The Android 12/13 UI really grinds my gears. Excessive amounts of whitespace, and the notification shade has become “kiddified” - Turning off wifi/mobile data now takes 2 taps, the icons are all ridiculously big and takes up so much screen space, etc.
I personally don’t like phones that are excessively big, because I use it a lot on my commutes. Screen real estate is valuable to me, and while whitespace has its uses, I think Android 12/13 went too far - it might work better on a tablet, but it sucks on a phone. I was really tempted by the Pixel, but ended up getting a Samsung partially because of this (One UI doesn’t have the same bloated-whitespace look).
Am I the only one? Surely Google did user testing… didn’t they?
AOSP 12+ is amazing once you whip it into behaving. I only use it with custom ROMs, LineageOS or crDroid if available to be specific with all sorts of UI mods to make it usable. I replace the unified Internet toggle with WiFi and Mobile toggles, use AOSP Mods to make quick settings have 3 toggles per row rather than 2, enable pure black mode and use third party widgets. Gboard and Google Calculator with network connection disabled. I also heavily prefer the previous Roboto font rather than the new sugary Google one. The less Pixel my phone is, the better.
The end result is a nice user experience with the benefits of the color engine.