Samsung has nobody to blame but itself for the steady trickle of Android users leaving the platform for greener pastures on the Apple side.
Samsung's bloated, poorly-performant "value adds" are the reason Android is perceived to be laggy and unresponsive. Instead of just selling quality devices with a polished, professional operating system, they seem to have this pathological need to alter the vanilla Android install and bundle a bunch of crapware with every release. They're the budget laptop maker of the mobile space, like Dell used to be in the laptop space, back when the standard first step after receiving a new laptop was (is?) to instantly reformat so you lose all the OEM apps.
After a few years with a great Nexus 4, my phone broke down and I switched to a Moto G Pure (the best thing I could find on a short notice, as those Nexus phones take a while to ship..)
It's a mostly ok phone, but the devil is in the details.. some of which I hate:
- The phone's vibration feel like an earthquake. I got a case just to ameliorate it and it still buzzes off everyone 100ft around me. Heck, I turned it OFF for voice and alerts but it still somehow vibrates for whatsapp and some games. Now I just don't play those games and have the phone in "do not disturb mode" so it doesn't vibrate like crazy.
- It has no led, so if I was away from the phone I can't see if I have an alert without touching the phone (perhaps that's why they made it vibrate so much? so that no matter where I am I know if I got a text?)
- It still uses the previous version of android even though it's a 2 month old phone which I just bought. This means no per-app permissions, etc.
So my point is.. yes you do need to get the details right! Just getting 95% there is useless, and that's where Moto and Samsung are. Maybe if they go back to only a few models they could get them right..
Samsung's bloated, poorly-performant "value adds" are the reason Android is perceived to be laggy and unresponsive. Instead of just selling quality devices with a polished, professional operating system, they seem to have this pathological need to alter the vanilla Android install and bundle a bunch of crapware with every release. They're the budget laptop maker of the mobile space, like Dell used to be in the laptop space, back when the standard first step after receiving a new laptop was (is?) to instantly reformat so you lose all the OEM apps.