This mirrors my experience. I had an S3, and my experiences with that and having to deal with the S4 for work turned me off of Samsung entirely.
Later on I ended up upgrading from my HTC One M8 to a refurbished S8 (it was one of the only phones on the market that was small enough for my tastes), and honestly I love it. All the flashy aesthetic stuff I had scoffed at Samsung for (curved screen edges, etc) ended up feeling really great once I was using the phones, ignoring Bixby gives me a free extra hardware button, the Samsung apps stack up pretty nicely against the stock Android ones, UI themeing works better than it ever did for me on other phones, and accessory availability is excellent due to their popularity.
Honestly, more phones should start adding extra remappable hardware buttons.
Later on I ended up upgrading from my HTC One M8 to a refurbished S8 (it was one of the only phones on the market that was small enough for my tastes), and honestly I love it. All the flashy aesthetic stuff I had scoffed at Samsung for (curved screen edges, etc) ended up feeling really great once I was using the phones, ignoring Bixby gives me a free extra hardware button, the Samsung apps stack up pretty nicely against the stock Android ones, UI themeing works better than it ever did for me on other phones, and accessory availability is excellent due to their popularity.
Honestly, more phones should start adding extra remappable hardware buttons.