Context

> Samsung Galaxy S24 specifications on GSM Arena

This is a follow-up to my previous post about disappointing phones, so if you want to learn more about the situation I was in, read that one first.

These events took place in July 2025 and have been narrated in past tense. Apologies for my year-long delay in writing this.

This won't be a typical phone review - I'm going to leave out a lot of things that a typical review would discuss, such as benchmarks and battery life, because you can look elsewhere for those. Instead, I'm going to focus on the aspects of the phone I felt most strongly about.

Reasons for this purchase

After previously making a shortlist of phones I'd consider, Samsung seemed to be the best fit for my needs. I mainly chose it because it's a common brand here, which makes repairs more accessible. It's also the "known evil" option since I could touch a demo unit in the shop, rather than the "unknown evil" of something I'd blindly buy online.

I bought a second-hand model online for $800 NZ, close to half the price that a new one would have cost.

The first emotion I felt when holding my new phone was relief that this purchase had put an end to my stressful brooding. For better or worse, I had at last decided which phone, and I could stop worrying about it. In fact, I was fairly excited to enjoy using the cameras.

Disrespect for the user

I didn't realise how good I'd had it running LineageOS.

The first thing I saw after getting to the home screen was a notification saying that it'll download over 2 GB of apps after I connect to the internet. There's no way to ignore or cancel this notification, it will download them. Immediately they have violated my right to choose what happens on my device, in fact it's not even presented as a choice. It tells me what's going to happen to me whether I like it or not. It's disrespectful and insulting.

Since Samsung thinks these apps are so important, let's take a quick look at them.

Preinstalled apps

Overall, this list is more bloated than my minimalist heart would like, but objectively it isn't that bad. It's a far cry from the Chinese-style bloatware: it didn't have any games, and almost all of the apps are from the phone manufacturers themselves.

Still, there's definitely some weird ones in here, such as Global Goals (I don't even know how to describe this one), and Samsung FREE, an app which you can open any time to look at contentslop (for free!), which couldn't be uninstalled until it was shut down last December. There's also Shop (different from Store) and SmartThings (different from Smart Switch).

It definitely varies by region. My girlfriend commented that her USA region Samsung phone would intermittently install random games, actual momslop games, match three, the kind of games you see in the YouTube ads, games I would never want to play in my life.

It seems Microsoft picked LinkedIn as one of the apps they paid to put on my phone. I'm not sure why they felt they needed to force it on me when (a) the neurotypical parasocial downtrodden world already believes it's mandatory to find employment, (b) you can easily open it on your computer by pressing Shift+Ctrl+Windows+Alt+L... but there it is anyway. All things considered, it's not that bad coming from Microsoft. The really bad part is that it's impossible to uninstall OneDrive. They shall not be spared from the coming terror.

The list includes two text messaging apps: Messages (with a Samsung design language icon) and Messages (with a Google design language icon). If you open Samsung messages it says it's been discontinued and you should use Google messages instead. Okay, then why force install it if it's a confusing unusable duplicate? Bizarre.

It also includes at least two competing AI chatbots (Gemini and Microsoft 365 Copilot), which is pretty funny. If you count a bit more disingenuously, there's a total of six (adding Bixby, Notes, Messages, and Google search). Eight if you also count Samsung Keyboard and Galaxy AI, but the latter isn't a separate app, it's branding that sort of permeates the whole phone.

To clarify, Bixby is Samsung's virtual assistant, Notes included prominent features to summarise the text you entered, Messages informed me that I can chat with Gemini (yes, in the Messages app), and the first thing you see after typing in Google search is an AI response filling the screen.

You need to create an account to use the Notes app.

More notifications

If you thought you could avoid having a Google and/or Samsung account by simply skipping those questions on the initial setup screen, you technically can, but your choice will haunt you forever at the top of the screen until you finally break.

There's a lingering notification from Android Setup saying Setup in progress, which cannot be disabled or swiped away. The purpose of this notification is to nag you to sign in to a Google account on the device. I do not have a Google account. So the notification is stuck like that forever.

There was also an undismissable notification from Find My Mobile, which similarly wants me to create or sign in to a Samsung account, and won't go away until I do.

Early software experience

All of the default apps were very needy. Many times, after opening an app it would display (not immediately, only after several seconds when you least expect it) some sort of informational or permission notice at the bottom of the screen. However, since I was tapping around to explore the app and wasn't expecting a notice to pop up randomly, I happened to touch on or outside the notice just as it popped up before I could read it, which dismisses the notice. I have literally no idea what I ended up agreeing or disagreeing to in any of these apps.

Also, lots of apps' internal menus had red dots marking some of the menu items. I assume the purpose of these is to highlight a new feature that I should check out, but everything here is equally new to me since it's a new phone. I found myself having to tap through each of these to get rid of the red dots because they were annoying me.

Worse, some of the highlighted features were deep in submenus, and it marked every item I'm supposed to click in order to get there, like a breadcrumb trail. So I'd have to click on two or three or four red dots in a row to dismiss a dot on a feature that looks just as new as all the other features surrounding it.

Here's all the dots I catalogued:

• Settings → Sign in to your Galaxy
• Settings → Bluetooth → Dots menu → Broadcast sound using Auracast
• Camera → Camera settings → Advanced video options → Log (pro mode only)
• Settings → Digital wellbeing → Dots menu → Settings
• Photos → Albums → Camera
• Phone → Keypad → Settings → Record calls → Transcription assist → (agree to Galaxy AI terms of service to dismiss this dot)
• Phone → Keypad → Settings → About phone → It tells me that it can't check for updates without an internet connection (I couldn't clear this dot until I connected to the internet)
• My Files → 60 new files added recently (I couldn't clear this dot at all)
• Notes → Hamburger menu → Settings → Note assist → (describes a GPT wrapper)
• Settings → Galaxy AI

Default apps I had to replace

Since I was now on my normal regular phone grindset, I decided to try going all-in on being a normal regular person, and figured I'd see how long I could survive on Samsung's default launcher and keyboard.

I lasted 20 minutes on the launcher before replacing it with KISS, and about a week on the keyboard before replacing it with MessagEase. I can't believe I'm saying this, but Samsung Keyboard wasn't really that bad after changing a couple of settings. I would almost want to recommend it to normal people for whom MessagEase would be too advanced, but... who am I kidding, normal people don't think about installing alternative phone keyboards.

I also tried sticking with the Apple-style separate sides pull-down gestures to show notifications or toggles, but I couldn't manage it. There's a fairly hidden option to unify this behaviour, which puts everything on one screen, making it so it doesn't matter which side you pull on. My Samsung-using girlfriend could not find the option and was very thankful when I showed her how to change this.

Cameras

I was actually really disappointed by the performance of the cameras. To summarise, this phone includes:

• 50 MP regular lens at 1x zoom (1/1.56")
• 10 MP zoom lens at 3x zoom (1/3.94")
• 12 MP ultrawide I don't care about

The 1x regular lens was perfectly fine. There wasn't much difference between its photos and the ones from my perfectly fine OnePlus 5T. It was about equal.

The 3x zoom lens is the one I was excited for, because I thought I'd be able to zoom in on things like birds in a way that I simply couldn't on the OnePlus, which only has a 1x lens. But if you've read my post about what makes a good smartphone camera, you'll recognise that the 1/3.94" sensor size is very bad. The sensor has such poor ability to resolve detail that it's almost useless, and you might as well have taken a 3x crop from the main lens instead. I tried a few Google Camera ports but they didn't improve it much.

These cameras are wholly mid, and I was not impressed. It's certainly not what I expected from upgrading to a flagship device after 6 years of progress in miniaturising hardware.

Samsung must disagree with me, as they've kept the camera hardware identical through the S25 and S26 models. Only at the S26 Ultra level would I get a sort of decent 5x 1/2.52" lens, but the Ultra is extremely expensive for that hardware. Similar zoom lenses are available on mid-range phones.

Bad things that don't deserve their own topic

Holding the power button opens the Gemini AI chatbot instead of the power menu. What??!

Installing apps was weirdly slow to process and I was never confident that it had actually succeeded. It would download them quickly, but then it would get stuck on the installing step for a suspiciously long time, and the phone got rather hot while doing this. This happened every time. Ok.

The edges were sharp and slippery. It was both uncomfortable and difficult to use the phone without a case. When lying in bed on my side using the phone, which is one of my preferred postures to use a phone in, I could feel the aluminium body cutting painfully into my skin. It made me want to stop using the phone after a while. Though it was bad for my physical health, maybe this is secretly a genius pro-mental health feature, because it made me want to put down the phone and do something else if I'd been looking at it for too long.

This was my first time using an in-screen fingerprint sensor. (I'm used to OnePlus's old approach of having it on the back.) It wasn't the best. It would occasionally misread, and when the screen is off I can't feel the sensor's location, so it's difficult to use it blindly. The positioning is fine though, it's about where my thumb naturally falls. The ripple animation when unlocking is obnoxious.

Samsung UI visual style

It was certainly different from what I was used to. I had thought it wouldn't be too bad to adjust to, since it was still Android underneath, but I hadn't realised how comfortable I'd become with LineageOS's stock Android style. Leaving that felt somewhat strange and foreign.

I assumed that it would grow on me over time, but what actually happened was I subconsciously began to associate Samsung's visual style with its consistent disrespect for the user. There's nothing wrong with the design language itself, but I don't like it now that it's become linked to those negative experiences.

The good parts

It wasn't all bad. There were a couple of things Samsung did better than any other phone I've seen before.

When you share a photo with embedded GPS location, there's an on-screen prompt to let you remove the location while sharing. To do this on other Android devices, I had to install Scrambled Exif and share via that app, which is a bit clunky and slow. Samsung putting the checkbox directly in the share sheet is extremely good, I really appreciated it.

The fitness step tracker was able to track steps instantly and perfectly accurately, even when using an third-party app (I used Stepsy). I put it in a pocket or in my bag somewhere, counted 2000 steps out loud as I walked, then checked the phone, and it was off by two, which might have been my fault for counting wrong. This is really good! I guess they invested in good pedometer hardware for their Samsung Health app, which I didn't try because it requires an online account.

They don't want you to know this, but you can uninstall the bloat

Use the Canta uninstaller, it's good. It can even uninstall apps that don't let you uninstall them through usual means. I was able to uninstall the Android Setup and Find My Mobile apps in order to remove their permanent notifications. In total I uninstalled 56 pieces of bloat, including many hidden services that didn't show on the home screen. Victory! Well, as much of a victory as I can have against a device that I don't truly control.

While I'm on the topic of recommending apps, you should use Droid-ify to install from F-Droid instead of using the F-Droid client itself. Droid-ify is faster to refresh, isn't buggy, and looks better. You can also enable popular third-party repos in the settings without having to find their QR codes. You should try it!

Fate of the phone

So my review is overall negative, and this isn't a device that I want to be bound to for the next few years.

Per the terms of TradeMe, the online second-hand marketplace I bought this phone on, I'm not promised a return unless there's a problem with what I bought. I started stressing out about this again because I didn't like the phone that much after all.

Wouldn't you believe it, there was a problem with the phone. It took me a week to set up all the apps and files I wanted to use. After that, with a heavy heart, I swapped over my sim card to the S24, only to find that it said no service, emergency calls only. I took the phone to my network's local shop, and we found that neither my sim card nor the employee's own one would work properly in the phone. They said I might have been sold a dud phone.

That evening, I did some research online, and found that the phone was IMEI blocked. That basically means that the cell phone network companies have decided to not let this specific phone's antenna connect to their networks. The block lists are shared between all companies. As far as I can tell, this only happens if a phone is reported stolen? Had I been sold a stolen phone? I was really freaking out.

I thought about sending it back to the seller and asking for a refund, but if they're a criminal, I didn't want to be left with no phone and no money, which would be a highly unenviable situation. I thought about going to the police, but they've been totally useless every time my stuff's been stolen, so I didn't think that was a good solution either.

In the end I assumed good faith and explained why the phone didn't work and asked the seller for a refund, and they paid me first, so I put the phone back in its box in a shipping envelope and felt several weights lift off my shoulders.

What a disaster.

I was very grateful for this turn of events that gave me a free trial of the Samsung experience without having to use that disrespectful garbage device any longer.

However, after all that, I was right back in my original situation. I still needed a new phone, and my most promising option had been removed from the list.

The main thing I learned is that manufacturer skins over Android feel uncomfortable to me. If I'm to buy another phone, I'll want it to mostly look like AOSP.

To be continued...

— Cadence