>Samsung annoy me with all the bloatware etc

This is why it never has been and will never be considered a premium android phone. Samsung's apps are awful.

I personally don't see the appeal of a premium product that includes bloatware when you can now get premium products without bloatware. I tolerated it in the early days of smartphones when there were fewer options and even fewer good options, but their "improvements" always felt gimmicky.

Samsung had been kind of side grading their flagships and offering worse SOCs depending on location, paired with there plainly being more options for Android there'll be more variety spread out over the different manufacturers

To this day my S6 was the phone I was actually happiest with. Mostly just because of its durability, fit and feel (and the screen of course) rather than any particular tech spec.

>>Samsung annoy me with all the bloatware etc but the hardware is decent

I used to buy every S Ultra phone every year, thinking the same - this year I bought the latest Oppo instead and wow, what a bubble I used to live in. The battery alone blows the Ultras out of the water, the chip is just as fast but stays cool, the camera and the screen are just better. The only thing that Samsung had over this was the anti reflective coating. Oh and it actually charges like a modern phone not something from 2015.

Samsung has really fallen behind the last couple years IMO. They use very different chips in different regions, and refuse for some reason to embrace bigger batteries.

Phones out of China these days are all sporting ~7000mah batteries, even in smaller form factors. Samsung's biggest phone only has 5000, and that's not a small difference in battery life.

Maybe they're still reeling from the Note 7 fiasco?

Samsung has really been dropping the ball and has basically reduced themselves to a "No kids, we have Apple at home" clones outside of their fold line ups. Their OneUI updates have borrowed heavily from liquid glass.

The S series have had the same camera hardware since the S22, and the upcoming S26 is no different. That's 5 years of the same exact hardware, and borderline the same display since the S21.

People like to give Apple shit for releasing the same phone year after year, but Samsung has literally been releasing the same exact phone for 4+ years now.

Now, they scrapped the edge late, brought back the plus, delayed the S26 because Apple forced them to put 256GB as the base storage instead of 128, and there's rumours of a wider aspect ratio fold on top of the regular fold. They're just throwing spaghetti at the wall trying to see what sticks.

Samsung has no vision.

I've owned the SII, Note 4 (and a few Pixels in between) and now the S24. The S24 is by far the worst Android phone I've used. Massive battery drain on stand-by, even with AOD off. It has about half the battery live of a Pixel 5. Many accidental touches when in your pocket which will screw up all sorts of settings. Annoying push for their AI. Sub-par fingerprint sensor. The only reason I bought this phone was because it is one of the last compact phones around.

That "bloatware" is just alternatives to Google's software and systems, and much of it isn't bad, if not better.

I prefer the Gallery app over Google Photos, the Samsung My Files app is cleaner than Google Files, Studio is a decent video editor, Samsung Notes is a capable rich text editor with pen support, Dex is a usable desktop shell, and more. Anything I don't like - like Bixby, Store, Keyboard, Wallet, Pass and Internet - I can easily replace and even hide them in the Settings. Combined they take up minimal storage.

I'm not sure what people expect Samsung to do, just use whatever Google says to use and not try to innovate?

The Samsung A-series are way too good for the price. I'm not surprised people aren't willing to pay twice the price (a Galaxy S) for incredibly marginal gains.

If you're not trying to use your phone as a gaming PC, or taking pictures in the dark, cheap Android phones are all you need.

Does Google have the hardware design expertise needed to compete? If they don't already posses that then it is quite a dilemma because they would need to either buy a top notch handset maker and hope that can be competive with the other Android makers. Or build it up themselves. And all this has to happen while competing with other Android makers, who will be very wary of Google. I also don't know that Google needs specific Android phones to be the best or most popular to win the things they care about. Phones are just platforms for them. Android ensures no one has a chokepoint on that.

Are they? Or are they just not willing to put in the resources to fight to get a bigger share?

It’s been more than long enough that I suspect no one could launch a third phone. If it doesn’t have iOS or Android it probably just won’t fly.

So I’m not sure how much they have to worry about.

From the same site: https://counterpointresearch.com/en/insights/global-smartpho...

20% of all phones sold are iPhones, and 80% are Android (or not 80%? Some small percentage is probably neither). Yeah, considering the iPhone has maybe 3-5 models, and across all the Android brands, maybe 500 models?

32% are other brands... interestingly Google belongs in said "other".

Besides Touch ID I'd be really hard pressed to tell you something my current iPhone can do that the iPhone 8+ couldn't, let alone something it can do that I use.

I recently upgraded from an iPhone 12 to an iPhone 16 because I couldn't figure out how to free enough storage on the 12. The battery was still more than good enough to go a full day.

I don't notice any difference other than now I have a pile of useless lightning cables (good riddance). Honestly kind of a relief as I liked the 12 just fine. Phones kind of seem like a Solved tech these days. About as exciting to upgrade them as upgrading my Brother Laser Printer.

2025 and 2024 look identical for the top five spots, just with each number +1, so it's not any sort of one-off thing.

Still much worse than what could have been. Compare to for example Fairphone, remove some screws and you can replace the battery. Same for the screen and other components. No glue.

I think the 12 was great, and the main driver when I upgraded to a 14 was much better stabilisation when shooting video. Otherwise I probably would've stuck with it.

It's a problem Apple could easily fix: put out another small phone. I'm in the "cold dead hands" camp with our 13 Minis: when the battery dies, get a new one and hope Apple comes to their senses in four years.

OTOH, maybe the iPhone Fold will turn out to not be two giant slabs of glass that still won't fit in your pocket. Maybe it'll be a reasonable size folded up, and big when unfolded. A person can dream...

Apple makes a sizeable sum through the App store and accessories. I don't think low churn on their flagship hardware is keeping their executives awake at night.

Apple is usually pretty good at keeping older phones performant enough but,

This is the first upgrade cycle that I upgraded in anger over an unusably slow and energy inefficient OS on an “older” model

I was traveling in south / south east Asia and my iPhone 15 Pro was dying twice a day despite minimal use besides maps and taking some photos. My battery health was 86% so not perfect but surely it shouldn’t die twice a day.

That coupled with the keyboard constantly lagging with every letter I typed made me realize Apple no longer cares about older models.

They threw that out with Liquid Glass.

I wish Android wasn’t also closing off their ecosystem.

It helps that the major cell carriers have convinced people to pay multiple times more than the budget carriers, to offer free phone upgrades every few years or when switching carriers. Makes me wonder how much cheaper phone plans could be

Perhaps your assumption is wrong. In a high income cohort, I know zero people that buy new phones every year.

https://nsysgroup.com/blog/average-device-lifespan-how-long-...

> Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP) shares more data on smartphone lifespan by brand. According to their research, people who use iPhones keep their devices longer: 61% of Apple smartphone users and 43% of Android users have owned their previous devices for two years or more.

>Notably, 29% of iPhone users held onto their phones for more than three years, compared to 21% of Android users. Additionally, CIRP found that over a third of iPhone buyers (both those who previously used iPhones and Androids) have owned their devices for over three years, while fewer than a third have owned them for less than two years.

Camera crashes? Never seen one. How did you do that?