Galaxy A52 5G and One UI Issues & Suggestions

[Gino76ph]

Dear Samsung,

I'm quite impressed with your Galaxy A52 5G especially the cameras and battery life.

But, as someone who used your phones for a long time (plus others) I have some suggestions:

1. a more optimised One UI for better compatibility, smoothness/zero jutter or flicker when using a 3rd-party party launcher especially when using gestures

2. A better way to hide apps using fingerprint sensor, face unlock or password similar to the implementation of Oxygen OS or MIUI.

3 Ability to change the icons without installing a launcher or icon pack

4. Better and faster One UI - general performance still seem slow by today's standards.

5. Fingerprint sensor could use a major speed upgrade; it is still very slow so i use Face Unlock which is not secured all the time.

Plus the usual cameras, battery life, performance optimisations. Cheers.

[Qwerty7]

I agree with all your points (especially the faster/more fluid one UI as rn the animations are no where near as consistent or smooth as stock android or iOS) but the custom launchers thing, that's on Google. Ever since the android 10 gestures custom launchers just don't reliably work well on any android phone. Maybe it's a bit better on pixels, but it still not great. Also the icon packs, and general theme store is a piece of garbage imo, it's just filled with many redundant and poorly designed themes. I understand Samsung can't exactly get rid of that, but personally I would prefer something like stock android 12 with the custom theming system which is a lot cleaner and more functional

[Gino76ph]

I remember back when it's One UI 2.0 (or 2.2) that Samsung (maybe due to software limitations or incompatibility) that Android 10's gesture was not working with Galaxy phones. Then an uproar and countless later Samsung "gave in" and i supposed opened up One UI and when came version 2.5 everything gestures was now suddenly compatible and fully working with the Galaxy devices.

Samsung has a lot to learn from Xiaomi and OnePlus in particular. If their MIUI and Oxygen OS respectively allows 3rd-party icon packs and that feature wherein you can hide apps by swiping or pinching out then why Samsung cannot is beyond me.

One UI 3.0/3.1 still feels very bloated and the skinned Android take the whole excitement away. It takes way the customisation away. One UI as it is right now look very childish in my opinion. 

[Qwerty7]

One UI 2.5 simply merged some AOSP code that just allowed you to use gestures with a 3rd party launcher. You could already force it before with stuff like ADB, or OHO+ tricks. It didn't *improve* the performance with these launchers. It simply allowed you to use it (very buggy). And this is the case on all android devices now, they allow you to use gestures with a launcher but it isn't a good experience.

[Gino76ph]

So, if it is very buggy is this Samsung's or Google's fault? Or both?

[Qwerty7]

Short answer: Google. Samsung cannot do anything about it.

Long answer: Again Google. While the pixels do have a API that allows *certain* 3rd party launchers to have a slightly nicer animation with gestures, it is not really great and is still pretty buggy. And as these gestures are Google's gestures, it is up to them to fix it. Plus, to get such a close integration with the system on these gestures (like how they follow your finger and close into the app, at least on the default launcher) is something that would be very hard for Samsung to implement in their own gesture method, which is why the alternative Samsung gestures have no finger tracking and the animation isn't as smooth.

[Gino76ph]

It still doesn't exactly answer my question. 

How come Oxygen OS and MIUI implements such smoothness in its gestures? 

The way I see it Samsung is just as equally guilty and partly to accept blame. Because they put too much importance & emphasis on One UI which is very childish, no robust theming option, no way to change icon pack (unless you install a 3rd-party launcher then install an icon pack) and there's too much bloateware that it slows down the UI.

Yes the performance and bloat can probably be removed by rooting the device but 1. most of us are not familiar with rooting and 2. It may well void the warranty. 

People have seemingly been clamouring for Samsung to change its ways. But they don't seem to listen to fans and end users like us. 

[Qwerty7]

Oxygen OS and MIUI may (and imo probably do) have better gestures *with the default launcher*. But no android phone has good, stock gesture support with 3rd party launchers. That's the part I was talking about

[Gino76ph]

I see.

But, If you were to choose amongst the various top 3rd-party launchers out there (Nova, Microsoft, Action, CPL, Lawnchair, Poco, etc) that has the best performance, smooth gestures, stock-looking UI and ability to hide apps easily which one would you go for?

[Qwerty7]

I used to use launchair actually; but had to use the Samsung gestures instead of the Google ones due to how they just didn't work properly. I used it over Nova due to having better animations (this was with nova 6 not the 7 beta which has the newer animations). Also I liked the UI and you could hide apps, etc. However I wanted to try out the gestures and especially with one UI 3, where the Samsung gestures got worse (way less responsive without hints and also no smooth animation) so I switched back to stock launcher. But yeah, out of those my favourite would be launchair then nova/action. I tried the Microsoft launcher before but didn't really like the UI, and action launcher without the pro version doesn't have many features (same can be said for nova again, but launchair is free)