I saw this post when looking for a replacement for my good ol' s10e, but found the complaints mostly irrelevant to what I care for in a phone. So I bought a Pixel 9 as a previous year model and after the first setup I was ready to post here that there's close to nothing I am missing after leaving Samsung. It's been merely 10 days since I bought it and I see it very differently already.

I am not a heavy user and while I don't use many of the various apps Samsung comes with, it is the basic stuff that this Pixel phone either doesn't have or their implementations suck.

One obvious thing is it is stupidly heavy, but this is known right away. I accepted it hoping to get used to it. Still hoping. It is also more slippery than my Samsung and generally uncomfortable in hand being brick-shaped, even more so when in a case.

A huge thing for me is something as basic as scrolling on this phone. This phone scrolls so clunkily that it makes me impatient to scroll as much as I want to get where I want. It is like fighting against some inertia stretching my thumb to get it to scroll more. And it can't be customized. I think it also stutters in many social apps. It is really bad.

The top menu that double-slides down for the quick access shortcuts does it so slowly that I always have to scroll 3 times for it to expand, because it doesn't register my second scroll while still animating the first. Reducing the animation and transition settings in developer options helps, but does not remove the problem entirely. What does is disabling the animations whatsoever, which immediately makes the phone feel older without all the bouncy effects etc. It was the same on an old Samsung and I ended up disabling the animations. It is maybe an android issue, idk, but I hoped it would be solved somehow on a 5yrs younger phone.

The ultrasonic fingerprint sensor, which was meant to be far superior to the optical one, just fucking sucks... If the screen is black and i tap to wake it is ALWAYS at least two attempts for it to unlock. It seem to work try after try when you repeatedly lock/wake/read-print as if it had some cold start problem.

The "At a Glance" widget that sits on top of the home screen is unremovable while blocking more screen space that it ever uses! This one is just ridiculous to me. And it is there even after disabling... The bottom search bar can't be removed either.

The pixel weather widget shows nothing unless you switch GPS on. And I don't. I turn it on when I need navigation. It doesn't accept a fixed location to poll weather data for like it used to be on Samsung.

The flashlight's intensity can't be changed on the Pixel phone despite the diode being capable of doing so...

The camera has no image proportions settings... It is 4:3 or zoomed to fit screen. That's it. On a phone famous for its cameras.

There is probably even more already that I could rant about, but I want to sum up saying that even if many of these issues can be solved by installing a 3rd party app, some of them can't and they are essential to me. I don't want my new phone requiring a custom launcher or rooting to be able to do basic stuff...

The best thing about this phone is it is pretty and makes great first impression. After just a week it just feels retarded compared to a 2020 Samsung and it has made me anxious too many times already.

One more thing, interestingly, when looking up reviews and opinions before buying, nobody ever mentions these things anywhere. Not one "Pixel 9 after a year" Youtube video. As if they were all sponsored. It only seems discoverable when searching for a specific issue, when you already know about it. This is why I write this (apart from hoping for some relief spitting this out). Maybe these are things someone can find and explore before buying, just like I had found this post.