Just because I like Pixels doesn’t mean I hate Samsung

It’s one of the oldest rivalries in the consumer world: Coke vs Pepsi. If I told you I prefer Coke, would you then assume I hate Pepsi? Any sane person would answer “no” to that question. “It’s just a preference,” they’d say. For some reason, though, that same logic doesn’t always seem to apply in the tech world, especially when it comes to smartphones.

After working at Android Authority for many years, I’ve learned that lots of people out there think that if you’re on one side of a coin, you must hate the other side. This is extremely apparent with the battle between Android vs iOS, for example. It seems that once you commit to an Android phone or an iPhone, that must mean that you can’t even associate with anyone on the other side. I’ve also seen this when discussing Pixel vs Samsung. In fact, I’ve been accused of hating Samsung on numerous occasions because I’m very obviously a Pixel guy, which people then assume to mean that I’m an anti-Samsung guy.

But this is not true. For well over a year, the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra was my daily driver, and even today, I’ve got the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra with me in my backpack wherever I go so I can use all the features in One UI that my Pixel 9 Pro doesn’t have. In other words, not only is it false to say that I hate Samsung, but I actually really, really like Samsung.

What I want to do today is talk about this problem as a whole. First, I want to talk frankly about why Pixel users don’t own Samsung phones. After that, I’ll touch on the flip side and talk about why Samsung fans don’t own Pixel phones. Hopefully, by the end, we’ll all understand each other a bit more.

If there’s one thing that unites people who love Pixel phones, it’s the software: Pixel UI. It’s fast and lean, gets updated at a steady clip, and is very close in both look and feel to stock Android. It’s also free of bloatware, and I’m not just talking about pre-loaded Netflix or whatever. Unlike Samsung phones, Pixel phones come with one version of each core app: one browser (Chrome); one photos app (Google Photos); one app store (Google Play); one payment app (Google Wallet); and on and on. The idea that Galaxy phones come with two versions of many apps — one made by Samsung and one by Google — just annoys Pixel users. It’s especially annoying that a lot of the Samsung versions can’t be uninstalled.

One UI also dramatically moves away from stock Android in both look and feel. For example, the settings page is organized in a completely different way and there are more toggles and buttons there than you’d ever find on a Pixel. The difficulty in finding what you need is such an issue that Samsung introduced an AI-powered search bar in Settings just to help users get around. In other words, One UI is packed to the brim with stuff you may never even need or know is there, while Pixel UI is far less overwhelming.

Google is also really good at figuring out a pain point for its users and then solving that pain point elegantly. For example, a long-standing issue is that if you take a lot of screenshots, they clutter up your photo gallery. So Google made a dedicated place to save them — appropriately titled Pixel Screenshots — that not only keeps your screenshots away from your main gallery but also uses AI to make them searchable and organized. Google also made the Select feature in the overview menu, which, in many situations, eliminates the need for screenshots at all.

Another example is using an app like Shazam to figure out what song is playing around you. You need to unlock your phone, open the app, and trigger it to start listening. On Pixels, though, the Now Playing feature preemptively figures this out so you can always see what’s playing on your lock screen — no other app needed.

Samsung just isn’t as good at this. In fact, a lot of the features that solve user pain points on Galaxy phones actually come from Google. Circle to Search debuted on Samsung phones first, but it is a Google-made product. Galaxy AI has a generative AI editing tool that can remove objects from photos and fill in the gap, but this is just lifted from Google’s Magic Editor. Google and Samsung are tightly partnered, so it makes sense that these kinds of things would happen. Regardless, Google is almost always in the lead when it comes to software innovations like these.

Moving away from software, Pixel hardware also works better for a lot of people. The most obvious example here is size. Samsung makes huge phones almost all the time and when it does make smaller ones, like the base Galaxy S25, they are inherently much weaker in specs. Meanwhile, phones like the Pixel 9 Pro (and the upcoming Pixel 10 Pro) manage to pack almost all the Pro-level specs you’d expect from a flagship into a relatively small size.

Samsung’s designs are also really stale at this point. A Galaxy S25 Ultra looks pretty much the same as a Galaxy S22 Ultra from three years earlier. If you compare that to the difference between a Pixel 9 and a Pixel 6, you’ll quickly see that Google has been steadily tweaking its design language to make its phones feel fresh, while Samsung has settled into just rehashing the same designs over and over again.

Finally, there’s the camera. While most Pixel fans would happily admit that Samsung’s cameras are also great, they simply have different philosophies. Pixels are really good at delivering great shots that look as close to life as possible. Samsung’s cameras, on the other hand, are good at delivering shots that look hyper-realistic, which a lot of people find more aesthetically pleasing. There’s nothing better or worse about each system, but Pixel fans just prefer the more natural look the Pixel camera creates.

First, we need to talk about One UI again. Although it’s a much heavier and more customized Android skin than Pixel UI, there is no arguing that it has way more features.

I’m not going to bother going into all the things you can do with One UI that you can’t do with Pixel UI, but here’s a taste:

• DeX, which turns your phone into a desktop-like interface.
• Samsung Routines, which allow you to create robust automations.
• Good Lock, which allows you to customize nearly every little thing about how your phone looks and works.
• Dual-Bluetooth connectivity, which allows you to connect two pairs of headphones at once.

These are all features you’ll find on most flagship Samsung phones, but won’t find on even the most expensive Pixel. Some Samsung users rely on these features so heavily they would never jump to a Pixel without Google creating a similar feature.

Moving on to hardware, the majority of flagship Samsung phones come with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processors. It’s an objective fact that the most powerful Qualcomm processor beats every single other Android processor by nearly every metric, and that includes Google’s Tensor processor. This means that a Galaxy phone that’s similar in price to a Pixel phone will probably be much, much more powerful. Samsung fans argue that the decision between paying $799 for a Pixel 9 with a Tensor chip or a $799 Galaxy S25 with a Snapdragon chip isn’t even a decision — of course they’re going to go with the phone that provides objectively better performance.

Regarding cameras, most Samsung fans would probably admit that One UI over-processes images, but they would counter that flagship Samsung camera hardware beats the hell out of Pixel’s any day of the week. The Galaxy S25 Ultra, S25 Edge, and Z Fold 7 all have 200MP primary camera sensors, which is far more capable hardware than any Pixel ever made. The S25 Ultra also comes with two telephoto lenses, giving you a lot more versatility with zoom. To top it all off, Samsung offers professional photographers an app called Expert RAW, which allows you to finely control every setting of each lens. This is something Pixels can’t even come close to replicating.

But finally, the biggest reason that Samsung users don’t buy Pixel phones is because…well…they can’t. Samsung phones are sold in nearly every country in the world. Pixels, by comparison, are sold in just a fraction of them. A person who lives in Brazil, for example, can buy most Samsung phones — but can’t buy any Pixels. Brazil has a population of over 200 million, so that’s 200 million people who are much more likely to be Samsung fans (and very vocal about it). This problem also exists in China, Indonesia, Mexico…the list goes on!

To make matters worse, some of the star features of Pixels aren’t supported even in the countries where the phones are actually available. One example is Call Screen, one of my favorite Pixel features. This tool has Google Assistant answer the phone for you, so you can decide whether the call is actually worth your time. This works automatically here in the US, but outside of the US, there are some countries where it only works manually — and some where it doesn’t work at all. For example, in Germany, manual Call Screen works, but in the neighboring Netherlands, it doesn’t. This probably has to do with local laws and language barriers, but it’s annoying that even if you can get a Pixel in your area, not everything is guaranteed to work — something Samsung users don’t need to worry about for 99% of One UI features.

The major takeaway here is that there are very legitimate reasons why Pixel users don’t like Samsung phones and, at the same time, very legitimate reasons why Galaxy users don’t like Pixels. Is either side wrong? No, not at all. Each side has purchased the phone that works best for them and their particular situation.

To help illuminate this, I want to highlight two comments that have appeared on my YouTube channel. This first one comes from a person who refers to themselves as a “Samsung Knight.” However, they also say there’s a lot about the Pixel line they respect, including how great the products look and their more neutral approach to the ecosystem:

This other comment comes from a Pixel user. They talk about how the camera keeps them with Pixels. But they also admit that they wish Pixels had better processors, like the ones you find in Samsung flagships:

These are two examples of people who love the phone they own but can also happily acknowledge that there are some things the other brand does better. This is the kind of attitude we need to see. As I’ve said many times before, no phone is perfect — there are always compromises. It’s OK to admit that your preferred brand doesn’t do everything right, just like it’s OK to admit that just because you prefer Coke doesn’t mean that you hate Pepsi.