I hope you all are doing great! Today, I am going to talk about my Galaxy M31s. The smartphone I have been using every single day for two years straight as my daily driver. Let's talk about what have changed and about my experience.
THIS IS NOT A REVIEW. I AM SHARING MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE, WHICH CAN AND WILL VARY WITH USERS.
1.Display: Still the same as Day one. Even after two years of heavy usage, it still has zero issues and zero burns. Still the same colours, still the same HDR, still the same, well, everything.
2.Cameras: Cameras on the Galaxy M31s has improved over the course of two years. The quality, the processing and the built in features, all have improved, and if it is in the hands of a good enough photographer, it can most definitely give a hard blow to all other devices in this range. Camera performance in low light used to be bad, but now it has improved quite a lot.
3.User Interface: The phone came with One UI Core 2.0 amd was pretty disappointing for that time. Later, with One UI Core 2.1 and later with One UI Core 3.1, Samsung deciced to add many new features which definitely made the experience good. I never really faced many issues with the software, only rarely, not something which a restart couldn't fix. Overall, pretty happy.
4.Battery and charging: The battery has degraded over time and now it doesn't provide the massive "Two-day backup" it used to. Now it lasts only a day. Charging speed has also slowed down from 1 hr 40 mins to 2 hrs (0-100). Again, this is expected with an ageing battery.
5.Body and physical appearance: The frame and back being made up of polycarbonate (or glasstic as Samsung says), has a lot of scratches from extensive usage. Paint has started chipping from the corners of the frame (this is because I dropped my phone way too many times on its corners, and I do not use a case). The display glass is however, completely unharmed.
6.Performance: I will be honest, performance degradation can be felt, especially in summer season. I feel like this is because of improper heat dissipation. Maybe the CPU needs repasting? I have no idea. During winters, the performance is almost the same as Day one. CODM on high settings and Minecraft with shaders (Render distance: 8 chunks) runs smoothly, which is impressive. 4K 60 HDR videos run without any issues on YouTube. Overall, not bad.
7.Software updates: This phone has received 13 software updates, out of which 10 are security updates and 3 are major updates (One UI Core 2.1, 3.1 and 4.1). The phone doesn't run the latest security patch, but overall, updates have been satisfactory, maybe more because I update my device with Smart Switch.
Other than the points mentioned above, I did have issues with the motherboard of my device in December 2020, a bit less than 4 months after purchase, where my SIM and SD card would randomly disconnect while using the device. That was fixed, about which you can read here:
So, that's all I had to say. Any questions or suggestion? Hit me up in the comments and I will respond there! I will see you soon, till then, have a great one :)
