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What I hate most about smartphones is parameters.
Its hard to organize a configs menu, and todays phones prove that.
The Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra
Whats the best I can expect from a tweaks menu?
I hope to never use parameters.
On an ideal smartphone, controls wouldnt exist.
All the AI features, buried in the Settings
The AI revolution in smartphones is leading to this point.
Eventually, AI is going to manage prefs.
Youll tell the AI what you need, and it will make the adjustments.
To that end, Samsung could end up with the BEST tweaks on any smartphone.
Bixby, Samsungs much-maligned digital assistant, is built to manage tweaks.
Bixby knows parameters better than any human.
Thats part of the problem.
The Galaxys controls are so complicated they need to put an AI in charge.
To find all of Quick tweaks, I need to swipe again.
All the AI features, buried in the Settings
That’s the difference between Apple and Samsung.
Too many tasks require an extra step on my Samsung phone.
Where do you enable this option?
After you swipe down twice, youll notice a tiny little customization pencil icon.
Of course, good luck finding this option, even though it should be turned on by default.
Good luck finding any of these options, in fact.
See, these options are not actually in the options app.
Want to see the Quick tweaks buttons with a single swipe?
That option is not anywhere in parameters.
Its only found under that tiny pencil menu, the one you find by swiping down twice.
Suddenly my Galaxy S24 Ultra feels more like a quest throughLegend of Zeldathan a modern smartphone.
On your iPhone, ALL of your prefs are in the prefs app.
The controls list is therefore very long, since it includes every app on your phone.
On my Galaxy S24, like all Android phones, there are tweaks in each separate app.
That would be fine if tweaks were well organized.
Sometimes controls are in the controls app.
Sometimes they are hidden under strange little icons, like the pencil example above.
Worst of all, Samsungs tweaks app is a big mess.
Whatever feature you want to find, youll get there in one or two steps.
To test this, I chose 10 common reasons why I use the tweaks menu.
The results were clear.
The Galaxy phone is never faster.
For half of these controls, the iPhone took fewer steps than the Galaxy.
For the other half, the parameters took the same number of steps on each phone.
Nothing was ever faster on the Galaxy phone.
Samsung can have a faster processor, more megapixels, and all the specification wins that it likes.
It isnt beating Apple if the phone isnt better to use.
Heres the proof, Samsung, that your phones are verifiably more complicated to use.
More steps means slower.
