[Samsung Galaxy Alpha] symphara:
I decided to get an Alpha as the prices in Switzerland, where I live, are fairly low for unlocked, brand-new devices, and my ageing Nexus 4 was in a dire need of replacement. Today I received my brand new, unlocked "dazzling white" Alpha!

This is my first non-Nexus android. I decided not to install the Google Now launcher on it immediately and give TouchWiz a try, just to see what it's like.

I've been playing with it for a couple of hours, and setting everything up, so here are my first impressions and troubles.

1. It looks lovely, it's so thin, metallic frame, beautiful soft back plastic. Great stuff.

2. The phone is obviously much more capable speed-wise than my Nexus 4, but it's not as fluid as the Nexus 4 (which had Lollipop 5.0.2). Some apps are really choppy, such as Hangouts. It's a strange overall experience: some things load very quickly, but it's not polished and the choppy-ness can be fairly annoying, especially when it causes it to miss touch inputs.

3. Certain apps cannot be uninstalled (e.g. Dropbox, which I don't use). They can only be disabled. On a bright note, Facebook is not installed and while the phone has some bloatware, it's not excessive. So far I ignored all the pre-installed apps (none seem useful at a glance), but I'll look at them more in detail when I get a chance.

4. The fingerprint scanner is not anywhere as bad as I believed it would be. Ok swiping is not as convenient as simply pushing the button, but otherwise it recognises my finger in one or two attempts. So far never worse than that.

5. The battery is obviously very small and I think this phone will last through a full day only with light use. I'll report back after a few days, but so far it went from 56% to 12% alarmingly fast - also, of course, I was installing and setting up stuff on it.

6. The camera seems ok. Indoor shots are so-so. The live-view in HDR more is nice, the focus indicator is nice, the interface is simple and clear. Overall colour balance is good. While I personally use a DSLR for anything more serious, the phone's camera is good to have for impromptu situations. For that, I think it would be adequate. It's certainly better than the Nexus 4 camera.

7. I'm not mad about the colours used by TouchWiz, especially that dirty green, and the drop-down settings are a bit too busy for my liking. This is fairly minor stuff. Otherwise everything seems to work by and large similarly to a Nexus phone.

8. I cannot find a method to swipe away all the notifications. Which is strange, especially since TouchWiz does have a way to close all the recent apps, which is very useful (and not even Lollipop has this feature).

9. I quite like the Samsung keyboard. It's got a little row of numbers on top, which I find very useful. The word suggestions are good. The best feature - I configured two languages on it, and if you "code-switch" (i.e. mix languages when typing) it will display suggestions and corrections appropriately. Without manually changing the language. Great stuff, very Blackberry-ish.

10. It doesn't work with the "Android file transfer" OSX application. At all. It's as if the phone is not connected, and there's no "enable USB file transfer" option on the phone, as on a Nexus device. I'll try later on Windows.

11. Bluetooth is off by default when booting the phone, and it doesn't remember the last enabled state. I don't understand why.

12. It has a lot of horrible "music" ringtones and just one that sounds remotely like a phone.

13. It was a pain to connect it to my LG watch. It just didn't work - reboots, reinstalls, re-pairs etc did nothing. That is, until I factory-reset the watch, then it worked.

14. I thought I wouldn't like the hardware Back and Recents buttons, and I thought I'd like the Home button. It's the other way around - got used pretty quickly to Back/Recents, but I'm not impressed with the Home button. It's a bit fiddly, it moves around a little and doesn't feel as precise and satisfying to press. The side buttons (power/volume) are great though.

15. The call quality is very good, better than the Nexus 4.

16. The screen is great, with good colours, great blacks and contrast level. It's punchy without being in-your-face. My previous OLED screen experience was with the Nexus Galaxy (also made by Samsung), and the Alpha definitely has a better screen, mostly because of the better white (still just a bit blue-ish) and no obvious residual pattern on a uniform background. The resolution is good. I can see the fine-graining on the display if I focus on it (pentile? or diamond?), but it doesn't bother me. Outdoor visibility in bright light is ok but not great, as in, adequate to make a phone call but not ideal for browsing the web for extended periods of time.

I'll post an update in a few days, once certain things such as the battery life are clearer. So far, the phone is above expectations.