Now only if they speed up the delivery, as Samsung really upped its game this time around, despite all the flaws of One UI that I hate, I admire how fast Samsung was with Android 13 rollout.

Having worked in Samsung a while back; if they consider something important they will keep on trying and get it done. Ex: OneUI effort came out of people calling out Samsung for its design chops compared to Apple. I no longer use OneUI but it is very comforting when I see it in wild.

To be clear, One UI is still very much iOS like, so Samsung still copies a lot, but in a bad way, there are ways to add utility features on top of stock Android without making it look like a cheap copy (see what Motorola and dotOS folks are doing). But yes, Samsung definitely improved by a lot in last 2 years with their update cadence.

If my memory serves right earlier One UI versions were much more opinionated and different. Not sure of recent ones.

One UI 5 is better than what Android 11 was in its stock form, but post Android 12, there's a stark difference in direction. I have S22+ and wife uses Pixel 7 Pro, and looking at UX & performance difference makes me jealous!

Interesting. Not sure what caused this change. Samsung invested heavily on design front in Seoul back in my time around 2016-2018.