I thought we should restart the brand discussion with something more popular to give this community relaunch a bit more oomph. So, Samsung it is.
I've never really used a Samsung phone much before, despite them being so popular in the States. Have friends who used them, they usually look nice and high quality, and the Galaxy S Active are the only high-end phones I know that doesn't shatter when you look at them wrong without a case, so, props to Samsung.
There are may reasons I don't like Samsung phones: Hardware fuse disabling Knox on bootloader unlock, Exynos vs Snapdragon models, the mandatory Bixby button, the Galaxy Note 7 that really blew up. To me, Samsung phones are trying so hard to go against what makes Android good, which is the customizability to do whatever you wanted. Android is everything; Samsung is just Samsung.
Personally, I think Samsung is only worth buying at the very high end for the Galaxy S series. I've heard that A series have gotten better, but there always seems to be better choices from Moto/Pixel/Chinese brands on Amazon that it's not worth considering their low tier offering.
What should we do next week? I'm thinking Microsoft, just to make fun of them for the very idea of making a Surface Duo 2.
Great hardware, especially as far as the screens. Questionable software environment. Last I had one, there were duplicates of most Google apps in inferior Samsung form, which was really useless, and they couldn’t be deleted (I think). While the display was s beautiful, another thing I didn’t like was I had one of the ones with curved glass on the sides, a Galaxy S9, which looked cool, was useless, and it ended up getting cracked on the side, so it was useless and fragile.
I don't think they've had an "Active" phone since S7 though? I know there's the Xcover series, but it isn't tied to the S line, I wonder if it's targetting the same niche