&gt; I wanted a Samsung phone but a pure Android experience<p>That&#x27;s Samsung&#x27;s fault.<p>&gt; Shouldn&#x27;t have to buy a phone direct from Google to get that.<p>Oh, I completely agree, but Samsung doesn&#x27;t want to simply provide OEM Android because they think that the add-ons distinguish them in a crowded market.<p>&gt; Apple is a hardware company Google is not.<p>But Apple&#x27;s limited hardware offering is why they can guarantee you such a pure Apple experience.  The equivalent exists in the Google ecosystem.  It&#x27;s buying one of the phones directly from the Google Play store.  The only difference is that in the Apple ecosystem there isn&#x27;t choice, so you don&#x27;t get to see better hardware spec&#x27;d phones that run IOS, while in the Android ecosystem you do.