The Benefits of the Walled Garden

I’m talking about the ones employed by (mainly) Samsung and Apple (in my smartphone-driven world). Where hardware and software tends to work together as long as the user accepts the ‘closed’ nature of what’s going on, looks at what others are doing from afar - and feels secure in the knowledge that everything, well, most things, just work!

I don’t have any Apple gear. I dipped my toe in the water some years back and didn’t like it much. My life was, since 2004/2008 all Google/Android. I have tried really hard to be satisfied with the Nexus/Pixel/ChromeOS life but missing features and seeing what Samsung do, sometimes draw me away and down another path. I can understand at times like this why people get stuck into Apple stuff (or Samsung) and don’t come out.

I have recently been having my annual toe-in-the-water with Samsung and have to hand a Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra on One UI 6, a Samsung Galaxy Z Flip4 and a Samsung Galaxy Tab S8. There is something compelling about how they just all work together for the benefit of the user - and I have to admit, that it draws me in!

As with any system, there are niggles - but with Samsung and Android, the user can often get round them. An example being the size of the icons/text in the Status Bar - which with One UI I think is too small. I can’t find any way to change that except to use Nova (or some other) Launcher or App someone has cooked up instead. But these instances are rare. Usually there’s a workaround with Samsung. The depth of system controls is exhaustive - and only made deeper by the inclusion of Good Lock (Samsung’s virtual lab) where even more stuff can be tweaked.

It’s not all good, of course. There’s all the Samsung services pushed at the user, like Bixby, Samsung Pay, doubling up of PIM apps, the sometimes confusing Galaxy Store (which can’t seem to work neatly with Google’s Play Store and allows crossover of updating apps) to mention a few - but for those willing to really reside inside the walled garden, well, because it’s Android perhaps a walled garden with a gate, these issues become side-issues and the user enjoys the benefits. And I’m sure that’s mainly true for Apple users, too.