> I'm not sure what people expect Samsung to do, just use whatever Google says to use and not try to innovate?

To me, the benefit of the S series was "Android on decent hardware". I would have preferred as close to stock Android as possible. I mostly use F-Droid stuff anyway, though of course that means I am far from the average consumer.

They are primarily a hardware company - it seems reasonable to expect them to innovate there, and leave innovation in software to the software companies.