I don't know if the bloatware is worse in the USA or something, but as a former TouchWiz hater I have to hard disagree on this. I would take One UI any time over whatever Fisher Price crap Google's designers have been peddling since Android 12.

Stock Android really peaked around version 10. Ever since they have just been messing with things that weren't broken, like the notifications or lock screen.

I thought I never would say this but thankfully Samsung doesn't automatically go along with Google's yearly inflation of whitespace [1] and other UX "improvements".

[1] Example of how ridiculous it has become: https://old.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/qbljd0/the_margins...

Then don't buy Samsung phones?

Believe me, after this experience I will not buy another Samsung phone again.

Personally I expand that out to generally be avoiding Samsung anything.

The only positive experience I've had with Samsung devices was dumpster diving their TVs as they had a stupid high failure rate of their capacitors. A couple of dollar order from Mouser or DigiKey and the TV would be better than new.

The fact that the only positives I've had with Samsung in the last decade or so is fixing their broken devices to score nearly free TVs says a lot about Samsung. I used to really like Samsung. I bought a lot of Samsung electronics, either as the original device or with their equipment in things (they used to make a ton of PC power supplies for OEMs, their CRT monitors and TVs were often re-badged in the US). I avoid it like the plague these days.

Pixels aren’t available in my country.

They aren't in my country, yet I have my second one (Pixel 3 and now Pixel 4). There are ways depending on your country, e.g. Amazon sends phones further than Google. Sometimes you can get overpriced Pixels in your own country (this way I got my replacement Pixel 4, Amazon didn't have them in stock after my warranty claim, so they gave me my money back and I bot Pixel 4 again for similar price).

Pixel series is my favorite. Even the second tier Pixels are better than the Samsung Galaxy I got last year. The builtin Samsung apps suck and can't be installed, true. But also the keyboard or screen size isn't a fit for me so it's constantly inserting periods/upper case words into my stream of words when I type quickly. And worst of all the USB-C port has gotten so bad only 2 of my 8 USB-C cables work with the phone anymore (though they still work with other USB-C devices I need to charge).

Really looking forward to going back to the Pixel phones and not touching Samsung again.

Pixel is generally out of my price range

Which Samsung do you get? My Samsung is more expensive than any Pixel I've had before.

Pixel 6a is $449 new. You can get an older model than that used for half the price too.

My sister-in-law got a Motorola phone under our Fi plan and I think it was fine too. They're around $300 new.

https://fi.google.com/about/phones/moto?pli=1

> There seem to be no way of removing them either

LineageOS is pretty good and non-American Samsungs are easily unlocked.

A custom ROM is probably the most (only?) reasonable way of using an Android phone.

Samsung is not a good choice for custom ROM due to Knox warranty hard fuse, Snapdragon/Exynos split on the "same" model, etc.

Xiaomi and other Chinese brands seem to be the way to go for flashing ROM's. There is still a huge community for those.

I ignore Samsung apps. What apps are you unable to avoid, other than the settings and tray?

you cannot remove them completely, but using ADB you can disable almost all of them.