I used a Samsung Galaxy phone for the past two years, and as much as I loved its hardware, it was the software that I liked most. Samsung apps felt a step above that of most other Android phones—but I’m not so sure how long that will last.

Samsung apps are better than Google’s apps.

At least for those of us who don’t want to do everything in the cloud

When I buy a phone, I’m interested in what the phone itself can do, not the cloud services it can tie into. I want my photos to reside in a gallery app on my device, not automatically uploaded to the cloud. I want my file manager to be great at viewing, moving, and renaming files stored on internal and removable storage. I like note-taking software that can easily export into formats I can view and edit in other apps.

This is the primary reason I have little interest in Pixel devices, whose main selling point is their integration with the Google ecosystem and, increasingly, Gemini. By contrast, Samsung Galaxy phones ship with so many functional apps that I have far less need to seek out alternatives or sign up for paid app subscriptions.

I greatly prefer Samsung Gallery over Google Photos and find it does nearly everything I want a gallery app to do (my one frustration is the inability to resize images to an exact size). Samsung My Files is a fully featured file manager app that is nearly as capable as any you find on a desktop. Samsung Notes is arguably the most powerful and feature-complete app that Samsung makes, and it’s easily the best note-taking app that ships on any Android phone. Admittedly, a similar thing could be said about Samsung Internet. I still feel all of this is true, but it’s not because Samsung’s apps have gotten better over the past few years.

App innovation has slowed

Galaxy phones are no longer about better software—it’s all about AI.

During my past couple of years with a Samsung phone, the only software that regularly received new on-device functionality was One UI itself—much of which was tucked away inside the superb Good Lock app. Even there, Samsung has started to fall behind. I loved the Open Canvas multitasking feature found on the OnePlus Open almost three years ago, and Samsung still hasn’t introduced as compelling a way to fully capitalize on larger screens.

Most of the new additions to Samsung’s other apps centered around Galaxy AI. To be clear, I do feel that Galaxy AI is the best implementation of AI I’ve seen on a smartphone, but for me, that’s a very low bar. Being the best at implementing features I don’t want (with a few notable exceptions) is hardly a compelling sales pitch to keep me enamored with these phones. I’m primarily happy that most of these Galaxy AI features can be turned off.

As much as I love Samsung Notes, there is room for improvement. I’d love for the app to get simple changes, like the ability to change fonts without having to change the entire phone’s system font. I also wish it could display a word count. These are what pushed me to seek out alternative software, not the ability to have something write letters for me or reformat paragraphs into bullet points. I just want a stellar note-taking app to get even better at letting me create my own notes, not create them for me.

Samsung Messages was packed with compelling ways to interact with text messages, and I’d love to see it continue to improve. Instead, Samsung’s messaging app is on its way out.

The most useful Galaxy AI features are the same you see elsewhere

Everyone has the same ideas

Credit: Justin Duino / How-To Geek

As I said, I feel Galaxy AI is the best implementation of AI I’ve seen on a phone, but that doesn’t mean it contains features that other phones don’t. It’s very helpful to have a voice recorder that can transcribe my recordings into text, but that’s something most pre-installed, and plenty of third-party voice recording apps now do. The same can be said for having a live translation of voice calls.

Likewise, I find it genuinely helpful that Samsung Keyboard can convert my handwriting into text, but that’s a feature I first encountered on BOOX tablets.

I’ve shown a few close people in my life the value of foldable phones, and they intuitively get the appeal of having a phone that expands to a larger screen. And to be fair, Samsung’s stock apps do a great job of making the most of that screen real estate. But there is more software that could be made. I sought out Moon+ Reader for viewing ebooks and comics, which is such a natural use-case for a “book-style” foldable that it’s a shame the company that first sold a mainstream version of this form-factor hasn’t leaned into it. Instead, this year’s Galaxy Unpacked continued to devote more time to showing off the latest ways to generate AI slop.

There’s a far way to fall

Samsung phones are still the easiest for me to recommend to the largest number of people. The build quality is stellar, the core functionality is there, and among Android phones, they’re the easiest to get repaired without having to mail them off somewhere. But aside from the foldables, which themselves have been around for over half a decade now, you don’t buy these phones because they’re innovative and exciting. You buy them because they’re good, and good is often good enough.

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