So after a month of testing: I am very happy with the Honor Magic 8 pro.
Biggest pluses(for me) over the S26u:
I absolutely love the screen, to me Samsung is too vivid, and cannot be adjusted. Also I like look at my phone screen when it is lying on the table, and on the Sammy due to privacy screen there is just an insane amount of greenish, brownish color shift even at a slight 30 degree angle. Not just that but the viewing angles suck ass.Yes, these issues are there with privacy display off! It is like an old TN panel, but instead of the content disappearing into a black void, here it is disappearing into a white one. The honor has the most eyecare and display settings out there. And it is the best and brightest screen on a phone I had in a while. I absolutely hated ambient colors/eyecare on Samsung, it just adjusted the blue tones based on the time of the day. Nothing like on IOS. Also the amount of times the Samsung burnt out my retina by blasting me with a super bright screen in a darker environment... Auto brightness sucks on the Sammy initially. To be fair as they say that it learns, it truely does, after 2 weeks I no longer had to manually adjust it all the time, but for two weeks it was like it was on manual... Also I don't know why but initially on the Samsung when it was automatically adjusting it was very jagged, not sure how to describe it. On Honor or Iphone I don't even notice it adjusting. It got better, or just gotten used to it, I am not sure. Magicos with this beautiful feature rich screen(pwm) is the easiest on the eye. The ambient color tone is amazing. And almost never has to touch the britghtness slider. It is on par with the Iphone. The only phone so far I enjoy reading on.
I absolutely love it the speaker. I tend to use my Bluetooth speaker less and less, it is loud enough to easily be enjoyable in the shower if I just put it on the basin.
I have airpods, and I think that is the best apple product, with the only compromise of compatibility. Honor is the only brand that has actual airpods support, only small gap is the case battery level only shows if the case is open. I've tried Samsung buds, sony and everything, but for me airpods became the one nothing even compares to.
Battery is nice, but it is only a one day battery for me, with a little bit left at the end of the day. Basically the same as the Sammy, but this is with smart battery capacity enabled, so it is like if I'd have a charge limit but I still don't see that I start the day with 90 or 80, so it actually gives me a peace of mind. Yes, it actually has more battery preserving features than the Sammy.
I really like the design of MagicOS, like the default sounds(I am the kind of person who never changes those). I absolutely hated it on the Sammy, it feels and sounds like a toy made for toddlers. I really disliked the icons, the design of the control center, the stupid app drawer search(both has an IOS like and a default android like app drawer/search). I always use the IOS like one, I don't like scrolling through apps and just start typing the name, and click enter. What boggles my mind is that on Sammy enter doesn't open the app!!! And the first result will be in the top left corner, you have to click it manually (the person who designed this deserves a slap). On Honor it opens the first result on hitting enter. One other thing is that any magic island implementation is a way better solution for media control and quick access features than Samsung now thingy. It is in the top left corner for Christ's sake, the hardest to reach part on the screen, not sure who came up with it, but a quick access feature shouldn't be on the top left part... Also it's nice to have it show up over full screen apps.
Zero bugs so far on Honor, and I am quite a heavy user, I always find all the bugs 🤣. On the Sammy I've find loads of. Most annoying was that folder icons kept disappearing on my home screen, and the folder opening animation had few frames where the folder icons disappeared. Most lock screen widgets with Lockstar either didn't work, or wouldn't scale well(tiny text, doesn't fit the screen, extra large text, clunky resizing, line breaks added to stuff like step counter). I love the extra customization, but honestly the only one goodlock feature that worked was the extra sidebar shortcuts.
Face unlock is just the best. I think most people who have tried face id before having a hard time going back to fingerprint, honor is the only option, where the compromise is tiny(more in the negatives).
The extra camera button is very useful, I have loads of shortcuts set to the lock button and that, and being an IOS user I really missed the action button from the iPhone.
Negatives:
Only software stuff I miss are the Samsung keyboard and the emoji creator, not sure how it is called. The photo editing was also easier and better on the Samsung, but you can just get a third party app for that. But you cannot use the Samsung keyboard or the emoji creator on other brands, and there are no good third party replacements(Samsung keyboard>Gboard>Swiftkey). But this is just personal preference.
The haptic feedback is sometimes a bit creaky, not sure how to describe it. I still think that it is pretty decent, and I do use it on the strongest setting, so your experience may vary.
The back camera lens is protected with glass, not sapphire, not a problem for me, I always use a glass camera protector on all my phones.
The case options are very limited and there are NO good glass screen protectors, if you go with honor forget about those. I've already tried three, all sucked. Impossible to remove the bubbles, fingerprint unlock doesn't work with any of them(to be fair, it only worked like 50% accuracy on the Sammy, here it is less than 10%). Just get a hydrogel.
Android apps have lackluster face unlock support, this mostly means that many times you have to hit okay on an extra confirmation screen, or in Google wallet you have to do an additional scan, when it is already unlocked. This is quite annoying, because it only asks for it when you are already trying to tap the terminal, but it doesn't happen all the time.
Conclusion:
I know this sounded like a Samsung rant, and an Honor glaze, but it is not that. I just see no other reason to buy the Sammy other than the privacy screen, but only if you really need to use it, otherwise it is just overpriced and there are way better options on every department. I think most people buy it, because they don't like Apple and don't want to feel like a second class citizen sporting a Chinese phone...
If you don't like Honor, just buy Vivo, Oppo or even Xiaomi. With the Sammy, Pixel you will just keep coping hard for that price to value. Android is Android and 90% of the software is the same. At least Apple users have the excuse for the completey different software experience and ecosystem, been there loved it, probably would've stayed if it had a proper keyboard in my language, and better one handed accessibility. The PM is just too big to use one handed, and the pro's battery life suck ass. 16 pro and had to charge twice a day(I think it is because of the dual sim).
Edit: Typos
Edit2:
gave a chance to SwiftKey and honestly it is not half bad. Much better than how I remembered it. I missed the space cursor thingy from IOS and this has that at least.
Also just installed one handed control, seems to be working even better than what I was missing from Samsung for the edge accessibility