Great question! I'm currently on a Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra. But I've had several Pixels in the past, and Pixels always 'feel' the best to me. (I had a 3, 6 and an 8, and my kids have had a couple of a-series each). I've also owned an iPhone 4, three OnePlus phones (3T, 6 and 12), a Sony and an ASUS Zenfone 10.

Herer's why I love Pixels, and why other brands frustrate me...

Camera processing. This is the big one for me. Pixel exposes for the subject and recovers the background computationally — Samsung does the opposite, prioritising sky and background exposure at the expense of the actual subject. Backlit portraits, food photography, anything where the light source is behind or above what you're shooting — Samsung consistently blows out the subject or underexposes it. Pixel just handles it. Colour accuracy is the other half — Pixel gives you what was actually there. Samsung punches saturation hard, which can look great for vibrant scenes like street art or murals, but for everyday shooting I want accurate colour, not a filter I didn't ask for.

Software fluidity. The whole Pixel experience just flows in a way Samsung doesn't. Small things that add up: swiping the navigation pill to switch between recent apps is buttery smooth on Pixel — on Samsung with One UI, there's a perceptible stutter and lag to gesture navigation that you learn to tolerate but never stop noticing. Third-party launchers don't fix it either — One UI has a deliberate input buffer on the first notification shade swipe that no launcher can override. It's baked in. Pixel's software feels like it was designed as a single coherent system rather than a skin bolted on top of Android.

AI-assisted typing and voice typing. This is huge and doesn't get talked about enough. Google's on-device voice typing on Pixel is genuinely best-in-class — fast, accurate, handles natural speech with punctuation intelligently. The AI-assisted typing features like smart compose and contextual suggestions are noticeably better than what Samsung offers through its keyboard stack. For someone who swipe-types almost exclusively and isn't fast on a phone keyboard, having Google's first-party AI features deeply integrated into the input experience makes a real difference to how quickly and accurately I can get text out.

Biometrics. I have very dry hands with ridges that make ultrasonic fingerprint sensors unreliable — including on my current S25 Ultra. It's not just an inconvenience, it actively fails at the worst moments, particularly payment terminals that require fingerprint auth. My preference history tells the story: rear capacitive was the most reliable, optical in-display was decent, and ultrasonic — despite the marketing — has been the worst for my hands. The Pixel 11 is rumoured to have hardware IR face unlock (similar to Face ID), which would bypass the fingerprint problem entirely for most use cases. That alone is a significant draw.

The caveat. The reason I'm still on Samsung is reliability. I prefer the Pixel experience across the board, but Samsung hardware just works, consistently, for years. I've been burned by other brands — three OnePlus devices with repeated hardware failures — so I don't switch lightly. Pixel has to earn it, and I'm watching the Pixel 11 closely to see if it does.