What I miss on the iPhone as a long-term Samsung user.

For the past 7 years, I’ve been a very big fan of Samsung and the One UI. Because the One UI is very simple and looks like a very user-friendly OS to handle. I liked the app icon transmission over the different One UI versions. Also, the Galaxy Store contains Samsung’s own built-in apps, which support one UI perfectly.

At the time, I felt the One UI was so heavy and couldn’t perform well on mobile. It was so laggy. One of the reasons why Samsung has high-capacity RAM is because of the weight of the OS. Being an Android fanboy, I couldn’t move on to iOS, so I decided to go for the Pixel. While using the pixel, I had a smooth experience. The pixel UI is not as heavy as one UI; it works perfectly fine, and it runs on mobile smoothly. (You can read my article comparing One UI vs. Pixel UI here.) After one year, I thought of giving iOS a try because of its software and hardware combination. Both were developed by the same company, so the OS might work well with the device. And also, Apple doesn’t have lots of unnecessary customization options, but it does all the things that are necessary. And also, it’s more secure than Android. Their update cycles are faster, and they release them globally on the same day. These options made me move to iPhones, but I still miss some features that are exclusive to Samsung. We will take a look into it.

Galaxy Store

The Galaxy Store is Samsung’s app store. It contains games, Samsung-developed apps, themes, icon packs, etc. The beauty of this is that it contains some apps that Google Play doesn’t provide. I remember the days when Fortnite was banned on the Play Store but remained on the Galaxy Store.

It contains beautiful themes and icon packs, which are exclusive to Samsung phones. Plenty of Samsung-developed apps are available in the Galaxy Store, which works perfectly fine with One UI. One of my favorite apps is Good Lock.

Good Lock

This is one of my favorite apps on Samsung. This app is exclusive to one UI. It does have lots of plugins to customize the phone. Using this app, we can customize the lock screen, call screen, app screen, themes, etc. Every tiny option can be customized using the Good Lock. Earlier, it was available in a limited number of countries, but now it’s globally available. The most interesting part for me is that we can create our own lock screen clocks and themes.

Bixby Routine

The Bixby routine made my life easy. The fascinating part was that Bixby learns from our daily routine and suggests routines that are helpful for us. For example, if we continuously start to disconnect from wifi and switch our phone to ring mode when leaving home, then it learns and asks us to enable it every time we leave home. Once we enable it, we don’t need to do it every time; once it finds out we are out of home, it automatically does the things. We can add routines manually. We can create our own tasks. For example, if this happens, then switch on or enable it likewise. Apart from that, it’s possible to create a Bixby widget that works like a button; if we press the widget for a certain task, it does the thing.

Samsung Notes

I have been using Samsung Notes for 7 years, and that is where I save all my notes and important details. It’s super easy and convenient to use. It has lots of customization and formatting options. Also, the notes never get lost thanks to the cloud synchronization. We can save it on one device, and we can view it on another device. The convenient part is that it does have a Windows app, so we can view mobile notes from a Windows PC, and we can write notes using a PC and later view them on the phone. This made it super easy and convenient to use Samsung Notes.

Games Launcher

This was a super cool feature for people who do mobile gaming. We can set the games to be automatically added to the game launcher once they are downloaded. Game launchers give us full control of the gaming performance. Using a game launcher, we can set the performance level of the mobile while playing the game. Also, we can mute notifications and calls so as not to get interrupted while gaming. These features provide a better gaming experience.

It shows how many hours we spent on each game. So we can keep track of our gaming screen time. This helps us avoid long hours of screen time and game addiction.

These are the exclusive One UI features I missed after switching to the Pixel and iPhone. But lots of these features are not mandatory, except for Samsung Notes. I found alternatives for the necessary Android features. Moving from Android to iPhone feels like a good move, but being a Samsung fanboy for years, I still miss some features, but it’s not a big deal.