My experience with 5 Samsung phones over 10ish years, last one being 2019:

Great hardware that nearly always impresses. Very infrequent hardware issues compared to its main competitors (in the android space).

Extremely annoying software experience. Locked bootloader aside, as I recognize that's only an issue for a very small group. But the software goes through these intense hills and valleys where you can go a long time without updates, with bugs, with bloat, with problems. Then a burst of updates that seem to address many of those issues, then it just slides back into the shit. And the amazing hardware is dragged down in this cycling, to the point where the phone will feel old at an accelerated rate. I've hard that exact complaint about apple and a few other android manufacturers many times but only Samsung has genuinely given me that experience.

It's very unfortunate. If they unlocked the bootloader I could bypass the software issues myself and have damn near the perfect phone.

Oh how I wish I could root Samsung phones. The best hardware all around. Cramped down by the dumb bootloader lock and Knox tripping!