Samsung TouchWiz has been dead for several years now, their OneUI is in what, third iteration now? From aesthetic and usability point, it is indeed nicer than stock android.

i suppose thats a matter of taste .. i moved from stock android to s20+, and i agree its not as bad as previous samsung touchwiz era :)

but then i declined most of the samsung apps - google already has all my data and i dont want to share it with samsung on top of that, and then samsung also included third party services such as a dialer app which i didn't use because of the (lack of) privacy policy

overall i'm looking forward to getting back to stock android!

I prefer Samsung apps over Google's for the simple reason that they do not insist on uploading my stuff anywhere.

E.g. Google Photos had two choices for the cloud service: start uploading now or upload later (and nagging meanwhile). There's no option for not interested, don't bother me anymore. Samsung Gallery asks for OneDrive once, but is fine with declining and not bothering me anymore.

Yes, the dialer does use third party service for screening the calls; it asked you about it, and when you declined, it respected your choice (I've declined as well).

There's a dark mode in the last 2? 3? versions? The main problem with Android wrt visual jank is now that lockscreen doesn't respect the night light, that night light fades in after unlock instead of being on immediately and that the automatic brightness has feedback loops that make brightness spike when display turns on or changes to white content (sensor detects phone light as ambient and turns up the brightness, over and over).