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Toutouxc

IMO it's fine. I had a Galaxy S9 a few years ago for two weeks (had to return it because of hardware issues) and it felt nice to use, smooth and modern. I've used many kinds of phones in my life, dumb phones, Symbian, Windows on PDAs and smartphones, Android from 1.6 up until now, and even though I'm firmly team Apple at this moment, I have to say that not having a dedicated "back" button or gesture and only occasionally showing a "back" arrow in the top-left corner (i.e. the one you can't reach one-handed) really stands out among the stupid UI decisions I've seen. Yes, iOS is fast and polished, it's just that pretty often I'm not sure how I got somewhere and how to get out.

TetOn

Swiping left to right from the leftmost edge of the phone onto the screen will execute the "back" function with or without the presence of a "back" arrow at the top-left corner.

Toutouxc

I was actually looking forward to this coming to iOS, but it’s one of the things that work great until they suddenly don’t. Back from a photo in Photos? Swipe down or top left corner. Hide the keyboard? Middle right. Back from someone’s profile in Messages? Swipe down or top right. Back from a PDF in Files? No swipes, just top right. Some of these do make sense if you follow closely how the UI elements fly onto the screen, but are confusing if you don’t.

Yizahi

You can't swipe across the opposing screen edge with your thump without letting go of the full grip on the phone and holding it only partially, risking it to fall. Glass phone body only makes things much worse. You can do it with a back button in a sane position though, without compromising a grip. Android allows navbar gestures since ver.10 and I never enable them because buttons are simply better, even though they take away some space on the screen.

iSnow

I switched to iPhone 13 Mini because there's no recent and small Android phone anymore. On the Mini, you can easily reach that screen edge. Which just drives home the point that those gigantoscreens are a bad idea.

pyr0hu

Dropped my iPhone 13 around 4-5 times, on the floor, in the bathtub without water, on the desk. Not even a scratch. I was afraid of the glass back but this thing _is_ sturdy. "Risking to fall" was a good reason about 4-5 years ago, but since then the devices got much better protected from falling IMO

cassepipe

Dedicated back and home button is the reason why I always buy a refurbished Galaxy S7 after I break/lose it. This is my third is six years. I like that the price to pay to maintain the same experience actually goes downwards. Who knows how long it will keep working like that? Hopefully I will be able to put lineageOS or postmarketOS on it when the software eventually stops working. Maybe some day I get to be an amazing linux hardware programmer like Caleb Connolly and am able to mainline S7 support in linux like he did for the SnapDragon 845, whatever that means

realusername

> Who knows how long it will keep working like that? Hopefully I will be able to put lineageOS or postmarketOS on it when the software eventually stops working.

You'll be fine, if I break my current phone, my next one will be a Galaxy S4 as well, some people do run Android 12 on it nowadays, the battery is replaceable and the phone is so cheap used that it's not even worth worrying about.

boterock

but now they added this task switcher to iPad which also appears when dragging from the left edge, and now going back is like rolling a dice. you don't know how how to go back without triggering the task switcher so it ends up taking multiple attempts to go back without the OS consuming the input

zgk7iqea

you can disable stage manager. i believe it is off by default

cglong

As a leftie, I really appreciate that on Android you can pull in from the rightmost edge too.

joekrill

Not on iOS, which I believe OP is referring to. On Android you can swipe back. But I just tried this on my iPad and it does not work. For the longest time I never even _noticed_ that "<back" link in the upper-left corner!

kitsunesoba

As an iOS app dev, swipe to go back definitely works on native iOS apps. If you find an app it doesn’t work in it’s probably an app built in whatever cross platform UI framework which doesn’t implement the gesture.

Additionally, one can always swipe the bottom bar to switch between apps.

thiht

You definitely can swipe back on iOS, I do it all the time and AFAIK it's the primary recommended way to go back. You have to swipe from the edge though.

Etheryte

Yes it does on iOS, it might just be that you misunderstand how the mechanic works. Swiping back will never exit you out of an application. But for example if you go Settings → General → About and then swipe back two times you'll end up back on the Settings screen.

jeroenhd

A virtual smartphone experience is a pretty cool demonstration of how smooth web apps can be. I'd love for other companies to also make these types of demos available so you can try out the software design before you spend money on it.

I didn't know about the dialer/Google Meet integration, that's a pretty smart move. The messages app being labeled "Android Messages" was also a surprise, I don't know any other brand that uses this exact messenger. Maybe the point they're trying to bring across there is that texts are just as good as iMessage?

It all feels pretty close to native though the web UI is still a lot choppier than the real UI. For any real UI demo you'd probably need an app rather than a web app, but I don't think Apple would allow such an app on the app store.

I'm not sure why Samsung is trying so hard with the ads, though. I get it, you really like the New And Exciting Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra Plus, you don't have to repeat it every other screen. I'm also not sure why they've gone all in on these influencer videos, the acting in them is so obvious it made me cringe. Is this what American ads look like?

dclowd9901

The way phone makers seem to be making phones more averse to web apps (apple’s 7 day eviction of web site data springs to mind), I don’t think this is the takeaway they want you to have.

codetrotter

Here is a screen recording showing what that web app looks like on an iPhone 14 Pro running iOS 16.2

https://video.nstr.no/w/4uYSJs2a4iMb8R9XBZufn2

trimbo

There are dozens here:

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=try+galaxy

From this search I also learned this used to be called "iTest" 2 years ago.

iamwpj

Just watching the incessant popups was frustrating.

codetrotter

In their defence most of the popups are in response to tapping things, but in the video that is less apparent :p

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the_common_man

Video does not play - Too many requests

codetrotter

I recently added HAProxy in front of my PeerTube server.

Probably the config for HAProxy is set a little bit low or something.

But try again now. And then try again a little bit later if it continues to not load.

codetrotter

I've had time to look a bit more now.

So when I proxy with HAProxy I was not forwarding client IP. And so Nginx and Peertube ended up thinking all connections came from same source. And this was probably leading to overly aggressive rate limiting at times.

I have now fixed parts of the configs so that now Nginx and Peertube are aware of the real client IP address.

mdev23

you are a saint

sintezcs

I’ve just tried it, and looks like I’m never going to buy Samsung instead of my iPhone :)

saiya-jin

[flagged]

doix

Funny that you pick on the hardware. I'd use an Apple phone if it could run Android, the hardware is the only positive thing I say about Apple stuff. My girlfriend has an iPhone 14 Pro Max and camera/microphone are good and and the lidar stuff is pretty cool.

The software is completely and utterly unusable for me. It reminds me of when I used to help my grandparents with technology, except now I am the grandparent. Nothing works like I'd expect and I just find it frustrating.

There are Android phones in a similar price range and I'm not really tempted to buy any of them. I would buy an iPhone running Android though.

smm11

I'd buy a iPhone in a heartbeat if I could run "Galaxy" as a VM on it, saving data to the cloud, blah, blah.

Which I guess is an option by this afternoon at least.

yett

"seriously subpar hardware" Apple's ARM chips are years ahead in competition

behnamoh

I think the GP meant RAM.

olliecornelia

Curious about the "seriously subpar hardware" claim. What are you referring to specifically?

elboru

Yeah, I don’t get it, I used to be an android user since the first Galaxy S up until the Galaxy S7, I’m really sensitive to slow devices, so as soon as my androids got a little slow (usually after a big update) I switched to the new shiny one. Then I got tired of buying flashy and expensive phones that lasted 2.5 years so I give the iPhone X a try. It’s 2023 and I still use the same phone I still get updates and what’s more important to me those updates haven’t slowed my phone a bit. It still feels the same. I’m not coming back as long as Apple keeps my old phones fast.

tiffanyg

The incessant Apple (iOS) / Google [and manufacturers] (Android) sniping is truly a sight to behold.

People going out of their way to declare (or at least make clear with varying degrees of intensity) just exactly which feudal overlord they're ready to "bleed for" (i.e., give money, personal data, and free promotion to). People who often act as if they have an appropriately suspicious view of corporations in just about any other interaction, come out boldly declaring that this company or that company is GREAT when it comes to privacy, or consumer choice, or <fill in the blank>.

One of the strongest and most consistent weaknesses of human psychology is the effect "flags" have on otherwise reasonable minds.

Y_Y

> "From my tutor, [I learned] to be neither of the Greens nor the Blues, the Parmularius nor the Scutarius; to bear hard work and have few needs; to do my own work and mind my own affairs; also — have nothing to do with gossip."

That's Marcus Aurelius in the ”Meditations" talking about supporting teams at the chariot races and gladiator fights. It seems very human to get all tribal about something subjective and inconsequential. Ancient Rome had the same fanboyism, just in a different arena.

(I have a phone that just runs Alpine Linux, but I know better than to try and tell anyone about it.)

alvarezbjm-hn

During a conflict, that mindset requires a large quote of power to be exercised. If you don't belong to a tribe, you will be declared an enemy. Picking no tribe doesn't make you "neutral" It makes you everybody's enemy.

2OEH8eoCRo0

> People going out of their way to declare (or at least make clear with varying degrees of intensity) just exactly which feudal overlord they're ready to "bleed for"

What about people who hate their overlord?

> (I have a phone that just runs Alpine Linux, but I know better than to try and tell anyone about it.)

I wish you would! That sounds interesting!

quaintdev

Marcus Aurelius thoughts have survived 2000 years. He did not even wanted them to be published. What a legend!

> I have a phone that just runs Alpine Linux, but I know better than to try and tell anyone about it.

What phone is this?

Y_Y

Sibling comments are correct, it's a pinephone (non-pro, with keyboard)

Moto7451

Possibly the Pine Phone.

tiffanyg

Thank you for this insightful comment!

(Love the aside at the end ... seriously, though, Aurelius had an incisive eye, his writings have great value and much to teach just about anyone ...)

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tester457

How does your phone's alpine linux setup work?

stronglikedan

The best thing about us Samsung fans is that we get to give our personal data to both Samsung and Google!

SketchySeaBeast

My theory is that if everyone has my data it becomes useless.

amelius

Based on what, if I may ask?

JumpCrisscross

> People going out of their way to declare

Isn’t this a bit dramatic? It’s a demo to which people are replying with their preferences. Some fly flags, but most debate features and priorities.

samstave

Said "flags", typically, have the ability to tax, control, imprison and murder you either domestically or send you into a meat grinder in the name of "national security" etc..

So yeah, people tend to fall in line under a flag through a lifetime of indoctrination and threat of financial or physical violence...

tiffanyg

There's something more fundamental, though - humans are a "social species". Evolutionarily, we are adapted to requiring (generally) at least something of a group / tribe. Other organisms solve survival (of the species, ultimately) problems differently - incredible and 'cheap' reproductive capacity, strength and versatility enough to be much more solitary as a rule, etc. - those niches are somewhat to rather different.

In any case, at this point in human history especially, I'd argue it's time to consider "the group" to be ALL humans - "by default". There are nuances, and I'm out of time for commenting further right now, but, that's my take on it.

Hopefully, this comment is of some use to you / someone / etc. - hope y'all have a great day!

valeness

[flagged]

MonaroVXR

One of them can record calls, the other doesn't that's enough for me.

blep-arsh

Still needs root on my non-US Samsung phone...

MonaroVXR

No, it doesn't on my non-us Samsung phone...

abvaw

[flagged]

tiffanyg

[flagged]

tiffanyg

[flagged]

AndroTux

Wow, they even managed to simulate the choppy animations!

jsheard

IME Android phones tend to feel smoother nowadays thanks to 120hz displays becoming widespread even in the midrange. Apple has 120hz on their Pro models but if you drop just one notch down from that $1000+ flagship then you're immediately back at 60hz.

etra0

My experience, sadly, has been the opposite. I had an iPhone 13 Pro Max with 120hz, and switched to a S22 Ultra, and although I can see the animations at 120hz, most of the time they feel stuttery.

I always was an Android user until that iPhone, I had it for about a year, and switched back to Android again because I thought I was missing some stuff, but I was wrong, I don't miss a thing of current Android, I think current iOS is simply smoother and more fun to use, and stutter free 95% of the time.

pawelduda

Years ago, back when Androids had even worse animations, I would just speed them up to the maximum (via developer settings), or disable entirely. I got used to it and still do it today. Action feedback is faster, and I don't need my device to be visually awesome anyway.

kitsunesoba

True of flagships, but even some low-midrange Android devices struggle to animate at even 60hz without frame drops. My late 2022 Android test device tablet that had an MSRP of about $300 when I bought it is like this, while an entry level iPad from 4 years ago running the latest iPadOS has no such problems.

I haven’t actually sat down and compared specs but I’m guessing this happens because Android devices tend to skimp hard on their GPUs at midrange and below.

xattt

60 vs 120 hz doesn’t explain animations without v-sync.

worthless-trash

Must be the iphone browser being garbage level.

ppetty

I’m not switching but this is a good demo approach. And if it gets better over time might seem ironic to early iPhone owners who were told that web apps would suffice… you can accomplish a lot with SPA / PWA.

It also makes me wonder if an Android “container” could run as an app on an iPhone. Maybe sideloading leads to that?

jeroenhd

Apple probably won't allow a full, dynamic Android container on their app store because of restrictions regarding loading code from the internet.

From a technical standpoint, I suppose it's possible, but you'd be stuck with a very barebones Android system without all the system daemons for notifications and such. You'll also need to write some kind of EGL-to-Metal driver to get decent graphical performance out of it.

Seeing how far Anbox and Windows' Android implementation have come, I do wonder if it's possible to take an Android app, stick it into an emulator, and bundle that as an .ipa for use on iOS and macOS. It would certainly make porting easier.

NexusGS

Thanks Samsung, that is a great reminder for all iOS users that they still get the best experience in the market (not to mention privacy)!

windexh8er

> not to mention privacy

I believe it's a stretch to say that Apple has the best privacy experience in the market, unless you believe Apple's marketing pitch on "privacy" verbatim. I think the best privacy on a smart phone today is likely GrapheneOS. Apple has sold it's users on privacy, but in actuality Apple is a for profit platform that has, and will, target it's users data as it needs to delight it's shareholders. For example ATT has issues [0], there's a class action against them [1], and it's hard to take them seriously when there's concern from a number of other angles [2]. A walled garden doesn't imply security and that's how Apple sells "privacy".

[0] https://publicknowledge.org/apples-privacy-promises-are-unde... [1] https://9to5mac.com/2023/01/09/apple-privacy-tracking-lawsui... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/sep/23/apple-use...

jbluepolarbear

Which phone comes with GrapheneOS in the market? For off the shelf phones, Apple is still one of the best option for privacy on the market. Market is being able to buy a phone as is, not install a 3rd party OS.

windexh8er

I disagree completely with this sentiment. We've been told that's how you buy a phone. Do you also buy generic servers or PCs that way? Where you can only run one OS? Apple is the anomaly here. Phones should be able to run different OSes as well. The fact that there's a defense of Apple's not-so-great privacy record with "the market says this is what Apple says a phone is" - is an unfortunate, and successful, marketing campaign by Apple.

Whether or not I can install a different OS on a phone does guarantee an erosion of privacy. What you're arguing is that I should be fine with Apple because you can't install another OS. No thanks. And, yes, people do buy Pixel phones just because they can install a privacy respecting OS. Now, baseband is another problem, but - that's one that Apple has no claims to solve for either.

smoldesu

If they're the best the market has to offer, we ought to start demanding better competitors. Apple is a cardholding PRISM member with proven backdoors in their OS. They're also a noted pushover and were fine instating total iCloud surveillance when China asked nicely.

It's a victory if you want it, but utterly pyrric when both of the options on the "market" are useless for privacy.

stronglikedan

I've tried to make the switch to iOS a few times, but it's hardly the best experience on the market, and I always go back to my Galaxy. Not that it's the best experience, since that's purely subjective, but it's just peoples' preferred experience.

gbil

Demo performance is shit for sure which doesn't help but having daily experience with both devices I can say that it is not black and white

cornedor

In the "settings app" they show of a few features. For some reason they decided that one of those great features is a mallware scanner...

I don't think this site will be very convincing, there are a lot of glitchy animations and unresponsive areas that look as if they should be working.

kernal

I use both an iPhone and a Pixel and like both. It's unfortunate most people base their opinions of Android based on the Samsung UI/UX.

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_jplc

Surely fun to develop. Worst spent marketing budget in history.

basisword

I’ve got a Galaxy for work (S20). I got it the year it was released and I can’t believe people choose to use it. It just feels horrible compared to the iPhone. Delays in the keyboard showing, UI lag all over the place, constant updates and notifications for Samsung things I’m not interested in. It was so bad I did a factory reset, thinking I’d screwed something up…but no, still the same. It’s a similar feeling to when Windows XP needed defragged or reinstalled - but at least when you reinstalled XP it was quick again.

hrrsn

I was given an S21 FE for work last year and I tried giving it an honest shot (similarly resetting it in the hopes it would improve) but after a few months I gave up and put the work SIM in my personal iPhone.

password54321

Felt like I jumped into 2008. After all these years they have failed to get rid of that cheap Android look.

chickenimprint

Honestly, the post-iOS 7 look looks much, much cheaper. I've always wondered how Johnny Ive got away with icons that look like they were designed in 5 minutes with GIMP. Everything is just a disgusting gradient weirdly cut off by the squircle like a "Download now" scam ad on a shady late 2000s piracy website. Not to speak of the icons that have zero consistency. They don't have the same margins, elements, styles, degree of complexity or anything in common really. It looks like they've been jumbled together from 4 different free svg icon packs. What the hell is that "Health" icon? Have you seen the abomination that is the settings icon?

quenix

Shows how subjective taste is. I like the settings & health icons.

MSFT_Edging

The default app layouts and visuals of samsung devices really don't do them any favors.

You'll find older folks leave it basically default. If you hide some of the ugly samsung app icons, it instantly improves tenfold.

That being said, I only have a samsung because the s22 is the smallest flagship you can buy.

cubancigar11

The cheapness is in the eyes of the beholder because in reality it is only cheap compared to iPhone.

jeroenhd

That's pretty funny, I always associate the weirdly grey iOS look with cheapness. Probably has to do with how all the crappy apps and websites try to copy iOS for some reason. I guess it's all a matter of what you're used to.

TazeTSchnitzel

This is surprisingly detailed! I didn't expect there to be such nice animations and for there to be an emoji panel in the messaging app.

It's interesting that they're using Safari's “add to Home Screen” feature so they can use fullscreen. I think that might be why that's the only browser which is supported.

vbitz

It works on desktop Chrome if you emulate a iPhone display and user agent.

They're just detecting "add to Home Screen" by looking for window.navigator.standalone which you can manually set using a breakpoint.

jeroenhd

That explains why I couldn't get it to work on my Android phone despite spoofing the user agent.

Kind of annoying, I was wondering what Samsungs's phone UI looks like these days but I guess they don't want my money. Samsung's marketing department can be weird like that for no well explained reason.

Edit: found out that Kiwi browser allows access to the Chrome extension store and to the Chrome dev tools so I got it to work despite all of Samsung's best efforts.

prhrb

can you explain more about manually setting a breakpoint. I am little noob

cthulberg

Chrome DevTools -> Sources -> trygalaxy.com -> _next/static -> pages -> index_... -> CTRL + F and search window.navigator.standalone -> click on the dash to the right (a blue arrow will appear) and refresh the page

The page will freeze, go to the Console, type window.navigator.standalone = true; and unfreeze the page clicking on the blue arrow.

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Try Galaxy: A web app to demo Samsung’s OS on an iPhone - Hacker News