Galaxy S22 vs Pixel 5 Reddit

I thought I would be a Pixel guy for life but the recent software decisions from Google and general bugginess of the phone has me looking elsewhere.

I love the small size of the Pixel 5 and used to love the long battery life (before software ruined that). It seems the S22 may be my next best option. Just curious if anyone has been in a similar positiion and might have made the switch to the S22 already. How has it been? Is the form factor similar? I know the S22 seems to be a bit thinner and taller, which I don't love, but it's probably the closest to the Pixel 5 that I'll get. How's the batter life on the S22? Comparable to how the Pixel 5 used to be when it first came out?

I am testing an S22 Ultra coming from a Pixel 6 Pro (and having had the original, the 2XL, 3XL, 4XL and 5).

The camera on the S22 is very "Samsung". There is still a lot of face smoothing in selfies, even with that setting turned off. The white balance is very bright and it tends to overexpose bright areas in the background, losing detail. The Pixel always takes more contrasty photos, and Samsung doesn't do this so photos look kinda overprocessed. The rear camera seems to be ok. I always end up editing photos in Snapseed to make some slight color adjustments. Check out comparisons, plenty of those around. The differences tend to come down to your personmal preference on the warmth of the photo. Pixels tend to be "cooler" and Samsung tends to go "warmer" and more vivid.

The Macro capabilities of the S22 Ultra are pretty amazing. I am enjoying this very much. Video recording is much better on the S22.

I have not been very happy with my 6 Pro. Android Auto wireless stutters horribly, I often run into stuttery performance with the phone. Battery Life hasn't been the greatest. Camera sometimes stutters or takes forever to launch and I lose out on things. It is even worse when running Android Auto.

MKBHD has said he preferred the S21 Ultra to the Pixel 6 Pro, so I ordered an S22 Ultra to test.

I was surprised how SLOW it felt. Granted, there were a lot of apps and things running in the background on first install, but it wasn't until I changed the processing speed to Maximum that the S22 felt smooth.

The fingerprint reader on the Pixel 6 has been a common complaint. I have issues with it from time to time, but so far the S22 Ultra doesn't seem to be responding any faster or more accurately. They feel the same two days in.

I was also expecting the RF/Signal on the S22 to be better than the Pixel 6 Pro, but so far, I am not noticing major improvements. I'm with T-Mobile, and at home I can't get 5G with the S22 or the Pixel. I thought the S22 would be able to get it indoors.

Outdoors, the Pixel holds on to 5G better than the S22 so far... Which is unexpected. The S22 I have (unlocked, from Fi) does not display 5G UC when used on Tmobile. I forgot to check the field test mode for band information, but ran a couple of speed tests on both phones in the same location, and the Pixel got faster speeds than the S22...

I am not hating the S22 as much as I thought I would. OneUI has gotten less annoying to me, but there are still a lot of things I miss from the Pixel: the latest ability to grab an image from the screen quickly is something I use a lot.

The notifications in the current version of OneUI are too small. I don't want to change the font size or zoom level of the system to get them bigger. The spacing is very small, they're very compact, and it looks much more pleasing on the Pixel.

Haptics/vibration are much better on the S22.

Turns out that the new galaxy devices got the Android 12 update faster then the pixels and will also receive the newest updates for a longer time period.

Which was also a concern is the decrease of system performance from time to time. It's just not the case anymore, that all these pixel devices run smooth all the time and have this huge advantage in the face of other devices.

Don't get me wrong. I use the pixel 5 for my own, but from my perspective android 12 is not running that smooth and I am also facing more and more bugs. Be it that I can not play Spotify songs via WiFi without stuttering, that I need to restart apps more often, bugs within the notification tray and the music tile or even that I have to restart my phone every couple of days because the phones speakers make a load ticking noise without any obvious reason.

Of course the Samsungs will have trouble with stuff also, but the pixel is not that outstanding anymore in my opinion. That's also something big tech reviewers like MKBHD have noticed and communicated from time to time.

I think the Android 11 experience on my pixel was way smoother and I don't really like what they did with the black background notification center and other stuff, but that's of course only subjective.

I would take the S22 but I also understand if you take the pixel because of the software or the longer battery life.

Is it worth upgrading to Samsung S22+?

Is Galaxy S22 ultra worth buying?

How long does a Galaxy S22 last?

What features will the Samsung S22 have?