As established on multiple occasions (with previous stories), I don’t believe it’s inherently wrong or bad when one phone maker takes some cues from another company in the making of their software or hardware. In fact, quite the opposite – I’m all for it, as long as those changes are useful for the users and add to their experience instead of taking away from it.
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For example, we’ve seen a bunch of “copycat” stories in the industry that haven’t proven to be particularly successful steals:
- After Samsung made curved displays “cool” and popular, dozens of other Android phone-makers got on the same train wagon – as we’ve come to realize, curved screens were just a novelty that quickly went out of fashion – even Samsung’s own flagship phones like the Galaxy S22 and Galaxy S22 Ultra are now slowly moving away from this trend
- Back in 2018, Xiaomi made the big mistake of copying Apple’s iPhone X design almost 1:1 (with the notch and rear camera layout), when eventually every single phone tech media outlet called the Chinese tech giant out, soon leading to a major shift in Xiaomi’s approach to hardware (think: Xiaomi Mi 9, Xiaomi Mi 10 Ultra, etc.)
- And, again, when a bunch of Android brands followed in Apple’s footsteps to kill the headphone jack and remove the charger from the box of their flagship phones, people were… angry; there are people in comments sections who, to this day, demand the return of the 3.5mm headphone jack and in-box charger
But there are what I call “good influences” or “good steals”, and that’s what we seem to be having with Samsung’s brand new One UI 5 software on top of Android 13, which Galaxy S22 users and future Galaxy S23 owners are getting right now, or very soon!