Hi, I have been a long time Samsung user and still use a Galaxy Fold as my secondary phone. It’s funny you are talking about “Google bloatware” when it typically is the other way around: Samsung being called out for having an almost insane amount of “bloatware” forced by default on all their phones right from the factory.
Nothing pretty much relies fully on Google apps for pretty much everything: Calls, messages, mail, files, browsing and so on. In fact it’s easier listing the 1st party Nothing apps: Weather, Gallery (work in progress), Voice Recorder, Glyph Interface - that’s it. Samsung on the other hand has their own apps for essentially every single purpose you can think of. If you don’t like the Google apps, you’ll have to use other alternatives.
Switching from Samsung to Nothing is very straightforward, not quite as good as switching from Samsung to Samsung, but it still transfers most of the stuff. Compared to OneUI, Nothing OS is slicker in my opinion, however that really is up to taste, there are some features I miss from OneUI:
- Side-bar: Being able to simply swipe from the side of the screen to get easy access to different apps and functions
- Gif recorder: One of the features I miss the most in Nothing OS
- No Samsung Notes: Samsung Notes is among the best note taking apps for Android and of course it only is compatible with Samsung devices by default
- No custom fonts: With OneUI you can easily download and change fonts, on Nothing OS you have two fixed fonts you can chose from and one of them is still slightly bugged
- No custom app drawer organisation: You can use the AI powered “Smart Drawer” feature on Nothing, which automatically creates folders and sorts all your apps. However you can’t change or reorganize the AI sorting. You also can’t create custom folders inside the app drawer, only possible on homescreens.
What I especially like about Nothing OS is the fairly minimalistic, monochromatic design language across the OS. While OneUI looks and feels like some kind of candy store with bright and vibrant colors everywhere, Nothing OS feels much more muted in a good way.
Personally going to Nothing was a downgrade all things considered (after all the Fold 4 had tons of features), but Nothing wins on the emotional level: I absolutely love the design (Nothing Phone 2 user here) of both hard- and software, the little details on both, be it the glyphs, the mechanic / sci-fi like tones, the smoother OS experience and battery life - it all boils down to a phone which for me is more fun to use than my previous Samsung phones, so much that I was willing to part with the S-Pen, Samsung Notes, Samsung’s flagship OLED panels and foldable screens.
The Phone (3a) is much more powerful than your Galaxy A13, has more RAM (especially the European 256 gig version which sports 12 gigs of RAM), the screen is better and I’m pretty sure the cameras also will be an upgrade. With six years of security updates and major updates until Android 18, this phone should serve you well for the next years.
