I've spent a lot on them, but I love trying different tech to find the product I like the most for my needs. I've also owned: the Z Flip 4, 7FE (my current backup), OnePlus Open, Honor Magic V3 global, Oppo Find N5, and I will be getting the Motorola Razr Fold on Monday.
That's strange. I have no issues doing any of the things you mention. My wife has an 84 year old friend who uses a Samsung phone ( I don't know which one it is ) and also seams to have no problem using most of the features. One thing I will say. I don't use Bixby.
So you really don't know what you missed when Apple software was pretty good.
Apple software has about the same quality since I started with iOS 4. Take that opinion as you want.
Much like I've had nearly every iPhone since day one, I've owned every Google Nexus and Pixel model till the present.
Android 16 on a Pixel IMHO, is just way more usable than iOS 26 right now. Liquid glass and lots of bugs, especially the keyboard make it bummer to use.
GrapheneOS on the Pixel if you want the most secure Android without any Google spyware.
My work phone is a Z fold7, my personal Android a Pixel 10 Pro along with my iPhone 16 Pro Max. While I slightly prefer the native Android OS experience of the Pixel, I must say Samsungs version on the Z fold is much improved.
Within an Apple focused site it's popular and fashionable to hate on Google, exacerbated by the fact they are arch rivals (with the exception of some cooperation between them and Apple) the belief that the big G is the biggest nefarious spy may be less than accurate.
Notice that i said better, not higher specs, everything that you mentioned in your post (Bigger battery, under screen camera, first mechanical camera, biggest battery, etc.) are just part of what it makes a phone and a ecosystem better, but is not everything, android devices had more ram (Double the amount sometimes) than IOS devices, and i have never heard anyone complaining about IOS device run out of memory, because sometimes higher number means nothing if the overall experience is bad, most Chinese phones while impressive on paper, are not great on real life, i live in Japan, i had access to all those phones for years, and not gray market, but with full support, and also have access to all the Japanese home made device, some you probably never heard of because they are only sold in the Japanese market with a bunch of options that only work in Japan, and while some are technically interesting, their support (OS update Mainly) sucks, and for the most part their android versions are very much similar to Google pixel implementation, pretty Vanilla, but their os is always behind, going back to the "Chinese phones" their android implementations are just not great, they all look like a cheap copy of IOS (Vivo, Xiomi), but without a clear update path, now i particularly dislike Samsung software, (To much Crapware and redundant apps that android already provide), i like the pixel approach (Less is more), we all have our likes and dislikes, I'm not really against what you said in here, i just have a different opinion, if they (The Chinese manufactures) implement a clear upgrade policy and optimize their version of android, provide better or original aesthetics, then I'm all for it.The point is the survey is excluding a large number of products, and their quality or consumer satisfaction wasn't measured *at all*.
But this copying claim is not really true.
The first foldable phone? Royole Flexpai
First tri-fold phone? Huawei Mate XT
First optical (under display) fingerprint reader? Vivo XO (Apple had a different technology years earlier - capacitive touch home button)
The largest battery? Realme Power P4 (10,000mAH)
First silicon carbon battery? Honor Magic Pro 5, followed by tons of Chinese brands; Samsung still doesn't have it
Continuous zoom camera? First implemented by Sony, rapidly adopted by many Chinese brands, and I don't believe Samsung even has it yet
First mechanical zoom camera? Xiaomi 17 Ultra
The Vivo X300 Ultra is generally considered the top camera phone today. 200MP (really 50MP in that silly x4 mode but they all lie about this, even Apple)
Oppo, Oneplus, Honor, Xiaomi, Realme, Redmi all push the envelope.
You even see jarring things like a somewhat odd mix of cheap Chinese internals and high end Leica optics.
There are also areas where the Chinese phones are pushing the envelope that I think are utterly useless, if not counterproductive, like fastest charging times and fastest screen refresh rates, but again its the Chinese models pushing the envelope, not vice versa.
Indeed, it is not the Chinese brands copying the Samsung advances as much as the opposite: It is Samsung copying many of the advances of these brands. Which of course is the point of discussing their exclusion from this survey at all. If they were irrelevant products that didn't push the envelope, their exclusion would be irrelevant.
Anyway, the "copycat" claim is somewhat irrelevant. Isn't Android just a "copycat" of iOS? Isn't every new smartphone just a "copycat" of Steve Job's original ? And it's not even a matter of Samsung's technical ability. Samsung actually makes a lot of very high end components (including periscope zoom camera modules used in these Chinese phones), and presumably could have been first to market, but it doesn't even put them in its own phones (as does Sony).
The point is this study leaves out a large number of competitors, with an impressive array of products, in order to focus on the mass market firms of Samsung and Apple. Which is entirely the reason the misleading ACSI "survey" exists in the first place. It's like a car survey stating "GM edges out Ford" in a restricted subset of drivers.
The point is surveying only 40% of the market, regardless of how "copycat" they are, is not a true picture of consumer sentiment.
Global Smartphone Market Share: Quarterly
Explore the latest smartphone market share trends in Q1 2026, with Apple and Samsung leading global growth amid strong demand in North America, Central America and Latin America, and emerging markets.counterpointresearch.com
Apparently your version of software quality is pretty sub-par.
On a purely aesthetic basis I think the Oppo X9 is the best looking phone out there.
It has nothing to do with touch sensor precision. It’s all about their predictive typing engine gone off the rails.
It's Liquid Glass, it's the godawful voice assistant still stuck in 2015, it's the horrible keyboard, it's the software bugs, it's the crippled software that locks you into the iFruit ecosystem.
