[corresation]

I can't imagine a worse android experience than what TouchWiz offers

How so? To be fair a lot of the features of TouchWiz ended up being borrowed and integrated directly into Android (just as there was borrowing from SenseUI). These competitive forces have helped Android evolve.

[tjoff]

Sure TouchWiz has features, it's the implementation and UI that stinks.

I have a friend that always said that "Samsung can't do software" and I thought that was a bit hyperbolic. Samsung is a huge company and just because one parts screws up doesn't mean, well, anything really.

But I guess I just had barely used any samsung devices that required software. I can honestly not mention a single piece of samsung software or device that wasn't seriously hindered by the software. From TVs that show hideous grey bars (when the aspect ratio doesn't match) that will blind you in dark scenes (just because the TV frame is grey (note that you can't even change this in the menus)) instead of black bars like all other TVs, to well, TouchWiz...

Take the sound notification you got in samsung phones (was this around the time of galaxy SII? (and not the 90's that you'd expect)) where the phone would make a sound notification when the battery was charged to 100%. With no way to turn it off. I dare say the most common use case when charging a phone is during the night, a lot of people have their phone alongside their bed and this meant that they would be waken a few hours later.

All samsung devices with software in it has at least a few of these annoyances that makes it obvious - no one, has ever, used this thing outside of a lab.

But that's just small details.

TouchWiz is horribly slow. No, it really is catastrophically bad. I tested the Galaxy tab 10.1 in a few stores, in everyone the interface was seriously slower than any of the competitors (with the same hardware). But I figured that this was because of people installing and abusing demo devices. Then I was to help a friend with their brand new tab 10.1, I even witnessed the unpacking and out of the box and it was just as horrid as in all the stores. The brand new top of the line $500 tablet behaved as a bloated, cheap, first generation device. And it hasn't gotten better with time.

Samsung completely ruined the Galaxy S. Compare it to the Nexus S, pretty much the same hardware and the Galaxy S was by comparison barely usable unless you installed a custom rom on it. At which point it suddenly became a great phone.

The touchwiz calendar and messaging applications (in galaxy SIII) looks like they have been designed by a 10-year old starting to learn photoshop (seriously, I just can't believe my eyes everytime i use a Samsung android phone). The UI isn't even remotely consistent with... anything.

Everything they tweaked and touched has been for the worse. Yes they have their own features, mostly features that are fun the first five minutes (if you are a ten year old) but at best doesn't annoy you after the first week.

[corresation]

I'm not really looking to defend Samsung -- their TVs and blu-ray players have terrible software (though on the gray bar bit, clearly that was an entirely intentional choice. Plasmas do that specifically because otherwise you will very quickly have a center portion of the screen that is dimmer than the outer portion, so the gray balances the wear. While LCD is supposedly immune to this, I once had a set that suffered the aspect ratio "burn-in" issue, retaining the obvious demarcation over weeks of use and multiple restarts), however having owned the Galaxy S II and now GS III, I have absolutely no issue with TouchWiz. Further it's notable that Samsung had a hardware accelerated browser that functioned much better than Android's offering before Google did.

You're kind of veering to the point of insulting people who might actually see credibility in TouchWiz (the whole "if you're ten years old" thing), which, I guess...whatever. But as someone who has quite appreciated Samsung devices I just don't have the complaints.

[tjoff]

I actually forgot that it probably had to do with a plasma tv, that's true, there is a reason for it.

"You're kind of veering to the point of insulting people"

Not my intention, but I guess it's my way of responding to the gimmicky features Samsung pushes - instead of focusing on usability. Something that I think the galaxy S4 promo videos demonstrate quite clearly. It's great that they try but in the end it ruins the experience (it shouldn't need to, but it does in my opinion).

If Galaxy S4 was a stock android device I'd buy it. With TouchWiz... I just can't...

[Nursie]

So what is touchwiz?

I've a Note and never really noticed what it is or does. I replaced the launcher with Apex, just because and... I'm just not sure what touchwiz is at this point or how it might be making my experience worse?