[StevePerkins]

I'm sorry, but this is absolutely nonsensical. I literally just posted a screenshot showing that this is configurable on a Samsung.

In fact, when I first setup this phone, I had to specifically choose to make the home bar visible at all. Because the current default setting on Samsungs is to use "gestures" only. The same as the default setting on a Pixel now. All Android manufacturers seem united in pushing this, to ape iOS.

There are plenty of reasons to choose a Google Pixel. And I wouldn't quibble with any of them. But it's absolutely bizarre to point to a default setting as a reason, when they are configurable and when both brands use the same default setting anyway.

So many of these discussion threads are like this. It's perfectly fine to prefer a Pixel over a Galaxy. But people so often seem to take umbrage against Samsung for some reason, and when you poke at a little it rarely makes much sense.

[__MatrixMan__]

The umbrage comes from having spent a few years supporting these devices (or rather, failing to support them). I don't know how many times I've had to sit there and get yelled at because I abandoned a troubleshooting workflow once I realized that the user was in some kind of Samsungified experience that was 95% identical to the default Android one (and was therefore out of my scope of support here in the carrier call center, go call Samsung).

Once they got their yelling out, they would sometimes ask me why Samsung would bother recreating all of the Google stuff if it was indeed 95% identical. What's in that 5%, they'd ask.

How do you answer that question without seeing Google's influence on the software as a necessary evil and Samsung's as an unnecessary evil?