I've had an S3 (currently an iPhone 5) running both stock TouchWiz and CyanogenMod10.1, which is the closest to stock Android I can get.
The hardware button didn't make sense to me because it made the back and menu buttons much closer to the edge, which lead to accidental presses of those buttons and there was also less space to hold the phone with. I disabled the hardware buttons and had on-screen buttons like the Nexus 4's. The multitasking button made me much faster at switching apps.
The plastic got greasy fast, that's my major complaint. As for thinness, I found an Otterboxed iPhone 5 easier to hold because of the depth. I don't understand this race to thinness because at some point (we may have already hit it), thinner phones are just harder to hold (my opinion). I also wish that phones could be a bit thicker with a bigger battery.
The notification widget is possibly the dumbest thing Samsung did with TouchWiz. No matter what position you were at in the widget (left, middle, far right, whatever), the widget would start to the right and then scroll back to the furthest left. Not only is this annoying, it was completely unnecessary and happened every single time you pulled down the notification shade.
Stock Android also has this widget, by the way. It's called Quick Settings and has more toggles than Samsung (at least in the S3. haven't played with S4 yet) and is customizable. It was also easily accessible by pulling down on the user-specified part of the screen (may have been CM10.1 specific).
Notifications in stock Android can also be easily swiped away, same as S3. I don't see how anyone can't figure out which ones are swipable or not. Use your phone, swipe, if it doesn't swipe, then it won't swipe in the future. It's usually things like voicemail or persistent processes that you started.
Stock Android should have burst mode as well for the camera.
If some of these features don't exist, I apologize. The Cyanogen team may have implemented some of these features on their own, but even so, I hated TouchWiz with every fiber of my being. A refreshed interface comes along with the release of Android 4.0 and Samsung decides to keep the look dated with a Gingerbread-era settings menu. Or the menu button, which should be extinct by now.
I'm testing iOS right now, but when I come back to Android, it will be either an HTC running CyanogenMod or Nexus phone for me.
The hardware button didn't make sense to me because it made the back and menu buttons much closer to the edge, which lead to accidental presses of those buttons and there was also less space to hold the phone with. I disabled the hardware buttons and had on-screen buttons like the Nexus 4's. The multitasking button made me much faster at switching apps.
The plastic got greasy fast, that's my major complaint. As for thinness, I found an Otterboxed iPhone 5 easier to hold because of the depth. I don't understand this race to thinness because at some point (we may have already hit it), thinner phones are just harder to hold (my opinion). I also wish that phones could be a bit thicker with a bigger battery.
The notification widget is possibly the dumbest thing Samsung did with TouchWiz. No matter what position you were at in the widget (left, middle, far right, whatever), the widget would start to the right and then scroll back to the furthest left. Not only is this annoying, it was completely unnecessary and happened every single time you pulled down the notification shade. Stock Android also has this widget, by the way. It's called Quick Settings and has more toggles than Samsung (at least in the S3. haven't played with S4 yet) and is customizable. It was also easily accessible by pulling down on the user-specified part of the screen (may have been CM10.1 specific).
Notifications in stock Android can also be easily swiped away, same as S3. I don't see how anyone can't figure out which ones are swipable or not. Use your phone, swipe, if it doesn't swipe, then it won't swipe in the future. It's usually things like voicemail or persistent processes that you started.
Stock Android should have burst mode as well for the camera.
If some of these features don't exist, I apologize. The Cyanogen team may have implemented some of these features on their own, but even so, I hated TouchWiz with every fiber of my being. A refreshed interface comes along with the release of Android 4.0 and Samsung decides to keep the look dated with a Gingerbread-era settings menu. Or the menu button, which should be extinct by now.
I'm testing iOS right now, but when I come back to Android, it will be either an HTC running CyanogenMod or Nexus phone for me.