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    Thursday, November 6
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    Samsung’s real advantage right now is software, not hardware

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    It’s late 2025, and Android phones coming out of China are smoking Samsung out of the water in terms of hardware and value. 
    This year’s flagship offerings by Oppo, Vivo, and Xiaomi are the devices that the Galaxy S25 Ultra has been dreaming of becoming when it grows up. Larger batteries and better cameras at much lower price tags are bringing the heat straight to Samsung. 

    However, each of these phones has a problem. 

    The “problem” with Samsung hardware is… Chinese Android phones

    I have daily-driven a ton of Android phones this year: the superb Xiaomi 15 Ultra, the excellent Vivo X3 Fold Pro, the greatest-of-all-time Vivo X200 Pro, the Oppo Find X8 Pro, the Find X8 Ultra, and the Find X9 Pro, among other devices. I didn’t thoroughly enjoy my brief time with the Pixel 10 Pro Fold, so my SIM card was out of that one as soon as my review was published; good riddance. 

    Point is, any of these phones has slightly better hardware than Samsung’s top brass, and with much better value, too. Pound for pound, if you’re a hardware enthusiast, it makes little sense to go with a Samsung, Apple, or Pixel phone: China’s finest are truly in a league of their own. 

    One common aspect of the latest interfaces of Xiaomi, Vivo, and Oppo is their obvious and unapologetic copying of iOS, starting from the near 1:1 Control Center cloning, to the settings app, the icon customization, and the biggest offender of them all, the now wide adoption of the Liquid Glass design language.

    While hardware and value are certainly unmatched on the best Chinese Android phones, the lack of originality in the software is an issue. It doesn’t feel particularly nice to use those interfaces, because despite their wider feature sets, they don’t feel particularly unique or nice to use. 

    That’s not the case with One UI, though. 

    Samsung’s latest One UI interface is peak Android

    The biggest Android manufacturer in the world has done one thing great this year, and it’s making its One UI interface the best custom Android skin at the moment. 

    Forget the boringness of the stockish Android that runs on the Pixels, forget ColorOS, OriginOS, or HyperOS; it’s One UI that combines the best aspects of Android 16 with some of the deepest customization functionalities around. It also does most of that while still retaining a semblance of originality and uniqueness that’s innately “Samsung”. 
    One UI 8.5 looks and feels great to use, and if I could use only one interface for the rest of my life, One UI is the best candidate for the job. 
    When it comes to Galaxy AI, it’s a necessary gimmick. Everyone is doing AI these days; even the app to set up my new router has an AI chatbot built in, because of course. With that in mind, Galaxy AI is among the okay-ish AI suites I’ve used, a bit more useful than Apple Intelligence and what-have-you cookie-cutter AI interface on a Chinese phone. Paired with Google’s capable Gemini, we get an actually useful selection of functionalities, if you’re into such stuff. 

    My favorite part of One UI, however, comes with no competition. 

    The biggest selling point of One UI

    I have always been a customization freak, and Samsung has usually scratched an itch that literally no other Android maker can. 

    I’ll sum it up in one word: GoodLock. 

    This selection of customization modules is the biggest flex Samsung could develop. Theme Park, Home Up, LockStar, Quick Star, and ClockFace are just a bunch of my favorite modules, and each of these offers pretty much unprecedented customization of your device’s home screen, lock screen, quick settings panel, status bar, and notifications panel. It’s like a candy shop for anyone who wants to do more with their phone aside from a standard wallpaper change. 

    To my knowledge, no other manufacturer lets you customize so much so easily, without any serious hassle or hacky workarounds. 

    To sum things up, Android fans can’t really have it better with any other custom Android skin rather than One UI. Hence my original point: Samsung’s biggest draw in 2025 is the software and not necessarily the hardware. 

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