I am a huge Apple fan. I drink the Apple flavored koolaid since I got my first iPhone in 2007. I remember using the iPhone for the first time in an AT&T store model, and I have to say my jaw dropped to the floor. I was absolutely stunned that a device could be so incredible.
I really can't express in words how wonderful it was, I must have played with that very first iPhone display model for 30 minutes. I became embarrassed because I literally couldn't stop myself from grinning. I've always been a fan of science fiction, and that kind of smartphone felt like one of the futuristic devices I had always wanted. I was NOT an Apple fan at the time, but that moment of pure magic converted me in a heartbeat, it was literally that fast. The device was truly breathtaking compared to other smartphones at the time. I HAD to have it and I've bought pretty much all Apple products since then, and it's all because of that very first iPhone.
I have never gotten that primal feeling of "this is magic!" from a Samsung device. Sure, they've been cool at times. I was very impressed with the Samsung Galaxy Note II the very first time I saw it. But they've never really given me a moment of stunning clarity where I felt like I had witnessed the future. Samsung, as a company, is absolutely amazing at delivering good chips. They make the most innovative NAND memory and SSD's as well as some gorgeous displays. Technically, without digging in to it, the Galaxy S5 is very impressive. On paper.
But the "soul" of the phone just isn't there. It is very obvious to me that when I use a samsung phone, I am using a product developed by 9-5 engineers who don't get attached to any particular product or company. They don't really care or obsess over getting every tiniest detail, such as perfecting UI response time to a certain number of milliseconds. These engineers look at consumer polling data and focus groups to decide what kinds of phones to make. They don't make a device of their own personal taste.
Samsung is good at delivering a certain spec of performance for a specific price. When you buy a Samsung display or a Samsung SSD, you can be absolutely sure that you will be getting the best specs and great reliability, far ahead of the competition. That is why I always buy samsung displays and SSD's. But a smartphone is different. A smartphone is such a personal device, a computer, that it really takes someone who is truly obsessed over every TINIEST detail to make it right. It's like a painting, you have to painstakingly sculpt the hardware and the software to work together perfectly, you can't just make add a new "skin" on top of an existing OS and call it "innovation".
I like Samsung, but they don't have the level of imagination required to make an amazing smartphone. Their smartphones are impressive on paper, and they have good specs. But the UI is horrifying and the features are so gimmicky and useless that I cannot imagine myself ever buying a Samsung smartphone. If it were up to Samsung to make the very first modern smartphone back in 2007 instead of Apple, I think we all know that they would have built a good device with good specs and then crippled it by putting Windows Mobile on it. Unlike hardware, software requires a level of abstract artistry that Samsung just doesn't possess, their culture doesn't allow such obsessive levels of creativity.