worth it, they work like a clockwork, soft and hardware are good and the cameras are up to standard. Its worth the money (don't buy on release)
Samsung pissed me off massively by having a pre installed Facebook app that cant be removed...
I tried switching to Pixel 7 Pro last fall, and I'm ready to go back to Samsung or try an iPhone next. The stupid thing loses GPS accuracy to outside of a block radius every other day. Also, every once in a while the app switcher just breaks because a Pixel service gets stuck. And the phone tends to crash every week or so if I don't reboot it.
I've been meaning to try graphene os, but haven't found the time to make that switch yet.
I had the Samsung Note 2 back in the day. I installed a custom bootloader and OS that worked fantastically. I had GPS issues, and all the guides I read said I have to reinstall Samsung's OS, get a GPS fix, then reinstall my custom OS.
I made the mistake of installing a newer version of the Samsung OS which installed Knox and locked down my bootloader. I was now locked into an old, insecure Android version with no possibility of ever upgrading because Samsung abandoned it.
From that day on, I vowed never to buy another Samsung product again. Screw them and their anti-choice bullshit.
Maybe mine have less bloat because I'm in Australia, maybe I don't consider some of the apps to be bloat, not sure - but I've had Samsung's since the S2 and I've always been content with my phones.
I have definitely found the software to be improved over the years, and I love that I can customise the colours of every element down to hyperlinks in my text messages, all using their Theme Park app from their funny little app store. They also have a few other decent apps to change around the notification bar icons and things like that.
I'll definitely be sticking with Samsung as long as all of these things keep going in a happy direction.
Yeah Samsung sucks. I am never going to leave Android so if I want a decent lower-midrange phone I have to stick with Motorola.
I've had Samsung phones for years and their software on my current phone has had me thinking I might switch to an iPhone whenever I upgrade (hopefully not soon), so, yeah. It was not this bad 10 years ago.
Last Samsung I had was the Galaxy s8, it was such a piece of shit I switched to an iPhone and am never going to buy another Samsung product in my life.
I mean, phones hand so much space now. Does it matter?
I know I can root and get rid of stupid apps, but like I just downloaded sent movie or Playlist I needed for a two week trip without any issue on space on my fold 4. So... why does the extra crap layer these days.
Early days, I'd root as my phone degraded over time. Now... why bother
Look at the size the 10% bar is in the 40-49 graph. Then the 6% bars in the 50-59 graph. Then look at the size of the 9% bar in the 60-69 graph. And then the Other bar (8%) in the 70+ graph.
Then go backup and look at the LG and Other bars (8% total) in the top graph. Whoever made this graphic is either intentionally misleading or just plain dumb.
Edit: The 78%, 80%, an 85% bars are also all exactly the same size. It just gets worse the longer you look at it.
Why not both
Yea, it's strange - top to bottom rows sum up to 94, 100, 92, 94, 100, 100
I've used samsung for all of my smartphones until my latest (when I switched to oneplus), but it's still an android phone. No way would I switch to ultra-locked-down apple.
Ye oneplus is great you just need a dns to block those chinese queries over vpn for example because it wont allow you to change the dns manually. (op8)
Yeah I have some serious ethical issues with Apple. I've never bought any of their products and never will. Aside from the anti-competitive walled garden of their tech and exorbitant cost of their products, their labor practices violate human rights in low cost labor markets. However Google and their partners such as Samsung are not free from guilt either. Unfortunately there's little choice in phone products, Android or iOS, pick your poison.
There was a time where Samsung flagships had features that iPhone didn't. Samsung slowly stripped their phones of these features.
If you don't need an android platform, and aren't after a foldable, there's a lot less of an argument to be made to be on Samsung these days.
And the bloatware got insane. At least let me remove the shit I don't want, Samsung.
I've had Samsung for around nine years. The thing that kept me married to them was the SD card slot. Now that it's gone, after my Note 10+ stops getting updates, I'll be looking at something else. I have the Samsung watch, buds and tablet but I'm assuming they'll work with a pixle if that's what I land on. I like the Samsung nearby share but that's such a small thing and doesn't keep brand loyalty. Otherwise, what do they offer that say the pixle doesn't?
It's basically the reason I'm using a mid-range Samsung. But they got rid of the headphone jack on the last generation A-series and it's only a matter of time before the SD card disappears too. Gonna look elsewhere for me next upgrade
Galaxy S10 with 128GB internal & 256GB microSD. Play anything from the entire music collection with the aux port in the car. Frequently listen to podcasts with bone conduction headphones. Couldn't be happier with a pocket computer.
I'm just hoping either Fairphone irons out it's kinks or legislation catches up with removable batteries and locked-down operating systems. I'm tired of feeling like I'm owning a device just until the manufacturer decides to turn it into e-waste.
I agree with you. One thing that keeps me with Samsung though is Dex. Everything else is replaceable with a time adjustment, but Dex is pretty big for me and other phones don't have it... Yet.
A bit weird to see LG in the charts (given that they're out of the smartphone industry now) and yet none of the other big manufacturers (Xiaomi, Huawei, Google).
I believe LG is also a South Korean company compared to the Chinese ones you mentioned so maybe there is a little patriotic incentive for LG over there.
The brands you mentioned aren't widely available in Korea. Since LG left the market, all the carriers, to my knowledge, only offer Apple or Samsung devices.
Source: I've lived in SoKo for a long time.
Thanks for the insight. Is what you're saying that there you can only buy a phone through a carrier?
Not much of a surprise, at least to me. Granted, my knowledge of the place is limited, but from what I've heard they really care about symbols of status (Fancy watches, jewelry, and, of course, expensive phones). Add that to the fact that kids nowdays aren't as patriotic (a good thing imo) and care less about local brands and the fact that tech literacy is not great either... Well it puts thing in perspective.
I think I was done with Samsung as a phone brand when the photos app asked me to sign in, rate it and send feedback. So much bloatware.
Probably doesn’t help the perception of high end status.
I’ve dealt with Samsung as the developer of a large app. They will pre-install your app on new phones if you pay them, which I think is pretty seedy. It’s also not very good for the dev because who knows if anyone will ever launch your preinstalled app. Samsung even claimed not to know. So we had no idea what we’d be paying for. Samsung’s Galaxy app store is also a totally laughable mess, far inferior to Google Play and AppStore in functionality. It even has spelling mistakes 😖
However I’ll keep doing business with Samsung. They’re just janky and it’s not surprising that users think they’re just as janky as I do.
Now Huawei…fuck Huawei. They created a big work mess for me by networking their way to a high ranking executive at our company and then telling them our app was “broken on millions of Huawei phones.” They made it sound like a bug in our code. But here’s what it actually was:
Trump banned Huawei from doing business in the US due to their ties to the Chinese Communist Party. This meant Huawei had to stop using some very core Android code libraries, since Google is an American company and couldn’t allow use of those libraries. So Huawei whipped up their own replacements to these libraries, but developers basically need to customize and republish their app specially for Huawei.
So because they got in trouble with Trump, Huawei needed all devs to rewrite their apps for Huawei phones. Instead of being honest about this, they got me in trouble, convincing an executive that something was wrong with our app. They generously offered to meet with our tech team and “help us fix it.”
I met with them, and once I understood what they were doing, I told them to get fucked. Then I wrote up a memo about what happened and let our executive leaders know that we wouldn’t be on Huawei phones ever again, going forward.
Samsung’s not THAT bad. Not even close.
wow
Ouch.. isn’t Samsung based in Korea?? How did they fuck that up
Shit software and OS
2 months ago I bought a regular samsung galaxy s23 and it's been running great so far. I expected MIUI levels of bloat, but surprisingly it is not that bad.
I had to disable a few samsung apps and for the most part, the phone stays out of my way and lets me do whatever i want.
I wish the s23 lineup gets good custom rom support. Would love to run a lean LineageOS / any AOSP based rom with MicroG on this phone.
If you can't uninstall the bloatware, just disable it in settings. I have been doing that and works perfectly fine. And then I put all the bloatware into a single folder in the launcher and voila, it's a clean experience. Stock android is the best, the next best thing is OneUI in my experience.
I’m 50, and I switched to an iPhone SE 2020 2 years ago, I’m never going back. It cost me 119$ and it’s worth every penny.
Would be interesting to see this lined up to other countries (US in particular)
The majority of youngsters will always pick a fashion brand (apple). However, the majority of them cannot afford it.
In its analysis, the survey credited iPhone's appeal among young people to Apple's premium branding – for the same storage size, an iPhone 14 (128GB) costs 1,250,000 won ($989) compared to the Galaxy S23's 1,150,000 won. Introduction of Apple Pay, Apple’s mobile payment service, to Korea earlier this year was cited as another contributing factor.
According to the article, cost is not a factor in their choice as they nearly cost the same.
I want to go back in time where flip phones and small screens were a thing.
Anyone with common sense prefers iPhone over stock rom Samsung.
Samsung's software is bloated with preinstalled crap. The software is not optimized, so even new the phones have major stutters frequently.
And don't get me started on the OTA updates. Those take a year to complete.
I love android because I can use FOSS software and I have more freedom when using it. But if I had to choose between a Galaxy and an iPhone, I'd pick the latter.
This is the argument someone makes who hasn't used a flagship Samsung device in at least 5 years.
One UI is one of my favorite OS's and usually has features months if not years before stock Android. I get OTA updates every month like clockwork and have even had beta versions of new Android OSs before Pixel users. I'm typing on a Fold 4 and my user experience is somehow smoother than when I purchased it. You cannot say the same for a Pixel or iPhone.
It's a shame, their hardware is pretty sweet
I agree!
Samsung has long lasting batteries and cameras are not too bad either.
Had Samsungs for 10 years watching them slowly get worse and worse. Switched to a Pixel last year and couldn't be happier.
Have alos been using Samsung phones for a while now, but my next one will not be a Samsung unless a miracle happens.
I love iPhone, their shit security gave us The Fappening
