This article may contain personal views and opinion from the author.
Google Messages app. | Image by PhoneArena
The Samsung Messages app will soon join the list of discontinued Samsung apps. Samsung has announced July as the month when the app will officially retire, and Google Messages will become the default messaging app on Galaxy smartphones. However, your votes indicate that you still prefer Samsung Messages as the best messaging app out there.
Samsung Messages is still better than Google Messages for many users
Samsung recently made it official that its native messaging app will go offline sometime in July. I covered this story and added a poll in it asking whether you are happy with Samsung's decision to kill its messaging app.
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The poll has received 624 votes as of this writing, with more than 80% of voters selecting the option that reads, "Samsung Messages is the best." While I, personally, prefer Google Messages for its RCS support, I also believe Samsung Messages has some really cool features that give it an edge over competitors. Let's dive into those features in detail.
A cleaner inbox
If you receive tons of messages daily, you know how difficult it is to find one that actually matters to you. In this situation, the best feature you would want from your messaging app is some kind of categorization capability, and unlike Google Messages, the Samsung Messages app provides it.
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It allows you to categorize messages into different built-in categories. For instance, I usually move all important messages to the Personal section, bank-related messages to the Transactions section, and all other non-important SMS to the Miscellaneous section.
Now, whenever I need to check a particular message, I simply go to its assigned section instead of searching through the thousands of messages I've received. Furthermore, I find the search functionality in the Samsung app far superior to that in the Google app.
When you type a particular part of the message you're searching for, Samsung Messages shows the entire message in the search results. Google Messages, on the other hand, only displays a snippet of the text. This means I have to open that particular message to confirm whether it's actually the one I was looking for.
Plenty of visual benefits
Google's own messaging app offers plenty of customization options, but it's nothing compared to what you get in Samsung's messaging app. Compared to Google Messages, which allows you to only change the theme from dark to light and configure different chat colors for different chats, Samsung Messages offers all these plus a few extra benefits.
It lets you choose an image from the gallery as the background. You have manual control to manage the opacity of the chat bubbles. Furthermore, you can adjust the text contrast as well.
There's also a built-in translation feature. All you need to do is select the message and choose the Translate option to translate it into any language of your choice.
No AI bloatware
Gemini icon on the Google Messages app homepage. | Image by PhoneArena
I honestly think that the job of apps like Samsung Messages and Google Messages should be only to send and receive messages. While the former does exactly this, the latter comes with built-in Gemini support, which I really don't know why it has been added.
Google says that you can use it to draft messages, ask questions, and get help with a few other tasks. But doesn't the dedicated Gemini app perform all these functions too?
If I've really become so dumb that I need AI support to draft an SMS, then I'll just open the Gemini app directly. Adding Gemini to Google Messages sounds utterly useless to me. Samsung Messages, on the other hand, doesn't have any such AI distractions.
Do you think Samsung is doing the right thing by killing its Messages app?
Despite all these benefits, we have no choice
Since Samsung has officially announced the end date for its Messages app, discussing its advantages over Google Messages makes little sense. I can only hope that Google adds all the above-mentioned features to its messaging app so that it becomes easier for veteran Samsung Messages users to move on.
Fortunately, Google has adopted a couple of features from the Samsung Messages app in the past. For instance, it recently added a completely new Trash folder, which was previously available on Samsung Messages.
Aman Kumar is a tech news writer with a long-standing passion for smartphones. Aman specializes in everything smartphones, from AI features like Pixel’s Camera Coach to understanding ideal hardware combinations. He loves breaking down complex features in a simple, clear way and hopes manufacturers bring back bold designs like the Nokia N-Gage. When he’s not writing, he’s either gaming on PUBG or talking fitness as a dedicated gym enthusiast.
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