I was actually waiting for new Galaxy phones for almost half a year. Was decided to buy iPhone 14 (I had iPhone XR at the time), but the price hike and lack of new things on base models, I decided not to go that route and instead decided to go with Samsung this time around (I like both, iOS and Android so switching between both is no issue for me). There were already rumors and leaks about new Snapdragon powered Galaxy phones even in Europe, so I decided to wait. And here they are and they really are very good. Still not sure if it’s 1300€ “very good” as I’ve never in my life paid this much for any phone, but I intend on sticking with it for very long thanks to good Samsung software support so I can justify that over buying 2-3 lesser devices in same time for about the same money. Aaaaanyway…
OneUI’s App Drawer weirdness
This one is actually really weird. Samsung’s OneUI offers tons of tweaks and settings to really tailor phone the way you want it. But for some reason they insist on using app drawer that only knows listing of apps in multiple pages. Coming from Xiaomi where app drawer is a continuous list of apps in alphabetic order in grid array and iPhone that actually has alphabetical list, this one feels really awkward and there is no way to change that. To open App drawer, you pull the display down and then you need to swipe left and right opposed to continues downwards swiping I was used on Xiaomi’s MIUI. It’s just not fluid and convenient and to make matters worse, it remembers on what page you left of last time which makes returning to it very inconsistent and unpredictable. Why can’t we just have option to have all apps in a continuous alphabetically ordered scrolling list. Not grid but a list. With alphabet index on the side so you can quickly drag on letter index to jump to list where app starting with certain letter is. Apple had that in iOS and I freaking loved that thing even though you could only get to it through app categories panel. It’s just more predictable and faster to find apps than apps in this grid multipage nonsense. Come on Samsung, just add option for this in the App Drawer settings. Grid multipage thing is just terrible to a point I organized everything in folders to keep all apps within a single page. Not ideal, but way better and faster to find app I need than hunting for it on multiple pages in overwhelming grid lists.
The way how Camera app captures photos
People seem to complain about shutter lag for years on Galaxy phones and I’m not going to lie, I hesitated a bit deciding for Galaxy because of this. Imagine paying 4 digit Euro price and have camera with mega lag when capturing photos. Well, as it turns out, this is not really a problem, but a solution to it leads through installing another app just to flip a settings switch which is a bit annoying.
For some reason, Samsung’s Camera app captures photos in a different way than other vendors which creates this “lag”. All other phone makers that I know start capturing photos the moment you touch the display on the “Shutter” button (take photo button). Samsung on the other hand, for whatever weird reason actually starts capturing the photo when you lift the finger from the display after touching the “Shutter” button. Which means to snap a photo quickly you need to also quickly tap the “Shutter” button and not just pressing it. You either have to train your muscle memory to have quick taps when capturing photos or you have to install “Camera Assistant” app from Good Lock Labs on Galaxy Store and use “Quick tap shutter” setting that makes snapping of photos happen the moment you touch the display, without having to as quickly lift the finger to actually do it. It’s really weird design decision on Samsung’s end and even weirder that this “Quick tap shutter” isn’t a setting available in the Samsung’s own Camera app in the first place.