S10e and the One UI 4 was a massive disappointment and a downgrade in some areas.
Sure we get some slightly different menus (whoopie do) and those in Europe already had the privacy features because of GDPR laws so were nothing new to us.
It uses more RAM, this is expected when more features are added but in this case, i don't see anything that requires more, the graphics in some areas have changed but nothing as spectacular as the hype was making it out to be or over previous One UI's to justify the increase.
They have added Virtual Memory (page file in Windows) in case you run out of RAM, which is, in my opinion, some kind of silent admission that Android is becoming RAM hungry. Page files are slow and they can rundown your hard drive if hit a lot, this feature should have the option to be disabled.
They messed up the camera...again. Photos/videos are darker than before the update. Night photos/videos before the update were not perfect but they were acceptable, now its just black and if there is a light on, it'll show it as blurry or over exposed light spot.
Night mode is nice but for night mode to work, the view has to be static and doesn't work for video. Also for Night mode, the image is bright but then its processed and dims considerably in many cases, this didn't happen before. The ability to control the Night Mode timer would be a useful feature.
The focus is out of whack. Pro mode had the ability to focus to infinity so there were no focusing issues and they REMOVED this very simple but effective feature for Multi/Centre/Manual Focus and no matter which one you choose, they all seem to do the same thing. I have hand held my phone and used a tripod for stability and i cant tell the difference between them, its like having 3 light switches on a wall and they all turn the same light on and off. No matter what setting i use, whether in pro mode for photo/video or the Single Take/Photo/Video, the software cant always decide what to focus on when an object is moving or if your hand slightly moves, it goes blurry. Being able to focus at infinity solved this issue but now its removed, photos/video are from my experience since the update are hit or miss.
They added a feature to change contrast etc. in pro photo which i think can be useful and they added it to pro video too but only on FHD 30 (1080p) and below and in my opinion, making it a useless feature because in 2022 you shouldn't be recording in such a low format with a 4K camera.
The icons now look cartoonish, like toy buttons but this can be a subjective opinion.
Battery seems to drain quicker too, cant figure this one out since i only have the apps on my phone that were on it before the update and i always put everything except facebook and facebook messenger in the deep sleep mode.
Phones have matured and while i am grateful of the extended updates, these updates are useless if they break things, more so when you are using a phone that may not receive any further updates.
Had i known about the focus and photo/video quality downgrade before hand, i wouldn't have bothered because it feels like this was designed by people who don't use Samsung phones or they intentionally sabotaged it to try and force people to buy their newer phones since sales for those phones have been drastically decreasing and pushed by a marketing department that are no better than some dodgy used car salesman.
Samsung phones are good from a hardware point of view but the company has become gimmicky (focusing on emojis and 100X digital zoom which is nothing more than image cropping and something you could already do in any image editor since the 90s).
They have removed too many features (headphone jack/SD Card Slot/Plug/headphones). Adding more cameras might look good on paper but a phone only needs 3 at most, a front one, a wide angle one at the back and a telephoto or even just one at the back since clip-on lenses have worked well for so many and still do on phones with a single lens and they need stop hyping up their software as the greatest upgrade ever and only leaving the average user wondering what all the fuss/hype was about.
The company needs a reset because if what the tech sites are saying is true, Samsung have been over taken in Europe by another tech company that offer much cheaper phones with very little difference in quality.
Samsung needs to realise that Apple is not its competitor, other android phones are their competition and if they don't get their act together, they are going to become the next blackberry.
This is not about trying to trash talk Samsung but a concerned long time Samsung phone user (my first was the Samsung Galaxy Europa) who is recognising a decline while others are rising and someone has to say it. I want my next phone to be a Samsung S phone but if nothing changes, there are other android options.
Samsung needs less hype, more features (bringing back the SD Card being the main one), less focus on gimmicks and to stop meddling with the software features that work but i feel like this is all going to fall on deaf ears and they are going to continue of their current path of decline, at least in Europe.
