Based on the advertised deep contouring and pressure-relieving AirCradle foam, I expected the pressure relief to be a standout feature, but it wasn’t. This is not to say that pressure relief was absent in testing, but it was minimal compared to that of firmer hybrid mattresses I’ve tested such as the DreamCloud Hybrid or the Wolf Memory Foam Hybrid Premium Firm. Which brings me to firmness: By my measure, this was not a “medium” mattress. Saatva rates this mattress between 5 and 7 on the firmness scale, so it falls in the medium-firm range. Unless you’re more than 200 pounds or have a taller build, your body mass would lead to more sinkage. This felt like a true firm mattress, which I’d rate at 7.5 to 8 out of 10. For context, the firmer hybrid mattresses we’ve tested, like the Plank Firm Luxe and Bear Elite Hybrid, reside in the 8 to 10 range of the firmness scale.

To be clear, a firm mattress is not at all a bad thing. The light cushioning for my pressure points, especially my hips, was right on target for back and stomach sleepers. Paired with how much spinal alignment support you get from this mattress, this is an excellent choice for these two sleeping positions. Side sleepers, I’m much more hesitant. In my two-week testing period, I also tried this mattress with Saatva’s Graphite Memory Foam Topper, which was included in the Winter Bundle. That helped significantly to create more cushion to sink into. The downside is that it’s not included with the mattress and costs extra. Athletes will have this available to them in Colorado Springs, but I can’t help but wonder whether, for LA28, it might have been more strategic to go with the Saatva Classic mattress, with its three customizable firmness levels and two heights. However, I can’t even begin to contemplate the logistical headache that would be; I am just a humble mattress tester.

The Saatva Memory Foam Hybrid did well at maintaining a bouncy feel that supported me as I moved between sleeping positions. It also maintained good motion isolation, keeping the bed stable so my husband wasn’t disturbed on his side as I tossed and turned. I wouldn’t label this a cooling mattress, even with the graphite-infused topper. It stayed more temperature-neutral, not amassing excessive body heat, but it didn’t offer a cool-to-the-touch feel either.

Personal Record

Photograph: Julia Forbes

Overall, this is a high-quality offering from Saatva, and based on my testing history with the brand, I expected nothing less. It also comes with Saatva’s free white-glove delivery service, which includes delivery, mattress setup, and haul-away of your old mattress. As someone who hauls around beds every single week, this being part of your purchase is a very big deal. Throw in a 365-night sleep trial with no minimal “break-in” period, plus a lifetime warranty that Saatva offers, and you’ll probably start to understand why I’ve always regarded this brand as one of the best in the game—they know what they are doing.

Other Samsung Phones to Consider

If you don’t see a Samsung phone mentioned in this guide, that might be because it’s not sold in the US and is a little harder to source for testing. But here are a few other Samsung phones I’ve tested to consider.

Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge for $1,220: Have you ever wanted a really thin and lightweight phone? No? Well, Samsung has an option for you anyway. The Galaxy S25 Edge (6/10, WIRED Review) sits in the middle of Samsung’s flagship lineup and matches several features of the Galaxy S25 Ultra, like a titanium frame, stronger front glass, and 4K 120 frames per second video recording. All the cameras even have autofocus. But it made several sacrifices to achieve its amazingly slim 5.8-mm frame (for context, the S25 Ultra is 8.2 mm thick). There’s no stylus, no telephoto camera, and worst of all, the battery capacity has been slashed. We’ve seen this before—thin phones have always compromised on battery life, and that’s no different here. I constantly had to baby this phone’s 3,900-mAh battery with average to heavy usage, and that’s just not acceptable. (The iPhone Air did it better.) If you find yourself constantly near a power source and you think you’ll enjoy the slim and light design, then go for it. Rumors suggest that the Edge did not perform well, and it may not see a successor in 2026.

Galaxy A17 5G.

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu

Samsung Galaxy A17 5G for $200: On paper, the Galaxy A17 (5/10, WIRED Review) seems like a really great deal. Six years of software support, an AMOLED screen, expandable storage, and a decent camera. Unfortunately, it’s held back by lackluster performance. The problem is specifically the very limited 4 GB of RAM in the US model, which severely ruins the entire experience of using the phone. If you had to use your smartphone in an emergency, I would not trust the A17 to be reliable. But if your needs are extremely minimal, it may suffice.

Galaxy A36.

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu

Samsung Galaxy A36 5G for $395: The Galaxy A36 (6/10, WIRED Review) doesn’t quite measure up to its peers from Nothing and Motorola. Performance is just too choppy, and that’s not acceptable at this price. It’s manageable—it’s not so slow that it will frustrate—but you can do better. If your needs are very minimal, it’s an OK phone, and the camera system is good, with day-long battery life, a nice AMOLED screen, and 6 years of software updates.

Galaxy Z Fold6 and Flip6.

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold6 or Galaxy Z Flip6: If you don’t want to pay a premium for a new folding phone, then consider 2024’s Galaxy Z Fold6 and Galaxy Z Flip7 (7/10, WIRED Review). The Fold6 has a close to “normal” smartphone experience on the exterior 6.3-inch screen. Open the phone up, and there’s a vast 7.6-inch AMOLED screen staring at your face, turning this folding phone into a tiny tablet. The Flip6 isn’t as nice as the newer Flip7—the bigger and brighter cover screen on the latest model is a step up—but it’s worth considering over the new Galaxy Z Flip7 FE. Technically, it’s nearly identical to that phone, but the FE uses a Samsung Exynos chip instead of a Qualcomm processor, and performance may not be as smooth. The main drawback? Battery life isn’t great. Make sure you don’t pay MSRP for these 2024 phones.

If you’re looking to save some cash, it’s fine to buy Samsung’s Galaxy S23 range or the Galaxy S23 FE from 2023, as long as the prices are a good deal lower than the original MSRP. (They’re hard to find at most major retailers.) These phones will still get support for a while, and they’re pretty great. I don’t think it’s worth buying anything older.

Should You Invest in Samsung’s Ecosystem?

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu

Samsung is one of the few smartphone manufacturers that can match Apple in its hardware ecosystem. Not only does the company make smartphones, but you can also expand your experience by adding on a Galaxy Watch8 smartwatch, Galaxy Buds3 Pro earbuds, Galaxy Ring fitness ring, Galaxy Tab S11, and even a Windows-powered Galaxy laptop.

There are certain perks to this, like how some features on the Galaxy Ring and Watch8 are only available when paired with a Samsung phone, and its earbuds will automatically switch between Samsung devices based on what you’re using. There’s not much in the way of exclusive features when using a Galaxy phone with a Galaxy laptop, but features like Quick Share let you speedily send photos and documents between your devices.

Again, it’s not necessary, and these other devices might not be the right ones for you within their respective categories, but if you’re chasing hardware parity, you have that option with Samsung.

What Is Galaxy AI?

Photograph: Julian Chokkattu

With the Galaxy S24 series, Samsung launched “Galaxy AI,” a selection of artificial intelligence features, many of which are powered by Google’s Gemini large language models. These enable smart features that may be helpful day to day, like real-time translations during phone calls, real-time transcriptions in Samsung’s Voice Recorder app, the ability to summarize long paragraphs of text in the Samsung Notes app, or change a sentence’s tone with the Samsung Keyboard.

In the Galaxy S25 series, Galaxy AI expanded to include Gemini as the default voice assistant and the ability for Gemini to work with multiple apps simultaneously. It also debuted Drawing Assist, which lets you sketch or enter a prompt and get an AI-generated image. Now, you can also use video in real-time with Gemini, even from the cover screen of the Galaxy Z Flip7.

You can find many of these features by heading to Settings > Galaxy AI to toggle them on or off. We have an explainer on how to limit Galaxy AI to on-device processing, too.

What Is Samsung DeX?

Courtesy of David Nield

Samsung’s DeX (short for “desktop experience”) launched in 2017, and it’s a way to plug in your Samsung phone to an external monitor and trigger a desktop version of the Android OS, all completely powered by the phone. You can find a list of compatible Samsung phones here—the Flip7 is the first Galaxy Flip to support DeX—and you’ll need a monitor, mouse, and keyboard, plus a cable to connect the phone to the monitor. (You can also cast DeX to select screens wirelessly.)

When in DeX mode, you can resize Android apps and have them all open in separate windows. It’s a proper computing platform, though you probably won’t want to use this as a permanent laptop replacement or anything of the sort. It’s great if you’re visiting another office, or working out of a coffee shop or airplane (if you have a portable display). We have a whole guide to setting up and using DeX here.

How I Test Phones

I’ve been reviewing smartphones for a decade, but one of my earliest smart devices was a Samsung Galaxy Captivate, which I got for “free” from my carrier at the time. After working during college, I finally saved enough cash for a Galaxy S3, my first flagship. I’ve spent years using Samsung phones in my personal life and began reviewing them for work not too long after.

With each Samsung smartphone, I always put my personal SIM card inside and spend as long as I can (a few weeks) using the phone as my own. I do camera testing and compare the results with similarly priced devices, I benchmark performance and play graphically demanding games to see how they fare, I try out all the new features, and even take calls to make sure that ol’ function still works fine.

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Want Google out of your life? It’s pretty easy to find alternative search, email, and photo storage providers, but it’s much harder to come up with a mobile operating system that’s free of Google. The obvious answer is an iPhone, but if you want Google out of your life, you probably don’t want to immediately replace it with Apple. While a little better from a privacy standpoint, Apple is still not great.

Fear not, privacy-conscious WIRED reader, there are alternatives to Android. Technically speaking, most alternative mobile operating systems are based on Android, not alternatives to it, but these various projects all remove Google and Google-related services (to varying degrees) from the system. Typically that means all the Google services are stripped out and replaced with some alternative code (usually the micro g project), which is then sandboxed in some way to isolate it and restrict what it has access to. The result is a phone that is less dependent on Google, pries less into your privacy, and sometimes might offer a more secure experience. However, at their core, these are all still based on Android.

If you want a true alternative to Android, there are a few. I am sorry to say, free software fans, the best and most functional alternative to Android is still iOS. Most people looking for Android alternatives are not, however, looking to switch to an Apple device. There are a couple of Linux-based phone systems out there, most notably SailfishOS, which can run Android apps (I will be testing this next), but in my testing, none of the Linux-based operating systems are ready to be your everyday device.

Best Preinstalled Phone: Fairphone 6 With /e/OS

The best de-Googled phone experience for most people is going to be Murena’s /e/OS version of the Fairphone 6. Not only does it offer the full /e/OS experience out of the box, with a strong focus on privacy and blocking apps from tracking you, but the Fairphone hardware is repairable, the battery replaceable, and the bootloader is locked. The catch, if you’re in the United States, is that the Fairphone 6 only works with T-Mobile and its MVNOs. Somewhat ironically, it worked great on GoogleFi when editor Julian Chokkattu tested it last year. I tested it using T-Mobile’s prepaid plan, as well as RedPocket’s T-Mobile-based service, and had no issues with either.

The Fairphone 6 gets even better when you put /e/OS on it. Thanks to the privacy-first design of /e/OS, apps no longer track you, but they do still work 99 percent of the time, which is often not the case with some apps on alternate OSes (looking at you, banking apps).

The core of the privacy features in /e/OS revolve around the Advanced Privacy app and widget. Here you can block (or chose to allow) in-app trackers, and there are other features such as hiding your IP address or geolocation when you feel like it. The IP and geo-spoofing are nice for limited-use cases, but the main privacy feature for most of us is the ability to block trackers in apps—and it turns out there are a lot of those.

Murena also ships /e/OS with a very nice custom app store, the App Lounge. It’s similar to the Play Store, but with extras like privacy information about each app. Under each listing in the App Lounge you’ll see a grade from 1 to 10, where 1 is horrible for privacy and 10 generally means no trackers. The App Lounge also grades apps according to which permissions they require. The fewer permissions (like access to your photos or geodata), the higher the rating.