I live in Dubai and we get the Exynos SoC (processor) for the Samsung Galaxy devices just like the UK and Europe unlike the ones which are sold in the US/Korea that have the awesome Snapdragon SoC. I've come to think of this as the norm and never bothered. Over the years I did notice in reviews when they say the battery life was awesome which for me was never the case, even after putting most of the apps into deep sleep, the battery life was horrid specifically the standby time (again with nothing in the background and most apps automatic syncing off such as Facebook which I replaced by an even lighter version called Metal Pro and Twitter which I replaced with Fenix 2, etc).
This year though, the gap between Exynos vs. Snapdragon has widened so much it's like you bought a completely different and inferior phone for the same freakin' super expensive price.
I was lured into the trap of pre-ordering to get my free Galaxy Buds+ which are awesome by the way and are still the best wireless buds that I've used.
So I pre-ordered the Galaxy S20+ 5G 512GB/128GB RAM. Firstly, I was disappointed from the get-go, the camera was the same if not slightly worse than my previous Galaxy S10 and Note 10+. The pictures at night even with good lighting had a lot of noise, they just weren't as crisp which was later improved with software updates and luckily the + version doesn't have the horrible Auto Focus issues which the Ultra has and will never be completely fixed due to the hardware.
I've done multiple factory resets after each update too, but man the battery life, even with my moderate usage which is listening to streaming audio for about an hour and receiving only few WhatsApp Messages and 5 emails at max, I had to charge the phone twice a day! I could never trust this phone to go out if it wasn't at 100% charge. Very sad for a $1300 USD phone at this day and age.
My other gripe is with the built in apps and finally Samsung started displaying ads everywhere in their own apps especially the Galaxy Store. I'd open the Store, it'll show a big pop up ad in my face about some game, I'd press "Don't show again" but a few hours later, it would still show me that same ad! Pathetic!
Let alone the fact that I had to disable most built in apps by using Package Disable Pro (another thing you must do just to get rid of the bloatware and apps that you don't want since most cannot be disabled or uninstalled) as I didn't want to have Samsung Calendar, Notes, etc. when I prefer to use the Google Calendar or Google Keep for notes due to the seamless integration with the Google ecosystem and the ability to view and edit online.
I've owned every Samsung Galaxy phone and Note phone since the S4 and Note 4 mainly due to lack of choice here in Dubai. LG is no more available here, Motorola is very rare as well and their latest flagship is expensive and offers mediocre specs. The others we have are Xiaomi (crappy cameras and Chinese bloatware inside) or Oppo so basically I was stuck, either iPhone or Samsung.
I finally was able to sell my S20+ at a decent price and started researching what to get? I initially wanted to get the OnePlus 8 Pro but just before pulling the trigger, I checked some forums and see the problems with its screen when the phone brightness is low (screen crush they call it or color crush, whatever). I didn't want to spend $800 USD for a phone that I knew had issues from the get-go.
I was out of ideas, then finally I thought of the Pixel 4, every review I've seen on YouTube complained about 1 thing mainly, its battery life as it only has a 2800 mAH battery (I wanted the regular Pixel not the XL as I prefer smaller phones) but I had no choice at this point and just pulled the trigger.
First off, it's amazing to just be able to turn on a phone and *use* it, there was nothing to disable! and because it had a Snapdragon 855, it felt buttery smooth, way smoother than my S20+ with the Exynos SoC even when that was with a 120 hz screen and the Pixel 4 with a 90 hz screen.
The Google Assistant is awesome and night and day better than Bixby (which I had disabled always anyway) as it can actually understand you 90% of the time.
The camera even though lacks a wide angle lens, takes phenomenal photos, the quality is just insane thanks to Google Computational magic when it comes to taking photos and what I've noticed is that you can simply launch the cam and snap a photo, no need to stay still and focus like I had to do with the S20+ especially the bokeh effect (Portrait mode) is night and day better. It works every single time whereas with the S20+ I had to always manually tap on the subject to focus on it.
Finally, the battery life, I knew I was not gonna get decent battery life after watching the reviews but I am shocked that my usage hasn't changed, my apps are the same, but it lasted me the full day, I slept and woke up and the battery was still at 17% and that was a typical day streaming bluetooth via my Galaxy Buds+ for about 2 hours, watching YouTube, taking a couple of videos at the gym, and receiving about 10 emails and WhatsApp messages.
I am blown away by this phone and never thought the Pure Android experience is so good.
I could go on forever about the positive things or changes I noticed in Pure Android, but one of the other things I loved is it has a built in ability to stop spam SMS, it you type a name of a venue in the contacts app like a restaurant, even if that name wasn't on your contacts, it would still show you the name/number as if it was on your phone, it just pulls the results from Google search! That's insane!
Farewell Samsung! Enjoy shoving ads in your 1000+ USD phones/TVs and giving people inferior hardware and keep losing customers!
This year though, the gap between Exynos vs. Snapdragon has widened so much it's like you bought a completely different and inferior phone for the same freakin' super expensive price.
I was lured into the trap of pre-ordering to get my free Galaxy Buds+ which are awesome by the way and are still the best wireless buds that I've used.
So I pre-ordered the Galaxy S20+ 5G 512GB/128GB RAM. Firstly, I was disappointed from the get-go, the camera was the same if not slightly worse than my previous Galaxy S10 and Note 10+. The pictures at night even with good lighting had a lot of noise, they just weren't as crisp which was later improved with software updates and luckily the + version doesn't have the horrible Auto Focus issues which the Ultra has and will never be completely fixed due to the hardware.
I've done multiple factory resets after each update too, but man the battery life, even with my moderate usage which is listening to streaming audio for about an hour and receiving only few WhatsApp Messages and 5 emails at max, I had to charge the phone twice a day! I could never trust this phone to go out if it wasn't at 100% charge. Very sad for a $1300 USD phone at this day and age.
My other gripe is with the built in apps and finally Samsung started displaying ads everywhere in their own apps especially the Galaxy Store. I'd open the Store, it'll show a big pop up ad in my face about some game, I'd press "Don't show again" but a few hours later, it would still show me that same ad! Pathetic!
Let alone the fact that I had to disable most built in apps by using Package Disable Pro (another thing you must do just to get rid of the bloatware and apps that you don't want since most cannot be disabled or uninstalled) as I didn't want to have Samsung Calendar, Notes, etc. when I prefer to use the Google Calendar or Google Keep for notes due to the seamless integration with the Google ecosystem and the ability to view and edit online.
I've owned every Samsung Galaxy phone and Note phone since the S4 and Note 4 mainly due to lack of choice here in Dubai. LG is no more available here, Motorola is very rare as well and their latest flagship is expensive and offers mediocre specs. The others we have are Xiaomi (crappy cameras and Chinese bloatware inside) or Oppo so basically I was stuck, either iPhone or Samsung.
I finally was able to sell my S20+ at a decent price and started researching what to get? I initially wanted to get the OnePlus 8 Pro but just before pulling the trigger, I checked some forums and see the problems with its screen when the phone brightness is low (screen crush they call it or color crush, whatever). I didn't want to spend $800 USD for a phone that I knew had issues from the get-go.
I was out of ideas, then finally I thought of the Pixel 4, every review I've seen on YouTube complained about 1 thing mainly, its battery life as it only has a 2800 mAH battery (I wanted the regular Pixel not the XL as I prefer smaller phones) but I had no choice at this point and just pulled the trigger.
First off, it's amazing to just be able to turn on a phone and *use* it, there was nothing to disable! and because it had a Snapdragon 855, it felt buttery smooth, way smoother than my S20+ with the Exynos SoC even when that was with a 120 hz screen and the Pixel 4 with a 90 hz screen.
The Google Assistant is awesome and night and day better than Bixby (which I had disabled always anyway) as it can actually understand you 90% of the time.
The camera even though lacks a wide angle lens, takes phenomenal photos, the quality is just insane thanks to Google Computational magic when it comes to taking photos and what I've noticed is that you can simply launch the cam and snap a photo, no need to stay still and focus like I had to do with the S20+ especially the bokeh effect (Portrait mode) is night and day better. It works every single time whereas with the S20+ I had to always manually tap on the subject to focus on it.
Finally, the battery life, I knew I was not gonna get decent battery life after watching the reviews but I am shocked that my usage hasn't changed, my apps are the same, but it lasted me the full day, I slept and woke up and the battery was still at 17% and that was a typical day streaming bluetooth via my Galaxy Buds+ for about 2 hours, watching YouTube, taking a couple of videos at the gym, and receiving about 10 emails and WhatsApp messages.
I am blown away by this phone and never thought the Pure Android experience is so good.
I could go on forever about the positive things or changes I noticed in Pure Android, but one of the other things I loved is it has a built in ability to stop spam SMS, it you type a name of a venue in the contacts app like a restaurant, even if that name wasn't on your contacts, it would still show you the name/number as if it was on your phone, it just pulls the results from Google search! That's insane!
Farewell Samsung! Enjoy shoving ads in your 1000+ USD phones/TVs and giving people inferior hardware and keep losing customers!
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to see you came over to the Pixel family ...I've never had to experience the Exynos side of the family and happy only US version's...pure Google at it's best always handles everything daily effortlessly...that saying it just works ..I stopped worrying about battery life a long time ago ..I have the 4 XL so can't comment on it's sibling..but happy you getting good battery and you can always bump up on those days you want extra push ...enjoy your new phone ...
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