Lol sure thing - nothing is objective and I'm never wrong!

Laptops. The M series is silly.

Not really. Most people don't care about privacy, or their personal data being sold to the highest bidder. People still use Facebook, too.

I’d consider switching to a Samsung phone if it didn’t contain a bunch of bloat. Don’t have ads in the operating system, don’t block side loading, don’t be loaded with telemetry. Don’t have software features in the phone that you need to subscribe for, don’t have in app purchases for the default apps that come with the phone.

If they get to this point, then they are on par with iPhone. Google seems to be closer, but they are behind in performance.

I’m happy to get a $700ish iPhone that I will use for 4-5 years.

If a phone has preinstalled apps that can be removed, I’m pretty much not even remotely interested.

I have a Samsung S23 and literally none of the issues you describe. I swapped the launcher out but other than that it's stock. I don't use any of the Samsung services so yes, there is some bloat there, but it takes up minimal storage so it's not a big deal.

I have sideloading, don't have any subscriptions, have amazing Work/Private sandboxing, and I have DeX which is so damn good. I came from Pixels and I honestly thing a lot of the tweaks Samsung makes to Android are real fixes to things Google ignores. It's not perfect, of course, but I'm not seeing much better from Apple or Google right now.

From the androids I’ve used, cheap/old ones, on the main screen when you swipe all the way to the left, it always loads Google news.

Can that be disabled on your Samsung? I’m asking, not as a criticism, but genuinely. I really think dexmode is really cool. I think I could do all my work with just a Samsung and dex mode.

That's a feature of the launcher. I use Nova Launcher, but there are plenty of others to choose from that don't do that. The launcher is essentially the "home screen or desktop" of your phone, including the app drawer. It can be swapped out depending on taste. So with that changed the only thing that remains "Samsungy" is the notification shade and the main settings menu.

Does switcher the launcher affect the performance in some way? I think I read somewhere that the default launcher is still running or something. But that didn’t really make sense to me.

No, and if it does it would be an unnoticeable amount. I've run custom launchers since the Nexus days. If I ever load the stock launcher it's slow to start so that indicates it hasn't been sitting in RAM.

There's so many extra things you can do with custom launchers that I would have a hard time going back. One thing I like about Nova that I haven't seen anywhere else, is folders within icons. So I can make a folder called "Messengers" and put all my different messaging apps in it. I then put Signal as the first in the folder (because I use it most) and in the folder setting select "launch first app" as the tap action and "open folder" as swipe up action. The folder then just becomes a Signal icon and works like a regular Signal icon, but if I swipe up on it, all my different messaging apps come up. Its great and I have these hidden folders for everything. My camera app is actually my gallery, picture editors, etc. My Phone app is also my contacts, meeting app, you get the picture. Keeps my home screen nice and tidy but I still have everything categorized and easy to reach.

That’s pretty cool, it sounds like the equivalent of a desktop environment in Linux.