I entirely agree with you, and profoundly dislike them, but it's clearly working for them if their financials don't lie. While most other manufacturers bleed money, Samsung had healthy profits on smartphones last time I checked. It still puzzles me that anyone would buy them at all, but I've long accepted that I'm not a representative sample.
So given that, I don't see why they would bother coming up with a vision after all this time.
Main things that stand out over apple:
- Much higher resolution camera w/ pretty incredible zoom. Though overall picture quality is a far closer comparison.
- S-pen, mostly used for its remote capability, shame they dropped that for the s25...
- Samsung Dex. I use my phone as my laptop daily, I've also used it as a dumb terminal for remote gaming while travelling which works exceptionally well
- Access to alternative browsers, ad blocking, alternate stores, side loading apps etc
While Google is no angel Apple actively works against open systems and control of your own devices, I'm glad to be out of that ecosystem.
It doesn't work for me, but that's because I courageously use my headphone jack.