I often post about Samsung here. I can’t recall if I’ve mentioned it before, but it might come as a surprise to some that I used to work on Apple’s social media marketing team (not iPhone, other Apple devices). Even then, I was not an Apple fanboy as I had just gotten my first Samsung Flip series phone before I got that job & I wasn’t about to buy a new iPhone less than a month after getting it just because I suddenly found myself working for Apple. In any case, I had switched between the two brands over the previous years, so I have a decent grasp of both UI‘s.
Here is a quick rundown of my smartphone history over the past decade:
iPhone SE
Samsung S10
iPhone SE 2
Samsung Flip 4
iPhone 13 Pro Max
Samsung Flip 6
While my first generation Apple SE was fairly comparable to the Samsungs on the market at the time, by the time the 13 Pro Max rolled out, we were looking at vastly different device experiences, which make iPhones feel cumbersomely outdated. The 13 Pro Max release solidified my opinion of Apple, since what I had previously considered might have been cost-cutting limitations on the SE series were revealed to be brand-wide. This is not to put down anybody with a crippling condition, but I cannot describe using an Apple device from Samsung as anything other than being disabled. For this article, I will provide the top 5 reasons I feel this way. I am not going to get into trivia that the average person wouldn’t notice, so we won’t be talking about things such as nits, we won’t even touch 60Hz versus 120Hz displays or go in depth on megapixels, but actual, usable smartphone features that make a realistic, noticeable difference to absolutely anybody. I truly think that if Apple fans knew what they were missing out on, they would not buy an iPhone ever again. It’s just a simple matter of the fact that they worship the brand. It’s not a matter of fact, usefulness, or accessibility, it’s simply brand worship.
1. Samsungs Have a Side Launcher
This is so unbelievably handy, I cannot stress it enough. Perhaps the worst thing about using an iPhone was not having this. Finding even my most used apps on iPhone was such a hassle. Due to various iOS changes over the years, the 13 Pro Max was nothing like the SE & SE2. Trying to find my apps, which were randomly arranged in various folders which I neither selected nor categorized, was always too much trouble, forcing me to use the search bar to open every app. It was painfully slow to get to anything. On the other hand, Samsung makes getting to my most used apps take less than a second, literally. This comes in handy, especially when it comes to the translation apps I often find myself using in casual meetings & conversations. To clarify, these don’t have to be your most used apps, they can simply be your favourite apps, contacts, reminders, clipboard, or tools. I simply have it set to the apps I use the most because that’s what works for me. I could go into this for hours, but simply put Samsung phones offer the most personalisation.
2. Samsungs Have 40-Slot Clipboards
Probably the second most shockingly inconvenient thing about iPhones is that they don’t have a clipboard. Yes, they have a copy-paste function, but no clipboard. With Samsung’s clipboard, you can see the last 40 things you copied, including text AND images. These do not reset even if you restart the phone, & you can even pin your most used ones. So, for example, if you have a set YouTube description that you reuse in every video, etc., you can easily pin that so you don’t have to type it out & you don’t have to go searching for it on an old video. You simply have it on your clipboard, accessible within seconds. A single copy-paste which does not even survive a restart simply does not cut it, especially after you get used to having arguably days of clipboard history on a Samsung.
3. Samsungs Have Dual-Screen Functionality
I don’t know at which point Samsung began to implement split screens across their devices. I first discovered it with the Flip 4, but it was not available on my Samsung S10, From what I understand, it is now available on even their normal slab phones. In any case, it has been a godsend for content creation in multiple aspects. Firstly, instead of installing a third-party teleprompter app with ads, watermarks & other inconveniences, you can simply open the Samsung Notes app & the camera app simultaneously to have your script right in front of you as you record. Secondly, when it comes to uploading these videos to social media, you can easily have X open on one screen & TikTok open on the other, copy-paste your descriptions, titles, etc. & post seconds apart—very important if you have an audience who expects you to post at the same time every day. iPhone just doesn’t have anything like this out of the box. I hear iPad does, but I guess for whatever reason, Apple does not see fit to add this to their phones. Maybe it’s because they want to sell more iPads? I don’t know, but it sure is inconvenient.
4. iPhone Cameras Are Not for Human Faces
I wish I had known this before I had bought the iPhone 13 Pro Max, but iPhone pictures are disgusting. Apple like to brag about their cameras having all the latest & greatest metrics, but their post-processing simply is not made for human faces. If you want to be a nature photographer, & capture a cliffside landscape, being able to count every crag & crevice in your images, an iPhone would be great for that, but when it comes to human faces, this makes them look ugly as Hell. You might think that this is cope, but there are countless TikTok videos of objectively attractive people saying the exact same thing.
I actually need someone at @apple to explain why my iPhone (that cost over a grand) makes me look like a corpse. Never buying another iPhone unless someone explains or fixes this bc this is ridiculous #iphoneistrash#iphone#apple#stevejobswouldnever
Personally, I look very orange in any photo shot on an iPhone.
I vaguely suspect that this post-processing is due to racial profiling since Apple is relatively “woke” & wants to target black demographics, whereas Samsung is more Asian-friendly. Anyway, perhaps it should be mentioned that women in Asia are carrying older model iPhones, specifically the XS, in addition to their current iPhone due to newer iPhones having such horrible post-processing.
So, if you want to look grungy, ugly, with every pimple & oversized pore highlighted with a grey dinge on orange skin for contrast, get an iPhone. But, if you want to look nice in your photos with minimal to no effort, get a Samsung. Of course, iphone has a wide variety of filters but, having gone through all of them, absolutely none of them make any photos any better & you do not have the option to download any 3rd party ones to the default camera, whereas on Samsung there are countless filters available on the device with many more downloadable to the default camera available for free. This isn’t even getting into the more advanced editing features which have been on the latest flagships, but you can do simple things like skin smoothing & brightening to even your tone without looking cartoonishly unnatural & ugly on even the base camera. Seriously, the iPhone cameras have gotten so bad that the digital camera market has begun to pick up again for the first time in a decade because nobody wants to take ugly pictures on new Apple devices. It’s much more expensive & inconvenient to have to buy then carry both an iPhone & a digital camera than it is to just buy a Samsung phone, which gives you the best of both worlds with one device. This is increasingly important, especially if you’re creating on social media, because shooting from your dedicated digital camera then downloading from your digital camera to your phone to edit then upload is just too many steps to bother with. Videos are the largest data files, so transferring from an external device is cumbersome & time-consuming by any means. A large part of why I bought the DJI Pocket 3 was due to having bought the iPhone 13 Pro Max. During that time, I used the pocket 3 constantly instead of the iPhone camera, but ever since I got my Samsung flip 6 I’ve only used the Pocket 3 maybe two times.
5. On Samsung Phones, No App Subscriptions Are Necessary
Some of the features above can be bought via apps on iPhones– not all, but some. However, nearly every single app on the App Store requires a subscription. Let’s look at the split screen option I mentioned above. Yes, there is an app you can get on the App Store for this feature, but rather than paying for it once, getting it for free forever out of the box like you do on a Samsung, you have to pay something like $10 a month forever just to use this feature, & that’s just one app. If you want a camera app that doesn’t make you look like you just crawled out of a cave for the first time in a week like iPhone’s default camera does, that’s another $120. Gaming apps require subscriptions, video editing apps require subscriptions, wallpaper apps require subscriptions, phone layout apps require subscriptions, absolutely everything requires subscriptions on Apple. I could not believe the insane amount of limitation that was available out of the box from Apple. I guess because they’re taking a 30%-40% cut of all these subscriptions that they just don’t care to provide anything useful out of the box, & it shows. From a developer’s perspective, it’s more lucrative to target Apple users simply because they are so used to being price gouged for everything. On the flip side, not just Samsung, but all Android users are used to getting everything for free. They will actually review-bomb you if your app won’t open on their ancient devices rather than contact you directly about any problems or pay a dime so that you have the capital to improve anything. So, I can see why many developers would rather work for or with Apple, but from a user perspective, it’s not a good experience at all. iPhone supremacists commonly fall back on calling Android users poor. However, people increasingly come to realise that this personal attack is baseless, with Samsung & other industry leaders being at or even above iPhone unit pricing. Still, if you were to calculate all of the features that iPhone is missing out of the box that you have to pay for app subscriptions for just to get a Samsung level of usefulness from an iPhone, you’re easily paying another $500 – $1000 dollars every year, making Samsung devices a much better value since they have all of these permanently right out of the box, arguably “for free,” or at least priced into the device cost. I guess add that onto another $500-$1000 dollars for a separate digital camera. Between all the additional peripherals & app subscriptions, you’re looking at anywhere between $3000-$4000 just to get an iPhone working at the capacity that a $1000 Samsung does. It’s like wasting a fortune & countless hours modifying a decades-old luxury sedan for racing when a purpose-built, track-ready sports car is an all around better value from the start.
Though I think that Samsung phones are markedly superior to iPhones, this opinion does not extend to watches. However, this is more for aesthetic purposes rather than functionality. They simply look better. In addition to the Apple Watch itself. I spent hundreds of dollars on a Japanese silver band for my Apple Watch 8, & it looks so good that I have no interest in changing it, not even to upgrade to a newer Apple Watch. At this point, I cannot imagine any feature which could possibly be added that would exceed the usefulness that my Watch 8 already provides. Really, what else could it do? It already has transit/credit NFC payments, health monitoring &, of course, clock capabilities. Google Maps are neutered & Apple Maps suck. I don’t really need it for music & it’s too small to really appreciate most photos, as most watch devices are. Realistically, I think the watch market has reached its pinnacle. There’s some Apple fan talk of adding cameras with some knockoff Apple watches already having them, but absolutely nobody’s clamoring over these features, & Apple has made no hint of being impressed enough to try launching them on official devices–which I think might be a smart move because just from a photographer’s perspective, you really can’t get great photo angles/lighting from your wrist.
Anyway, this preference for Apple Watch also led to another reason why I greatly dislike iPhones. You see, in Japan, as an anti-perversion measure, all cell phones make a sound when you take a picture. Unfortunately, when you pair your Apple Watch with your iPhone, the two devices often unlock each other at random, making a clicking noise which could be perceived as a camera shutter. This made me very paranoid, especially when I’m on trains or even just talking to random people, that they or someone around me would think I was sneakily taking pictures when my watch or phone simply decided to unlock at a random moment. While no one ever said anything, it was a constant uneasy paranoia which I was greatly relieved to be rid of upon switching from the iPhone 13 Pro Max to the Samsung Flip 6. While I keep my SE2 for the functionality needed to maintain my Apple Watch, since I never take this device with me the locking noise/camera noise issue has disappeared from my life. Thankfully.
Perhaps it is important to note that my affinity for Samsung is not like that of iPhone fans, who demonstrate blind loyalty to the brand as if they were somehow married to Apple—even when all common sense suggests that Samsung offers superior functionality, convenience & value. Instead, it is these superior features themselves that keep me returning to Samsung when purchasing new devices.
If another phone company, especially a Japanese one, were to introduce features superior to those of Samsung—even if it were Apple, following an extreme overhaul of its UI—I would simply choose the better device rather than prioritize a brand name. It just so happens that Samsung consistently delivers the best features I have ever found in any device. So, I will continue buying them until that is no longer the case.
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