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The Samsung Galaxy S23’s bloated Android build somehow uses 60GB of storage

389 points by carride 4y ago

causi 4y ago
It's sad. There are a lot of things I love about Samsung phones. Double-tapping the power button to turn the flashlight on, the Samsung TTS engine, DeX mode, always-on OTG functionality. I can't justify the continued anti-consumer behavior though.
MiddleEndian 4y ago
Android overall is a pretty terrible experience. Phone manufacturers will pay developers to make Android worse instead of just doing nothing. But presumably they get back the cash in ads or tracking from doing that.
- WrtCdEvrydy 4y ago
  This is why I love the Nothing Phone and my older Pixel 4A. Even my Moto G7 came with a relatively unbothered experience.
  - LightHugger 4y ago
    No headphone jack, it's not worth buying.
    - WrtCdEvrydy 4y ago
      Pixel 4A has one. I didn't even notice the Nothing Phone didn't until you just pointed it out.
    - TillE 4y ago
      I wish Apple still made a nice, inexpensive iPod Nano. That was my favorite "MP3 player", and I'd gladly go without a headphone jack on the phone if I could still have a separate portable music device that wasn't garbage.
- grumpyprole 4y ago
  For me, iPhone is a terrible experience, e.g no proper FLAC support and poor Bluetooth codec support.
  - MiddleEndian 4y ago
    I can't say I'm a fan of iPhones either lol
    - pessimizer 4y ago
      Apple/Google partisans think that criticism of Apple/Google is a form of praise for Google/Apple that lets them off the hook.
      - grumpyprole 4y ago
        Isn't the split more Apple/Not-apple? The Samsung is perfectly usable without the Google ecosystem.
    - grumpyprole 4y ago
      As long as we can agree they are both terrible, then all is good :)
malermeister 4y ago
Samsung makes great hardware, but their software is a deal breaker. If only they could leave stock Android in peace they could be making great phones...
- kevincox 4y ago
  But they make so much money shoveling bloatware and ads on every device that they create. That's enough to make me never give another penny to Samgsung. (Well at least directly, their hardware is often used to make other devices which are hard to avoid.)
  - ddalex 4y ago
    But their phone HW is SOOOO nice, I think it beats even apple on how beautiful, light and sparkly it is.
    - malermeister 4y ago
      And they often have best-in-class camera hardware, too. All squandered thanks to a terrible software strategy.
      - phpisthebest 4y ago
        The S23 mainly uses the same Sony Sensors that are in the Pixel 7 Pro.....
      - magicalhippo 4y ago
        I have a S21. It takes pretty terrible pictures, like all smeared out and void of details. Do I need to use a third-party camera app or something?
  - joseph_grobbles 4y ago
    [dead]
  - shortcake27 4y ago
neilv 4y ago
Maybe the same logic that led to all the lenses. https://www.theonion.com/fuck-everything-were-doing-five-blades-1819584036 https://www.theonion.com/fuck-everything-were-doing-five-bla...
- therein 4y ago
  Yeah, what were they thinking. That thing looks disturbingly ugly. This multi-lens thing is getting out of hand.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
notinfuriated 4y ago
Wonder when they'll just start packaging garbage files to waste storage space to entice customers to buy the phone with the largest drive by default.
- bitwize 4y ago
  More stuff for Joey Pardella to find when he hacks your phone!
- booboofixer 4y ago
  Lorem Ipsum - Official Lyrics Video 4K 120Hz (8 hours)
0xbadcafebee 4y ago
It's already ridiculous that Android takes up 15GB. What the hell are they putting in there?! Modern technology is so depressing.
- enticeing 4y ago
  From the article, it sounds like it's roughly half that on the Pixel 7 at least, around 7-8Gb, since they use an A/B os partition scheme to make OS updates work better.
- ChuckNorris89 4y ago
  >What the hell are they putting in there?! Several ISOs of Call of Duty: MW2 and a BluRay-rip of Jingle All the Way.
- f1refly 4y ago
  Actual android takes about 800MiB, judging from the lineagos flashable zip files.
iforgotpassword 4y ago
Holy spacewasting shovelware batman! At what point would it make sense to mandate that the manufacturer has to put the net space on the packaging and on their product page? Advertising a phone with 128gb of storage and half is already gone right out of the box almost sounds like fraud.
- IronWolve 4y ago
  And no sdcard expansion.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
ChickenNugger 4y ago
I laughed out loud at this part: >It's the size of two Windows 11 installs, side by side. What could Samsung possibly be putting in there?!
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
dagmx 4y ago
While I agree that this requires criticism, this felt unnecessary from the author > We can take a few guesses as to why things are so big. First, Samsung is notorious for having a shoddy software division that pumps out low-quality code. The company tends to change everything in Android just for change's sake, and it's hard to imagine those changes are very good.
- ryeights 4y ago
  Samsung is the undisputed king of Android crapware. There's no crime in calling a spade a spade
- mouse_ 4y ago
  I don't think that it's unnecessary. Samsung's "Not-Invented-Here" syndrome causes legitimate problems, and it is increasingly becoming a notable reason to steer clear of their products.
- OnlineGladiator 4y ago
  I genuinely do not understand why people protest others sharing negative opinions. The author dislikes Samsung's software and he's writing about it. I tend to agree with him, although I stopped buying Samsung years ago so maybe it's changed. Why is it problematic for him to share something that many people agree with? Why can't people fucking complain about shit sucking? Are we going to give Meta the benefit of the doubt the next time they say they care about our privacy or are we going to learn from history and call out a company on their lazy practices?
  - themitigating 4y ago
    "Why can't people fucking complain about shit sucking?" Not if it isn't justified
    - OnlineGladiator 4y ago
      Having used Samsung products in the past - how is it not justified?
eweise 4y ago
That's why I bought a Google Pixel. Had a Samsung phone and couldn't stand all the crapware they put on it.
- topicseed 4y ago
  Loved my Samsung S21 Ultra overall, but holy moly the installed apps... Anyway, now with a Pixel 7 Pro and would take a lot to make me go astray.
newaccount2021 4y ago
[dead]
rolenthedeep 4y ago
This kind of shit is why I've decided to avoid Samsung wherever possible. I bought a galaxy watch years ago and got sucked in with a galaxy flagship phone and the Samsung earbuds. Every Samsung device I've ever owned since the galaxy s4 has been utter trash. The watch was never useful because Samsung wanted to create their own app ecosystem and all but abandoned it. My note 10+ is full of bugs and rooting it is entirely out of the question. My earbuds have been nothing but trouble and are thankfully finally dead enough that I can justify replacing them. Can't wait for this phone to finally die so I can replace it with something that I don't actively hate.
- ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago
  I agree. I tried every other brand to avoid apple but came back to apple this year. Samsung is bloatware and janky and google pixel was incredible but had really poor battery life and somehow even though android looked great, iOS did tiny micro interactions so much better. E.g. when holding the space in iOS, the whole keyboard becomes a virtual touchpad vs android where you can only go left or right horizontally.
- capitainenemo 4y ago
  Their software is terrible, but their hardware is pretty nice. Shame they've been paring it down over the years. Pinnacle of their hardware, IMO was the Galaxy Note 4. Had their "antiglare AMOLED" (admittedly still not ideal for long device lifespan and outdoor use), wacom stylus with hover and right click (awesome for local or remote desktop sessions), replaceable battery, IR blaster, blood oxygen sensor, pulse measurement, audio jack, physical buttons. Nowdays I make do with their 2022 XCover6 - but I miss the features I lost.
  - GuB-42 4y ago
    I still have my Galaxy Note 4. It refuses to die, and manufacturers refuse to give it a competitor. It may be its last year though, even though it is perfectly functional, and I blame app developers for that. It runs Android 6, and for the last couple of years, developers have been dropping support. LineageOS is an option, though on that particular phone, it is not as good as stock, and know some apps are going to piss me off because of SafetyNet. It is also starting to lack in processing power, as apps get more and more demanding even though they don't offer more in terms of features. My next phone is probably going to be the XCover6 too. Seems to be the only decent phone with a removeable battery, with the FairPhone, but the FairPhone has no SD card, no headphone jack, and I find it overpriced. BTW, the S5 was also an excellent phone, a combination of the two would have been perfect. It lacked a stylus, but it was waterproof and built like a tank even though it wasn't a rugged phone. It it also supported hovering on its touchscreen (called Air View), a feature I don't understand why it isn't present in every phone today, if just for its ability to support "hover" target in web pages. Its hardware implementation is also pretty cheap and clever: it is just a particular way of driving the capacitive touchscreen.
saagarjha 4y ago
Has anyone looked into what this is? I feel like this must be a bug, or a significant oversight at least.
- kylepdm 4y ago
  Nah, I think they just really "ship their org structure".
- wvenable 4y ago
  For all the comments about "shovelware" here there's actually no way that all their software could take up all that space. It should be easy for someone with access to the phone to see what's actually in that partition.
- laweijfmvo 4y ago
  Also curious. Having two Calculator apps != 60GB. It's gotta be some random data/model/locale stuff?
snozolli 4y ago
I have a Samsung S20 and I'll never buy another Samsung phone again unless they drastically change course. Their dumb insistence on fighting Google at every turn means that Google Fi's Visual Voicemail is broken on Samsung devices. I also get regular nag notifications to create or log into a Samsung account, agree to some Samsung TOS that I'm not even a part of, or other nonsense. The phone looks sleek, but the rounded edges mean that the edge of the screen is distorted and useless, and combined with the slick surfaces it practically catapult itself off of common household furnishing. The much-touted, three-lens camera isn't even any good! The photos are dull, over-processed, and show lens distortion at various points across the image.
- hnburnsy 4y ago
  Use the Universal Android Debloater. It makes your Samsung phone like the early Oneplus phones, clean and fast. Super happy with my S20 Ultra after having Oneplus for years. Tip get a certified refurb from Amazon, 90 days to return if not happy.
  - acchow 4y ago
    I just read through the installation instructions for Universal Android Debloater. I can see why everyone just wants to buy an iPhone instead.
- ysleepy 4y ago
  I have an S21 and I'm very happy. https://github.com/0x192/universal-android-debloater https://github.com/0x192/universal-android-debloater I disabled most of samsung's stuff though, no nagging for a samsung account or anything.
  - askonomm 4y ago
    > I'm very happy 1. Buy phone 2. Disable most stuff 3. Use some experimental third party tool to "debloat" phone I don't know, that's the exact stuff that would make me the opposite of happy.
bruh2 4y ago
What brand of Android phones would you guys usually go for? anything that gives smooth, AOSP, non-flashy experience?
- xnx 4y ago
  I have only used and would only ever consider Google Nexus / Pixel phones. The modifications made by every third party seem to make things worse.
- xxpor 4y ago
  Pixel.
- mrguyorama 4y ago
  Pixel phones are great for a clean android experience, but you have to wholeheartedly sell your soul to google. Midrange motorola phones can also be clean and open.
  - mey 4y ago
    Nova launcher on the Pixel is a great combo for a non-rooted clean Android experience. You can disable many Google tracking/privacy things at that point, have a clean UI and quick security updates. One issue I have run into is Google breaking app switching on occasion because they want to use their launcher as the app switcher. Haven't seen this issue in the last year thankfully.
  - somat 4y ago
    I have an old refurb pixel 3 I bought to put linage OS on but it was a verizon device and has a locked bootloader. sigh so no alternate android for me.. Anyway I am using it as a daily driver with the stock pixel android package and have zero google accounts. I mainly use f-droid and adb.
    - sanchay 4y ago
      Check out Aurora store as an alternative to Play Store No Google login yet have access to all apps without the hassle of adb I personally use F-droid + Aurora Store.
gidorah 4y ago
Having two versions of the same apps (Android and Samsaung) would drive me insane. Why does anyone put up with this?
- wvenable 4y ago
  Am I weird that I actually prefer the Samsung versions of most apps? I use Samsung email, notes, messages, health, etc.
  - soco 4y ago
    No you're not alone. Plus the zillion of alternatives which one can choose instead of complaining about app x. Why should I care they use space? My pictures use way more space... I selected Samsung based on camera reviews and it delivers just that.
  - gidorah 4y ago
    Not at all weird. My main grievance would be not being able to uninstall apps I don't use, not that someone else prefers another app.
    - nikau 4y ago
      you can uninstall apps via adb - if not my s8 would have ended up thrown in the bin as the stupid bixby button couldn't be disabled any other way at the time.
- staticman2 4y ago
  I don't see why it's a big deal? I put google calender on my home screen and never click on Samsung Calendar. I prefer Samsung health so never click on Google Health. Why should that drive me insane?
- MBCook 4y ago
  I think Samsung has to include the Google stuff to get the Play store, don’t they? So it’s either both or just Google. And the want to differentiate (for better or worse) from stock Android. I can’t see them ditching the play store, so here they are.
TomK32 4y ago
> Another round of crapware will also be included if you buy a phone from a carrier, i.e., all the Verizon apps and whatever space they want to sell to third parties. The average amount users are reporting is 60GB, but crapware deals change across carriers and countries, so it will be different for everyone. So that 60GB is with additional apps the carrier forces onto you.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  Why is why no one should buy devices from the mobile network operators, in the US. That has been true ever since iPhone came out and broke their stranglehold on selling malware laden devices.
andyjohnson0 4y ago
> Samsung may want to give the appearance of having its own non-Google ecosystem, and to do that, it clones every Google app that comes with its devices. Samsung is contractually obligated to include the Google apps, so you get both the Google and Samsung versions. Unfortunately this is nothing new. I bought a Galaxy S7+ table nearly two years ago and it was infested with crappy Samsung apps (two calculators... why?). Eventually I used adb to uninstall a bunch of stuff, but they're still taking up storage space even if I can't see them. Absurd. Apart from the crapware it's a decent tablet though.
- petodo 4y ago
  > Eventually I used adb to uninstall a bunch of stuff, but they're still taking up storage space even if I can't see them. Absurd. So you didn't uninstall them, you disabled them.
  - andyjohnson0 4y ago
    > So you didn't uninstall them, you disabled them. No, I installed them. Samsung had marked them as being non-uninstallable via the Android Settings UI, so I used `adb -d shell pm uninstall --user 0 <packagename>` to forcibly uninstall them, although (as I said) the code is still in the rom. Simply disabling them could be done using the UI, or with `adb -d shell pm disable <packagename>`, but they'd still be cluttering the apps list - which is not what I wanted.
    - sprayk 4y ago
      uninstalling should not work at all on at least some of those apps, as they will exist on the read-only system partition (that only gets touched when the phone updates).
      - andyjohnson0 4y ago
        It worked for me. I assume it removes them from the OS's database of installed apps, even though it doesnt remove the executable code. I wrote some notes at https://andyjohnson.uk/blog/2021/07/17/cleaning-up-a-samsung-galaxy-tab-s7/ https://andyjohnson.uk/blog/2021/07/17/cleaning-up-a-samsung...
durnygbur 4y ago
I'm unable to count how many times I bricked my and my family's Samsung phones in attempt to remove bloatware apps and services. You think it's as easy a one liner with service name and `adb uninstall`? oooops wrong service, now you have to hard reset and reinstall the device...
- hnburnsy 4y ago
  Universal Android Debloater, will detect your model and suggest what to remove that is safe.
gentle 4y ago
I've moved from a Samsung S10+ to a Google Pixel 6 Pro and I couldn't be happier, and it's mainly because of November like this. I also hate that they got rid of their headphone jacks and removable storage. They were the few differentiations that kept me on Samsung.
jpeter 4y ago
At least the S23 has no Exynos version. The battery was a joke on my S10e. I now have a Google Pixel 7 and the battery lasts 2x to 3x as long.
- fomine3 4y ago
  Inform: You're using customized Exynos again!
shp0ngle 4y ago
This article is kind of content free :( I remember Ars Technica being actually technical? The only actual information here is "Samsung Android is 60GB" and "Samsung doesn't use A/B paritioning". Which is nice, but can you give me more information? What is actually on there?
- pleasantpeasant 4y ago
  This is the future of AI internet articles. Short, less details, uninteresting, and a clickbait title.
  - AtlasBarfed 4y ago
    Your comment made me realize that reddit and HN and other semi-legit upvote/downvote sites are going to get even more important in the AI listicle era.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
AdmiralAsshat 4y ago
Samsung hardware is top-notch, but the software bloat is ridiculous. The problem is they make some OS changes that are actually useful to the end-user, especially when Google seems to be asleep at the wheel. We got really really close for a couple years there when HTC was shipping excellent hardware (the HTC One line) along with an interface that felt like a barely-skinned vanilla Android operating system. But then they kept hemorrhaging money, losing market position, and sold off most of their engineers to Google. Oh well...
- BugsJustFindMe 4y ago
  > Samsung hardware is top-notch Sometimes. In some ways. Their appliances (washer/dryer/etc) are notoriously unreliable, and their phone batteries appear to swell more than others.
  - gjsman-1000 4y ago
    Can speak to that. We went with a Samsung kitchen about ~5 years ago. 2 Dishwashers, 1 Refrigerator, 1 Robot Vacuum, and 2 Stoves later... well, we still have the 2nd Samsung Refrigerator (covered in dents though because the "stainless steel" is apparently super thin) and the Microwave (though we have been told it has a critical flaw, so treat the door gently), but everything else isn't Samsung anymore. It just all broke in one way or another. We also had a Galaxy Note9 in the family that became ludicrously slow after a year and started dropping phone calls - apparently a known software issue that randomly plagued people, absolutely no fix to this day, software reset will not fix. We basically went to all Bosch and Apple after that. Heaven help anyone who bought recent high-end Samsung SSDs and doesn't read the news.
  - kop316 4y ago
    > Their appliances (washer/dryer/etc) are notoriously unreliable Yep. I am in a house that is all Sanmsung appliances. The Dishwasher's intake valve started leaking, the Oven's LCD panel broke and only showed garbled information, and the dryer's heating source broke. These were all appliances bought in 2019. Thankfully, I was able to get replacement parts for the first two and fix easily enough, but there was no way to easily fix the dryer (I ended up getting a new dryer). There is no way I would buy a Samsung Appliance again, and it frankly makes me question the quality of anything they make.
homero 4y ago
Then they take away the micro SD card for no legit reason
sschueller 4y ago
That would explain why they got rid of the 128 GB version. Insane the amount of disk space we waste when we managed to fit incredible games on a few KBs in the 80s. It feels like when you build more highway lanes. Induced demand.
- grujicd 4y ago
  They didn't for the smallest S23 (non-plus, non-ultra), it still has 128GB option.
  - valzam 4y ago
    But for the next 2 weeks you get the 256gb for the price of 128gb, maybe not a coincidence...
dredmorbius 4y ago
What Google giveth, Samsung taketh away. (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_and_Bill%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_and_Bill%27s_law>)
dangus 4y ago
Pile this onto the evidence mountain for "yet another reason to not buy anything from Samsung." And not just phones: washers, dryers, refrigerators, TVs, dishwashers you name it. Samsung is rarely a market leader, so you're basically never missing out by choosing someone else instead of them..
LorenDB 4y ago
Reason number #107 to not use Samsung products.
MSFT_Edging 4y ago
I bought an s22 on fi because they offered a great deal. I really need a smaller phone and the smallest pixel just felt like garbage in the hand. I really hate the limitations the samsung phones have but I really don't know what else to buy. It seems like a simple ask to have a smallish phone with good build quality but it simply doesn't exist, and if it does it will almost always never get updates.
xnavra50 4y ago
They will never learn.
boarush 4y ago
So no one here seems to have actually used a recent Samsung device. "System" includes user apps and system apps unless "My Files" is granted the permission for usage access. Several comments on the article and in the Twitter thread have already pointed it out.
nikolay 4y ago
I'm not sure why Samsung keeps doing this - there are many apps, their store conflicts often with Google Play Store. Yes, they offer stellar hardware, but I am now considering Pixel! And you can uninstall most of their "system" apps!
Tade0 4y ago
Never mind the bloatware, why have phones have become so bloated in both weight and dimensions? The S23 at 168g is by far the lightest Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 phone(runner-up is 185g), but that's still heavy. What gives?
- kypro 4y ago
  I wonder how much it has to do with it being easier to post flagship stats in a larger chassis? Although I think the right answer is simply that people prefer larger screens for video and phones today make much better use of empty space.
- knaik94 4y ago
  I don't mind the size at all because it means a nice big battery. I can't tell you the difference between 350g and 200g while holding it. Has the weight ever been an issue where it's made your hand tired? I understand the frustration of big screens though, I personally prefer them but I also haven't had issues reaching things with my thumbs regardless of phone size.
  - hocuspocus 4y ago
    I can most certainly tell the difference between an iPhone and a much lighter Android phone of the same size. I had an Essential before my Pixel 5 and I hated the extra weight. The S23 lineup is actually quite reasonable here.
  - Tade0 4y ago
    > Has the weight ever been an issue where it's made your hand tired? It becomes a problem when you're lying on your back. Also when it slips out of your hand, it's harder to catch. Not major concerns for most of the population I suppose, but it affects me. As for dimensions large phones appear to be particularly difficult to use for women. My SO is getting her first-gen iPhone SE refurbished because it's the last such light and small offering from that manufacturer and up to very recently it could run the most recent iOS.
- jakub_g 4y ago
cheriot 4y ago
I was just reading about Digital Turbine over the weekend. That's the company Samsung and others use to conduct real time bidding for which apps are preinstalled (when a new phone is activated). They handle ads for other pieces of bloatware like built-in news feeds as well. I had no idea the bloatware had become so advanced. It sounds like Samsung inflicts plenty of additional damage with their own copies of google's apps.
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  Wow that is such a second rate thing to do. Delegate an important design choice to “the highest bidder” instead of curate the best experience for the user.
lleb97a 4y ago
I'm typing this on an S7 that refuses to die. Not looking forward to buying a new phone.
- jonas-w 4y ago
  Same, typing this on a s10+ which is still supported (i think), but also not looking forward to buy a new one.
unit_circle 4y ago
I'm just holding out hope my S22 lasts until we have an iPhone with a USB-C port.
knaik94 4y ago
This is the reason why I ended up with a non flagship, mid-tier, moto phone that allowed me to unlock the bootloader and root. Headphone jack and microsd card support was also a very high priority, and the reason why I didn't end up with a pixel. I want complete control over my device. With recent Android version it seems like Google is locking down the OS and making it closer to how iOS is. It's becoming harder to find good phones that allow bootloader unlocks and rooting while also being supported by AT&T, which I am tied to because of a family plan. Samsung phones, even if you buy the US non-carrier variant, don't allow bootloader unlocking. AT&T provisions VoLTE and VoWifi based on a Whitelist of phone models so international variants won't work on the network at all. A microsd card slow wouldn't fix the underlying issue of bloat but would at least decrease the impact of it.
- abdullahkhalids 4y ago
  Do bank apps still work with the rooted phone?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - FieryTransition 4y ago
    Would like to know this as well, I rooted my oneplus recently, and the moment the secure boot chain of trust broke, no security sensitive apps worked. I've signed my own secure boot loader on Linux, but I don't know if you can do it on Android at all, since you don't have keys or can modify the secure storage easily.
    - knaik94 4y ago
      I am not sure what you mean by security sensitive app. Something like Samsung Knox will not work after you unlock the bootloader but that's because of the assumptions it needs to make in order to promise user data integrity. It's similar to apps requiring TPM for data/disk encryption. Self signing wouldn't restore that chain of trust. Those apps breaking is working as intended, none of the financial apps I use were affected. There's option for systemless root. Also, I know companies have used the root status as a form of DRM. That's not about user security, it's about protecting DRM security, like Widevine L1 or L3 and the android Netflix app. Financial apps haven't been an issue for me, I am running bootloader unlocked and rooted using Magisk.
lockhouse 4y ago
Meanwhile my iPhone has a little over 12G used by iOS and System Data. I know I’m comparing Apples to Oranges, err ummm Androids here, but still!
- tux2bsd 4y ago
  [dead]
dopa42365 4y ago
A single TB of a high speed NVMe SSD is as little as 50€ (and Samsung is paying a fraction of that, of course). Why even obsess over a few cents of storage so much?
- danbruc 4y ago
  It does not only take up space on disk, you also have to load all that stuff into memory, which costs time and money. You might make your caches less effective which costs performance or more money for larger caches. You have to download updates which cost time and bandwidth and maybe money. Of course that all depends on the exact source and nature of the bloat, but just saying that the disk space is just a couple of cents is probably not adequate.
- notatoad 4y ago
  according to samsung's current pre-order promotion [1], an extra 128GB of storage is a $240 upgrade. that 60GB is worth $120, not pennies. [1] https://www.samsung.com/ca/smartphones/galaxy-s23/buy/ https://www.samsung.com/ca/smartphones/galaxy-s23/buy/
valzam 4y ago
As someone who has used a S10e for 4 years and just ordered a S23 I think people are blowing the "bloatware" way out of proportion. I use the Samsung apps I want, the rest are disabled/tucked away in a folder. I never get bothered to update the ones I don't use. My wife has a pixel 6a, I don't see how my Samsung is any more bloated after 5 mins of setup. In fact OneUI allows you to make everything look a lot more minimal and cleaner than the default pixel setup with it's huge buttons, colours everywhere and the google search bar you can't get rid of.
- Xeamek 4y ago
  Exactly. People have this weird idea that some how google's closed source, data grabbing "use our service please" implementation of file browser is more "pure android" then samsungs one. Where in fact it is either the same, or the samsung one is actually less 'in your face' with being a oem-made product
- anthomtb 4y ago
  Maybe folks are confusing Samsung with Xiaomi.
  - nsonha 4y ago
    MIUI eu is less bloat than Samsung, Google even.
- valzam 4y ago
  I think the only app I was concerned about is Facebook being installed. But I deactivated it right when I got the phone and never had to touch it again.
- cleanchit 4y ago
  I don't want to spend an entire day disabling shit and uninstalling games that the vendor installed on my phone automatically.
- somerandomqaguy 4y ago
  Depends on the phone. For Canadian Galaxy series, Samsung bakes in the carrier firmware into the base images and factory resets itself the first time you insert a SIM. For example if you buy a S23 unlocked from Costco and then insert a Telus SIM card, it factory resets itself to the firmware the that Telus has specces. That includes system level app MyTelus, Facebook, Netflix, Amazon, and a few others that I can't remember right now.l. So if you like to do setup before inserting a SIM card, all the changes you've made get blown away (supposed to only happen the first time though). What's more, Samsung phones tend to be very unsolicited notification heavy the first few days to draw your attention to all of the new features that they have. Whether you care or not i.e. the S20 will throw a notification about how you can change the background wallpaper. On the Pixel at least Google chose to wait until you accessed a feature to start throwing these 'tips' at you. So at least for me, Samsung phones aren't a pleasant experience to deal with. >In fact OneUI allows you to make everything look a lot more minimal and cleaner than the default pixel setup with it's huge buttons, colours everywhere and the google search bar you can't get rid of. Perhaps but it is still faster to install Nova launcher and tweak one or two settings to remove the search bar, then it is to disable 10 or so individual apps bundled in Samsung phones.
chenxiaolong 4y ago
The firmware is not available on the FOTA (OTA update metadata) server yet, but if you know the exact version number, you can download the firmware from Samsung FUS ("firmware update service"). Looking at the European S23 Ultra (model: SM-S918B, sales code: EUX, version: S918BXXU1AWA6/S918BOXM1AWA6): * The compressed firmware is 9.2 GiB. * The total image size after decompression and desparsing is 12 GiB. I'm not sure why the device mentioned in the article would be reporting 60 GB, but I'm guessing it's counting some data in the userdata partition. Due to AVB's (Android Verified Boot) use of footers, the image size in the firmware package must match the actual partition size. So the 60 GB can't be the sum of all the read-only OS partitions. * The biggest image is `super` -> `system` at 5.4 GiB. * All of the images contained within the dm-linear `super` partition are formatted with the new erofs filesystem. I didn't know any devices shipped with that yet. Even the Pixel 7 series is still using ext4 for read-only partitions. * The complete partition table and file list (after image extraction): https://gist.github.com/chenxiaolong/a4c70376f8e5ba0b4f415470ba7948af https://gist.github.com/chenxiaolong/a4c70376f8e5ba0b4f41547...
- game_the0ry 4y ago
  So the android build is not 60 GB? I feel like this discussion could be easily resolved just by going to best buy and seeing how much free GB is on a 128gb demo device.
  - metadat 4y ago
    This would be a solution, except the S23 hasn't actually launched yet, so it's not available to inspect at any retailer. Looks like the launch will be on Feb 17, 2023 (11 days from today).
- MishaalRahman 4y ago
  >* All of the images contained within the dm-linear `super` partition are formatted with the new erofs filesystem. I didn't know any devices shipped with that yet. Even the Pixel 7 series is still using ext4 for read-only partitions. Several OEMs (apart from Huawei, who developed it) have been using EROFS in their mobile devices for a while now, notably Xiaomi and OPPO. Google actually tried to make EROFS an Android 13 launch requirement, but they postponed this requirement (and didn't ship it on the Pixel 7) when they discovered a regression in app launch times.
Xeamek 4y ago
I understand not everyone may like samsung's spin on basic apps and thats fine... But to pretend the google ones are 'true android' and everyone else's are somehow inherently fake is approaching Apple's fan level of fanaticism. Stock android is long dead and if you actually go into androids repository, all the basics app have been abandoned. What you get with pixel is exactly the same what you get with samsung: closed source apps. One was made by Google and the other one by samsung. But ultimately they aren't any closer to 'pure android' then going into market place and just downloading a third-party calendar or calculator from there. But also, samsung does try to make stuff themselves, not just "copy" basic google apps: samsung Dex or Knox are features that are fairly unique when compared to other android vendors. Also, there is much more customization. So while it doesn't completely excuse the fact of using more space then pixels version of android, there are some feature differences that make this disparity less outrageous.
- NoboruWataya 4y ago
  I basically want something as close as possible to GrapheneOS but which can run Google Wallet (and which is guaranteed to run my banking apps). So a nice, clean, stock Android where the default apps are removable or as unobtrusive as possible (so I can install FOSS equivalents from F-Droid) would be nice.
  - nelblu 4y ago
    Try calyxos with microG.
  - jacooper 4y ago
    So a pixel.
    - NoboruWataya 4y ago
      I think so. My next phone will likely be a Pixel or a Fairphone.
    - MikusR 4y ago
      Pixels don't run stock android
mensetmanusman 4y ago
They should have a separate ssd for the OS that is hidden from the 512 GB the user had for storage/apps.
redbell 4y ago
> A company like Facebook will buy a spot on Samsung's system partition, where it can get more intrusive system permissions that aren't granted to app store apps, letting it more effectively spy on users. Wow! I never thought about this! If it is true that pre-installed apps will have a VIP, sudo-like permissions that are not granted to user-installed apps, then, they should be permanently disabled (since technically, you can't uninstall them), or at least, the ones having a proven spying record in the past.
- FloatArtifact 4y ago
  I wish this was explored more in the article.
jeroenhd 4y ago
The only sources for this article are two screenshots from Twitter. The article is written by someone who clearly has some beef with Samsung as well, which comes with a bunch of assertions about bloatware. Even if every user-interfaceable app were to have an entire copy of Chromium like many desktop apps these days do, you wouldn't end up with 60 whole gigabytes. As analyzed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34685858 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34685858 the system partition and the apps that come with it are only a part of the reported size. I don't know why Samsung needs an ungodly 12 gigabytes of space but I'm not surprised given how much "desktop OS" features are built into it (DeX with input hardware is a capable desktop/laptop replacement for more people than you'd expect!) My guess, because Samsung wouldn't be the first to make this mistake[1]: something may be logging constantly to a writeable OS partition, or caching something without size constraints. At first and during testing these logs take up megabytes of space, but during weeks or months of usage these logs may quickly grow out of control. Android's space analysis can't attribute the log file to any specific system app, but it's in a place that only system apps can access to it would categorize this data as "system". [1]: after a quick Google: https://community.oneplus.com/thread/1416848 https://community.oneplus.com/thread/1416848 https://androidforums.com/threads/system-data-growing-out-of-control.513566/ https://androidforums.com/threads/system-data-growing-out-of... https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/system-data-keeps-expanding-and-wont-shrink-eliminating-all-free-space.3570852/ https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/system-data-keeps-expandi... https://forums.androidcentral.com/ask-question/1043714-why-system-storage-taking-all-available-space.html https://forums.androidcentral.com/ask-question/1043714-why-s...
- fomine3 4y ago
  This article is half baked. I'd like to see du or something like that
r1ch 4y ago
It's disappointing how much junk gets shipped in non-Google ROMs and how little OEMs seem to care. I bought a Xiaomi phone several years ago and in addition to the usual bloatware it came complete with Qualcomm radio debugging tools running in the background, including a copy of tcpdump running on all interfaces constantly logging to the internal storage. I rooted and removed it, but after Google Pay and various other apps stopped working I decided to upgrade to the latest model last year. I was sure that in the three years since my old phone that someone at Xiaomi would have noticed battery-sapping debug tools running in the background of their ROM. Of course the new phone has the exact same problem.
plantain 4y ago
Samsung as a company is a terrible experience - horrible first party sales experience, unfathomably bad support. I can't bring myself to buy from them again. My guess is they just tick along from their tight vertical integration and competent hardware division that lets the rest of the company drag their feet.
Willish42 4y ago
Complaints about Samsung's software aside, it's ridiculous that we can't uninstall nonessential apps.
- tux2bsd 4y ago
  [dead]
lawgimenez 4y ago
If anyone's looking for a decent Android phone, try Infinix. I just bought one and it's surprisingly good and cheap. 256GB/8GB RAM storage for less than $200.
King-Aaron 4y ago
One of the nicest android UI's I've used in recent years was on my Huawei Mate20 Pro. Really seamless integration and everything 'felt' really nice. Just updated to a S22 Ultra and I freaking hate Samsung's UI. It all just feels slightly clunkier, in both function and in UX (back button location is a big one to get used to). It also tends to have a lot of input lag, particularly when scrolling in big apps like facebook or gmail. Really not happy with it as a purchase.
jrumbut 4y ago
What makes me upset is that the latest Galaxy has a horrific and completely unpredictable autocorrect which replaced a so-so but very usable and predictable predecessor. The bloat apps are bad too but the autocorrect is what's really awful.
t0bia_s 4y ago
I don’t care about their OS. Tech savy person shouldn't use OneUI anyway. However Samsung's HW is great. Hopefully they will make S23a in compact size. Then I'll gladly flash LionageOS or IodéOS here.
perryizgr8 4y ago
https://old.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/10vfdbx/bloatware_pushes_the_galaxy_s23_android_os_to_an/j7i1p0f/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/10vfdbx/bloatware_... The real reason is that Android's storage reporting is slightly buggy. Read linked comment for details.
tonymet 4y ago
Xbox series S OS build uses 152GB / 512GB storage = 30% of storage for the OS

389 points by carride 4y ago

It's sad. There are a lot of things I love about Samsung phones. Double-tapping the power button to turn the flashlight on, the Samsung TTS engine, DeX mode, always-on OTG functionality. I can't justify the continued anti-consumer behavior though.

MiddleEndian 4y ago

Android overall is a pretty terrible experience. Phone manufacturers will pay developers to make Android worse instead of just doing nothing. But presumably they get back the cash in ads or tracking from doing that.

WrtCdEvrydy 4y ago
This is why I love the Nothing Phone and my older Pixel 4A. Even my Moto G7 came with a relatively unbothered experience.
- LightHugger 4y ago
  No headphone jack, it's not worth buying.
  - WrtCdEvrydy 4y ago
    Pixel 4A has one. I didn't even notice the Nothing Phone didn't until you just pointed it out.
  - TillE 4y ago
    I wish Apple still made a nice, inexpensive iPod Nano. That was my favorite "MP3 player", and I'd gladly go without a headphone jack on the phone if I could still have a separate portable music device that wasn't garbage.
grumpyprole 4y ago
For me, iPhone is a terrible experience, e.g no proper FLAC support and poor Bluetooth codec support.
- MiddleEndian 4y ago
  I can't say I'm a fan of iPhones either lol
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    Apple/Google partisans think that criticism of Apple/Google is a form of praise for Google/Apple that lets them off the hook.
    - grumpyprole 4y ago
      Isn't the split more Apple/Not-apple? The Samsung is perfectly usable without the Google ecosystem.
  - grumpyprole 4y ago
    As long as we can agree they are both terrible, then all is good :)

malermeister 4y ago

Samsung makes great hardware, but their software is a deal breaker. If only they could leave stock Android in peace they could be making great phones...

kevincox 4y ago
But they make so much money shoveling bloatware and ads on every device that they create. That's enough to make me never give another penny to Samgsung. (Well at least directly, their hardware is often used to make other devices which are hard to avoid.)
- ddalex 4y ago
  But their phone HW is SOOOO nice, I think it beats even apple on how beautiful, light and sparkly it is.
  - malermeister 4y ago
    And they often have best-in-class camera hardware, too. All squandered thanks to a terrible software strategy.
    - phpisthebest 4y ago
      The S23 mainly uses the same Sony Sensors that are in the Pixel 7 Pro.....
    - magicalhippo 4y ago
      I have a S21. It takes pretty terrible pictures, like all smeared out and void of details. Do I need to use a third-party camera app or something?
- joseph_grobbles 4y ago
  [dead]
- shortcake27 4y ago

neilv 4y ago

Maybe the same logic that led to all the lenses. https://www.theonion.com/fuck-everything-were-doing-five-blades-1819584036 https://www.theonion.com/fuck-everything-were-doing-five-bla...

therein 4y ago
Yeah, what were they thinking. That thing looks disturbingly ugly. This multi-lens thing is getting out of hand.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

notinfuriated 4y ago

Wonder when they'll just start packaging garbage files to waste storage space to entice customers to buy the phone with the largest drive by default.

bitwize 4y ago
More stuff for Joey Pardella to find when he hacks your phone!
booboofixer 4y ago
Lorem Ipsum - Official Lyrics Video 4K 120Hz (8 hours)

0xbadcafebee 4y ago

It's already ridiculous that Android takes up 15GB. What the hell are they putting in there?! Modern technology is so depressing.

enticeing 4y ago
From the article, it sounds like it's roughly half that on the Pixel 7 at least, around 7-8Gb, since they use an A/B os partition scheme to make OS updates work better.
ChuckNorris89 4y ago
>What the hell are they putting in there?! Several ISOs of Call of Duty: MW2 and a BluRay-rip of Jingle All the Way.
f1refly 4y ago
Actual android takes about 800MiB, judging from the lineagos flashable zip files.

iforgotpassword 4y ago

Holy spacewasting shovelware batman! At what point would it make sense to mandate that the manufacturer has to put the net space on the packaging and on their product page? Advertising a phone with 128gb of storage and half is already gone right out of the box almost sounds like fraud.

IronWolve 4y ago
And no sdcard expansion.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

ChickenNugger 4y ago

I laughed out loud at this part: >It's the size of two Windows 11 installs, side by side. What could Samsung possibly be putting in there?!

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

dagmx 4y ago

While I agree that this requires criticism, this felt unnecessary from the author > We can take a few guesses as to why things are so big. First, Samsung is notorious for having a shoddy software division that pumps out low-quality code. The company tends to change everything in Android just for change's sake, and it's hard to imagine those changes are very good.

ryeights 4y ago
Samsung is the undisputed king of Android crapware. There's no crime in calling a spade a spade
mouse_ 4y ago
I don't think that it's unnecessary. Samsung's "Not-Invented-Here" syndrome causes legitimate problems, and it is increasingly becoming a notable reason to steer clear of their products.
OnlineGladiator 4y ago
I genuinely do not understand why people protest others sharing negative opinions. The author dislikes Samsung's software and he's writing about it. I tend to agree with him, although I stopped buying Samsung years ago so maybe it's changed. Why is it problematic for him to share something that many people agree with? Why can't people fucking complain about shit sucking? Are we going to give Meta the benefit of the doubt the next time they say they care about our privacy or are we going to learn from history and call out a company on their lazy practices?
- themitigating 4y ago
  "Why can't people fucking complain about shit sucking?" Not if it isn't justified
  - OnlineGladiator 4y ago
    Having used Samsung products in the past - how is it not justified?

eweise 4y ago

That's why I bought a Google Pixel. Had a Samsung phone and couldn't stand all the crapware they put on it.

topicseed 4y ago
Loved my Samsung S21 Ultra overall, but holy moly the installed apps... Anyway, now with a Pixel 7 Pro and would take a lot to make me go astray.

newaccount2021 4y ago

[dead]

rolenthedeep 4y ago

This kind of shit is why I've decided to avoid Samsung wherever possible. I bought a galaxy watch years ago and got sucked in with a galaxy flagship phone and the Samsung earbuds. Every Samsung device I've ever owned since the galaxy s4 has been utter trash. The watch was never useful because Samsung wanted to create their own app ecosystem and all but abandoned it. My note 10+ is full of bugs and rooting it is entirely out of the question. My earbuds have been nothing but trouble and are thankfully finally dead enough that I can justify replacing them. Can't wait for this phone to finally die so I can replace it with something that I don't actively hate.

ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago
I agree. I tried every other brand to avoid apple but came back to apple this year. Samsung is bloatware and janky and google pixel was incredible but had really poor battery life and somehow even though android looked great, iOS did tiny micro interactions so much better. E.g. when holding the space in iOS, the whole keyboard becomes a virtual touchpad vs android where you can only go left or right horizontally.
capitainenemo 4y ago
Their software is terrible, but their hardware is pretty nice. Shame they've been paring it down over the years. Pinnacle of their hardware, IMO was the Galaxy Note 4. Had their "antiglare AMOLED" (admittedly still not ideal for long device lifespan and outdoor use), wacom stylus with hover and right click (awesome for local or remote desktop sessions), replaceable battery, IR blaster, blood oxygen sensor, pulse measurement, audio jack, physical buttons. Nowdays I make do with their 2022 XCover6 - but I miss the features I lost.
- GuB-42 4y ago
  I still have my Galaxy Note 4. It refuses to die, and manufacturers refuse to give it a competitor. It may be its last year though, even though it is perfectly functional, and I blame app developers for that. It runs Android 6, and for the last couple of years, developers have been dropping support. LineageOS is an option, though on that particular phone, it is not as good as stock, and know some apps are going to piss me off because of SafetyNet. It is also starting to lack in processing power, as apps get more and more demanding even though they don't offer more in terms of features. My next phone is probably going to be the XCover6 too. Seems to be the only decent phone with a removeable battery, with the FairPhone, but the FairPhone has no SD card, no headphone jack, and I find it overpriced. BTW, the S5 was also an excellent phone, a combination of the two would have been perfect. It lacked a stylus, but it was waterproof and built like a tank even though it wasn't a rugged phone. It it also supported hovering on its touchscreen (called Air View), a feature I don't understand why it isn't present in every phone today, if just for its ability to support "hover" target in web pages. Its hardware implementation is also pretty cheap and clever: it is just a particular way of driving the capacitive touchscreen.

saagarjha 4y ago

Has anyone looked into what this is? I feel like this must be a bug, or a significant oversight at least.

kylepdm 4y ago
Nah, I think they just really "ship their org structure".
wvenable 4y ago
For all the comments about "shovelware" here there's actually no way that all their software could take up all that space. It should be easy for someone with access to the phone to see what's actually in that partition.
laweijfmvo 4y ago
Also curious. Having two Calculator apps != 60GB. It's gotta be some random data/model/locale stuff?

snozolli 4y ago

I have a Samsung S20 and I'll never buy another Samsung phone again unless they drastically change course. Their dumb insistence on fighting Google at every turn means that Google Fi's Visual Voicemail is broken on Samsung devices. I also get regular nag notifications to create or log into a Samsung account, agree to some Samsung TOS that I'm not even a part of, or other nonsense. The phone looks sleek, but the rounded edges mean that the edge of the screen is distorted and useless, and combined with the slick surfaces it practically catapult itself off of common household furnishing. The much-touted, three-lens camera isn't even any good! The photos are dull, over-processed, and show lens distortion at various points across the image.

hnburnsy 4y ago
Use the Universal Android Debloater. It makes your Samsung phone like the early Oneplus phones, clean and fast. Super happy with my S20 Ultra after having Oneplus for years. Tip get a certified refurb from Amazon, 90 days to return if not happy.
- acchow 4y ago
  I just read through the installation instructions for Universal Android Debloater. I can see why everyone just wants to buy an iPhone instead.
ysleepy 4y ago
I have an S21 and I'm very happy. https://github.com/0x192/universal-android-debloater https://github.com/0x192/universal-android-debloater I disabled most of samsung's stuff though, no nagging for a samsung account or anything.
- askonomm 4y ago
  > I'm very happy 1. Buy phone 2. Disable most stuff 3. Use some experimental third party tool to "debloat" phone I don't know, that's the exact stuff that would make me the opposite of happy.

bruh2 4y ago

What brand of Android phones would you guys usually go for? anything that gives smooth, AOSP, non-flashy experience?

xnx 4y ago
I have only used and would only ever consider Google Nexus / Pixel phones. The modifications made by every third party seem to make things worse.
xxpor 4y ago
Pixel.
mrguyorama 4y ago
Pixel phones are great for a clean android experience, but you have to wholeheartedly sell your soul to google. Midrange motorola phones can also be clean and open.
- mey 4y ago
  Nova launcher on the Pixel is a great combo for a non-rooted clean Android experience. You can disable many Google tracking/privacy things at that point, have a clean UI and quick security updates. One issue I have run into is Google breaking app switching on occasion because they want to use their launcher as the app switcher. Haven't seen this issue in the last year thankfully.
- somat 4y ago
  I have an old refurb pixel 3 I bought to put linage OS on but it was a verizon device and has a locked bootloader. sigh so no alternate android for me.. Anyway I am using it as a daily driver with the stock pixel android package and have zero google accounts. I mainly use f-droid and adb.
  - sanchay 4y ago
    Check out Aurora store as an alternative to Play Store No Google login yet have access to all apps without the hassle of adb I personally use F-droid + Aurora Store.

gidorah 4y ago

Having two versions of the same apps (Android and Samsaung) would drive me insane. Why does anyone put up with this?

wvenable 4y ago
Am I weird that I actually prefer the Samsung versions of most apps? I use Samsung email, notes, messages, health, etc.
- soco 4y ago
  No you're not alone. Plus the zillion of alternatives which one can choose instead of complaining about app x. Why should I care they use space? My pictures use way more space... I selected Samsung based on camera reviews and it delivers just that.
- gidorah 4y ago
  Not at all weird. My main grievance would be not being able to uninstall apps I don't use, not that someone else prefers another app.
  - nikau 4y ago
    you can uninstall apps via adb - if not my s8 would have ended up thrown in the bin as the stupid bixby button couldn't be disabled any other way at the time.
staticman2 4y ago
I don't see why it's a big deal? I put google calender on my home screen and never click on Samsung Calendar. I prefer Samsung health so never click on Google Health. Why should that drive me insane?
MBCook 4y ago
I think Samsung has to include the Google stuff to get the Play store, don’t they? So it’s either both or just Google. And the want to differentiate (for better or worse) from stock Android. I can’t see them ditching the play store, so here they are.

TomK32 4y ago

> Another round of crapware will also be included if you buy a phone from a carrier, i.e., all the Verizon apps and whatever space they want to sell to third parties. The average amount users are reporting is 60GB, but crapware deals change across carriers and countries, so it will be different for everyone. So that 60GB is with additional apps the carrier forces onto you.

lotsofpulp 4y ago
Why is why no one should buy devices from the mobile network operators, in the US. That has been true ever since iPhone came out and broke their stranglehold on selling malware laden devices.

andyjohnson0 4y ago

> Samsung may want to give the appearance of having its own non-Google ecosystem, and to do that, it clones every Google app that comes with its devices. Samsung is contractually obligated to include the Google apps, so you get both the Google and Samsung versions. Unfortunately this is nothing new. I bought a Galaxy S7+ table nearly two years ago and it was infested with crappy Samsung apps (two calculators... why?). Eventually I used adb to uninstall a bunch of stuff, but they're still taking up storage space even if I can't see them. Absurd. Apart from the crapware it's a decent tablet though.

petodo 4y ago
> Eventually I used adb to uninstall a bunch of stuff, but they're still taking up storage space even if I can't see them. Absurd. So you didn't uninstall them, you disabled them.
- andyjohnson0 4y ago
  > So you didn't uninstall them, you disabled them. No, I installed them. Samsung had marked them as being non-uninstallable via the Android Settings UI, so I used `adb -d shell pm uninstall --user 0 <packagename>` to forcibly uninstall them, although (as I said) the code is still in the rom. Simply disabling them could be done using the UI, or with `adb -d shell pm disable <packagename>`, but they'd still be cluttering the apps list - which is not what I wanted.
  - sprayk 4y ago
    uninstalling should not work at all on at least some of those apps, as they will exist on the read-only system partition (that only gets touched when the phone updates).
    - andyjohnson0 4y ago
      It worked for me. I assume it removes them from the OS's database of installed apps, even though it doesnt remove the executable code. I wrote some notes at https://andyjohnson.uk/blog/2021/07/17/cleaning-up-a-samsung-galaxy-tab-s7/ https://andyjohnson.uk/blog/2021/07/17/cleaning-up-a-samsung...

durnygbur 4y ago

I'm unable to count how many times I bricked my and my family's Samsung phones in attempt to remove bloatware apps and services. You think it's as easy a one liner with service name and `adb uninstall`? oooops wrong service, now you have to hard reset and reinstall the device...

hnburnsy 4y ago
Universal Android Debloater, will detect your model and suggest what to remove that is safe.

gentle 4y ago

I've moved from a Samsung S10+ to a Google Pixel 6 Pro and I couldn't be happier, and it's mainly because of November like this. I also hate that they got rid of their headphone jacks and removable storage. They were the few differentiations that kept me on Samsung.

jpeter 4y ago

At least the S23 has no Exynos version. The battery was a joke on my S10e. I now have a Google Pixel 7 and the battery lasts 2x to 3x as long.

fomine3 4y ago
Inform: You're using customized Exynos again!

shp0ngle 4y ago

This article is kind of content free :( I remember Ars Technica being actually technical? The only actual information here is "Samsung Android is 60GB" and "Samsung doesn't use A/B paritioning". Which is nice, but can you give me more information? What is actually on there?

pleasantpeasant 4y ago
This is the future of AI internet articles. Short, less details, uninteresting, and a clickbait title.
- AtlasBarfed 4y ago
  Your comment made me realize that reddit and HN and other semi-legit upvote/downvote sites are going to get even more important in the AI listicle era.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

AdmiralAsshat 4y ago

Samsung hardware is top-notch, but the software bloat is ridiculous. The problem is they make some OS changes that are actually useful to the end-user, especially when Google seems to be asleep at the wheel. We got really really close for a couple years there when HTC was shipping excellent hardware (the HTC One line) along with an interface that felt like a barely-skinned vanilla Android operating system. But then they kept hemorrhaging money, losing market position, and sold off most of their engineers to Google. Oh well...

BugsJustFindMe 4y ago
> Samsung hardware is top-notch Sometimes. In some ways. Their appliances (washer/dryer/etc) are notoriously unreliable, and their phone batteries appear to swell more than others.
- gjsman-1000 4y ago
  Can speak to that. We went with a Samsung kitchen about ~5 years ago. 2 Dishwashers, 1 Refrigerator, 1 Robot Vacuum, and 2 Stoves later... well, we still have the 2nd Samsung Refrigerator (covered in dents though because the "stainless steel" is apparently super thin) and the Microwave (though we have been told it has a critical flaw, so treat the door gently), but everything else isn't Samsung anymore. It just all broke in one way or another. We also had a Galaxy Note9 in the family that became ludicrously slow after a year and started dropping phone calls - apparently a known software issue that randomly plagued people, absolutely no fix to this day, software reset will not fix. We basically went to all Bosch and Apple after that. Heaven help anyone who bought recent high-end Samsung SSDs and doesn't read the news.
- kop316 4y ago
  > Their appliances (washer/dryer/etc) are notoriously unreliable Yep. I am in a house that is all Sanmsung appliances. The Dishwasher's intake valve started leaking, the Oven's LCD panel broke and only showed garbled information, and the dryer's heating source broke. These were all appliances bought in 2019. Thankfully, I was able to get replacement parts for the first two and fix easily enough, but there was no way to easily fix the dryer (I ended up getting a new dryer). There is no way I would buy a Samsung Appliance again, and it frankly makes me question the quality of anything they make.

homero 4y ago

Then they take away the micro SD card for no legit reason

sschueller 4y ago

That would explain why they got rid of the 128 GB version. Insane the amount of disk space we waste when we managed to fit incredible games on a few KBs in the 80s. It feels like when you build more highway lanes. Induced demand.

grujicd 4y ago
They didn't for the smallest S23 (non-plus, non-ultra), it still has 128GB option.
- valzam 4y ago
  But for the next 2 weeks you get the 256gb for the price of 128gb, maybe not a coincidence...

dredmorbius 4y ago

What Google giveth, Samsung taketh away. (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_and_Bill%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_and_Bill%27s_law>)

dangus 4y ago

Pile this onto the evidence mountain for "yet another reason to not buy anything from Samsung." And not just phones: washers, dryers, refrigerators, TVs, dishwashers you name it. Samsung is rarely a market leader, so you're basically never missing out by choosing someone else instead of them..

LorenDB 4y ago

Reason number #107 to not use Samsung products.

MSFT_Edging 4y ago

I bought an s22 on fi because they offered a great deal. I really need a smaller phone and the smallest pixel just felt like garbage in the hand. I really hate the limitations the samsung phones have but I really don't know what else to buy. It seems like a simple ask to have a smallish phone with good build quality but it simply doesn't exist, and if it does it will almost always never get updates.

xnavra50 4y ago

They will never learn.

boarush 4y ago

So no one here seems to have actually used a recent Samsung device. "System" includes user apps and system apps unless "My Files" is granted the permission for usage access. Several comments on the article and in the Twitter thread have already pointed it out.

nikolay 4y ago

I'm not sure why Samsung keeps doing this - there are many apps, their store conflicts often with Google Play Store. Yes, they offer stellar hardware, but I am now considering Pixel! And you can uninstall most of their "system" apps!

Tade0 4y ago

Never mind the bloatware, why have phones have become so bloated in both weight and dimensions? The S23 at 168g is by far the lightest Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 phone(runner-up is 185g), but that's still heavy. What gives?

kypro 4y ago
I wonder how much it has to do with it being easier to post flagship stats in a larger chassis? Although I think the right answer is simply that people prefer larger screens for video and phones today make much better use of empty space.
knaik94 4y ago
I don't mind the size at all because it means a nice big battery. I can't tell you the difference between 350g and 200g while holding it. Has the weight ever been an issue where it's made your hand tired? I understand the frustration of big screens though, I personally prefer them but I also haven't had issues reaching things with my thumbs regardless of phone size.
- hocuspocus 4y ago
  I can most certainly tell the difference between an iPhone and a much lighter Android phone of the same size. I had an Essential before my Pixel 5 and I hated the extra weight. The S23 lineup is actually quite reasonable here.
- Tade0 4y ago
  > Has the weight ever been an issue where it's made your hand tired? It becomes a problem when you're lying on your back. Also when it slips out of your hand, it's harder to catch. Not major concerns for most of the population I suppose, but it affects me. As for dimensions large phones appear to be particularly difficult to use for women. My SO is getting her first-gen iPhone SE refurbished because it's the last such light and small offering from that manufacturer and up to very recently it could run the most recent iOS.
jakub_g 4y ago

cheriot 4y ago

I was just reading about Digital Turbine over the weekend. That's the company Samsung and others use to conduct real time bidding for which apps are preinstalled (when a new phone is activated). They handle ads for other pieces of bloatware like built-in news feeds as well. I had no idea the bloatware had become so advanced. It sounds like Samsung inflicts plenty of additional damage with their own copies of google's apps.

quickthrower2 4y ago
Wow that is such a second rate thing to do. Delegate an important design choice to “the highest bidder” instead of curate the best experience for the user.

lleb97a 4y ago

I'm typing this on an S7 that refuses to die. Not looking forward to buying a new phone.

jonas-w 4y ago
Same, typing this on a s10+ which is still supported (i think), but also not looking forward to buy a new one.

unit_circle 4y ago

I'm just holding out hope my S22 lasts until we have an iPhone with a USB-C port.

knaik94 4y ago

This is the reason why I ended up with a non flagship, mid-tier, moto phone that allowed me to unlock the bootloader and root. Headphone jack and microsd card support was also a very high priority, and the reason why I didn't end up with a pixel. I want complete control over my device. With recent Android version it seems like Google is locking down the OS and making it closer to how iOS is. It's becoming harder to find good phones that allow bootloader unlocks and rooting while also being supported by AT&T, which I am tied to because of a family plan. Samsung phones, even if you buy the US non-carrier variant, don't allow bootloader unlocking. AT&T provisions VoLTE and VoWifi based on a Whitelist of phone models so international variants won't work on the network at all. A microsd card slow wouldn't fix the underlying issue of bloat but would at least decrease the impact of it.

abdullahkhalids 4y ago
Do bank apps still work with the rooted phone?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- FieryTransition 4y ago
  Would like to know this as well, I rooted my oneplus recently, and the moment the secure boot chain of trust broke, no security sensitive apps worked. I've signed my own secure boot loader on Linux, but I don't know if you can do it on Android at all, since you don't have keys or can modify the secure storage easily.
  - knaik94 4y ago
    I am not sure what you mean by security sensitive app. Something like Samsung Knox will not work after you unlock the bootloader but that's because of the assumptions it needs to make in order to promise user data integrity. It's similar to apps requiring TPM for data/disk encryption. Self signing wouldn't restore that chain of trust. Those apps breaking is working as intended, none of the financial apps I use were affected. There's option for systemless root. Also, I know companies have used the root status as a form of DRM. That's not about user security, it's about protecting DRM security, like Widevine L1 or L3 and the android Netflix app. Financial apps haven't been an issue for me, I am running bootloader unlocked and rooted using Magisk.

lockhouse 4y ago

Meanwhile my iPhone has a little over 12G used by iOS and System Data. I know I’m comparing Apples to Oranges, err ummm Androids here, but still!

tux2bsd 4y ago
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dopa42365 4y ago

A single TB of a high speed NVMe SSD is as little as 50€ (and Samsung is paying a fraction of that, of course). Why even obsess over a few cents of storage so much?

danbruc 4y ago
It does not only take up space on disk, you also have to load all that stuff into memory, which costs time and money. You might make your caches less effective which costs performance or more money for larger caches. You have to download updates which cost time and bandwidth and maybe money. Of course that all depends on the exact source and nature of the bloat, but just saying that the disk space is just a couple of cents is probably not adequate.
notatoad 4y ago
according to samsung's current pre-order promotion [1], an extra 128GB of storage is a $240 upgrade. that 60GB is worth $120, not pennies. [1] https://www.samsung.com/ca/smartphones/galaxy-s23/buy/ https://www.samsung.com/ca/smartphones/galaxy-s23/buy/

valzam 4y ago

As someone who has used a S10e for 4 years and just ordered a S23 I think people are blowing the "bloatware" way out of proportion. I use the Samsung apps I want, the rest are disabled/tucked away in a folder. I never get bothered to update the ones I don't use. My wife has a pixel 6a, I don't see how my Samsung is any more bloated after 5 mins of setup. In fact OneUI allows you to make everything look a lot more minimal and cleaner than the default pixel setup with it's huge buttons, colours everywhere and the google search bar you can't get rid of.

Xeamek 4y ago
Exactly. People have this weird idea that some how google's closed source, data grabbing "use our service please" implementation of file browser is more "pure android" then samsungs one. Where in fact it is either the same, or the samsung one is actually less 'in your face' with being a oem-made product
anthomtb 4y ago
Maybe folks are confusing Samsung with Xiaomi.
- nsonha 4y ago
  MIUI eu is less bloat than Samsung, Google even.
valzam 4y ago
I think the only app I was concerned about is Facebook being installed. But I deactivated it right when I got the phone and never had to touch it again.
cleanchit 4y ago
I don't want to spend an entire day disabling shit and uninstalling games that the vendor installed on my phone automatically.
somerandomqaguy 4y ago
Depends on the phone. For Canadian Galaxy series, Samsung bakes in the carrier firmware into the base images and factory resets itself the first time you insert a SIM. For example if you buy a S23 unlocked from Costco and then insert a Telus SIM card, it factory resets itself to the firmware the that Telus has specces. That includes system level app MyTelus, Facebook, Netflix, Amazon, and a few others that I can't remember right now.l. So if you like to do setup before inserting a SIM card, all the changes you've made get blown away (supposed to only happen the first time though). What's more, Samsung phones tend to be very unsolicited notification heavy the first few days to draw your attention to all of the new features that they have. Whether you care or not i.e. the S20 will throw a notification about how you can change the background wallpaper. On the Pixel at least Google chose to wait until you accessed a feature to start throwing these 'tips' at you. So at least for me, Samsung phones aren't a pleasant experience to deal with. >In fact OneUI allows you to make everything look a lot more minimal and cleaner than the default pixel setup with it's huge buttons, colours everywhere and the google search bar you can't get rid of. Perhaps but it is still faster to install Nova launcher and tweak one or two settings to remove the search bar, then it is to disable 10 or so individual apps bundled in Samsung phones.

chenxiaolong 4y ago

The firmware is not available on the FOTA (OTA update metadata) server yet, but if you know the exact version number, you can download the firmware from Samsung FUS ("firmware update service"). Looking at the European S23 Ultra (model: SM-S918B, sales code: EUX, version: S918BXXU1AWA6/S918BOXM1AWA6): * The compressed firmware is 9.2 GiB. * The total image size after decompression and desparsing is 12 GiB. I'm not sure why the device mentioned in the article would be reporting 60 GB, but I'm guessing it's counting some data in the userdata partition. Due to AVB's (Android Verified Boot) use of footers, the image size in the firmware package must match the actual partition size. So the 60 GB can't be the sum of all the read-only OS partitions. * The biggest image is `super` -> `system` at 5.4 GiB. * All of the images contained within the dm-linear `super` partition are formatted with the new erofs filesystem. I didn't know any devices shipped with that yet. Even the Pixel 7 series is still using ext4 for read-only partitions. * The complete partition table and file list (after image extraction): https://gist.github.com/chenxiaolong/a4c70376f8e5ba0b4f415470ba7948af https://gist.github.com/chenxiaolong/a4c70376f8e5ba0b4f41547...

game_the0ry 4y ago
So the android build is not 60 GB? I feel like this discussion could be easily resolved just by going to best buy and seeing how much free GB is on a 128gb demo device.
- metadat 4y ago
  This would be a solution, except the S23 hasn't actually launched yet, so it's not available to inspect at any retailer. Looks like the launch will be on Feb 17, 2023 (11 days from today).
MishaalRahman 4y ago
>* All of the images contained within the dm-linear `super` partition are formatted with the new erofs filesystem. I didn't know any devices shipped with that yet. Even the Pixel 7 series is still using ext4 for read-only partitions. Several OEMs (apart from Huawei, who developed it) have been using EROFS in their mobile devices for a while now, notably Xiaomi and OPPO. Google actually tried to make EROFS an Android 13 launch requirement, but they postponed this requirement (and didn't ship it on the Pixel 7) when they discovered a regression in app launch times.

Xeamek 4y ago

I understand not everyone may like samsung's spin on basic apps and thats fine... But to pretend the google ones are 'true android' and everyone else's are somehow inherently fake is approaching Apple's fan level of fanaticism. Stock android is long dead and if you actually go into androids repository, all the basics app have been abandoned. What you get with pixel is exactly the same what you get with samsung: closed source apps. One was made by Google and the other one by samsung. But ultimately they aren't any closer to 'pure android' then going into market place and just downloading a third-party calendar or calculator from there. But also, samsung does try to make stuff themselves, not just "copy" basic google apps: samsung Dex or Knox are features that are fairly unique when compared to other android vendors. Also, there is much more customization. So while it doesn't completely excuse the fact of using more space then pixels version of android, there are some feature differences that make this disparity less outrageous.

NoboruWataya 4y ago
I basically want something as close as possible to GrapheneOS but which can run Google Wallet (and which is guaranteed to run my banking apps). So a nice, clean, stock Android where the default apps are removable or as unobtrusive as possible (so I can install FOSS equivalents from F-Droid) would be nice.
- nelblu 4y ago
  Try calyxos with microG.
- jacooper 4y ago
  So a pixel.
  - NoboruWataya 4y ago
    I think so. My next phone will likely be a Pixel or a Fairphone.
  - MikusR 4y ago
    Pixels don't run stock android

mensetmanusman 4y ago

They should have a separate ssd for the OS that is hidden from the 512 GB the user had for storage/apps.

redbell 4y ago

> A company like Facebook will buy a spot on Samsung's system partition, where it can get more intrusive system permissions that aren't granted to app store apps, letting it more effectively spy on users. Wow! I never thought about this! If it is true that pre-installed apps will have a VIP, sudo-like permissions that are not granted to user-installed apps, then, they should be permanently disabled (since technically, you can't uninstall them), or at least, the ones having a proven spying record in the past.

FloatArtifact 4y ago
I wish this was explored more in the article.

jeroenhd 4y ago

The only sources for this article are two screenshots from Twitter. The article is written by someone who clearly has some beef with Samsung as well, which comes with a bunch of assertions about bloatware. Even if every user-interfaceable app were to have an entire copy of Chromium like many desktop apps these days do, you wouldn't end up with 60 whole gigabytes. As analyzed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34685858 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34685858 the system partition and the apps that come with it are only a part of the reported size. I don't know why Samsung needs an ungodly 12 gigabytes of space but I'm not surprised given how much "desktop OS" features are built into it (DeX with input hardware is a capable desktop/laptop replacement for more people than you'd expect!) My guess, because Samsung wouldn't be the first to make this mistake[1]: something may be logging constantly to a writeable OS partition, or caching something without size constraints. At first and during testing these logs take up megabytes of space, but during weeks or months of usage these logs may quickly grow out of control. Android's space analysis can't attribute the log file to any specific system app, but it's in a place that only system apps can access to it would categorize this data as "system". [1]: after a quick Google: https://community.oneplus.com/thread/1416848 https://community.oneplus.com/thread/1416848 https://androidforums.com/threads/system-data-growing-out-of-control.513566/ https://androidforums.com/threads/system-data-growing-out-of... https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/system-data-keeps-expanding-and-wont-shrink-eliminating-all-free-space.3570852/ https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/system-data-keeps-expandi... https://forums.androidcentral.com/ask-question/1043714-why-system-storage-taking-all-available-space.html https://forums.androidcentral.com/ask-question/1043714-why-s...

fomine3 4y ago
This article is half baked. I'd like to see du or something like that

r1ch 4y ago

It's disappointing how much junk gets shipped in non-Google ROMs and how little OEMs seem to care. I bought a Xiaomi phone several years ago and in addition to the usual bloatware it came complete with Qualcomm radio debugging tools running in the background, including a copy of tcpdump running on all interfaces constantly logging to the internal storage. I rooted and removed it, but after Google Pay and various other apps stopped working I decided to upgrade to the latest model last year. I was sure that in the three years since my old phone that someone at Xiaomi would have noticed battery-sapping debug tools running in the background of their ROM. Of course the new phone has the exact same problem.

plantain 4y ago

Samsung as a company is a terrible experience - horrible first party sales experience, unfathomably bad support. I can't bring myself to buy from them again. My guess is they just tick along from their tight vertical integration and competent hardware division that lets the rest of the company drag their feet.

Willish42 4y ago

Complaints about Samsung's software aside, it's ridiculous that we can't uninstall nonessential apps.

tux2bsd 4y ago
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lawgimenez 4y ago

If anyone's looking for a decent Android phone, try Infinix. I just bought one and it's surprisingly good and cheap. 256GB/8GB RAM storage for less than $200.

King-Aaron 4y ago

One of the nicest android UI's I've used in recent years was on my Huawei Mate20 Pro. Really seamless integration and everything 'felt' really nice. Just updated to a S22 Ultra and I freaking hate Samsung's UI. It all just feels slightly clunkier, in both function and in UX (back button location is a big one to get used to). It also tends to have a lot of input lag, particularly when scrolling in big apps like facebook or gmail. Really not happy with it as a purchase.

jrumbut 4y ago

What makes me upset is that the latest Galaxy has a horrific and completely unpredictable autocorrect which replaced a so-so but very usable and predictable predecessor. The bloat apps are bad too but the autocorrect is what's really awful.

t0bia_s 4y ago

I don’t care about their OS. Tech savy person shouldn't use OneUI anyway. However Samsung's HW is great. Hopefully they will make S23a in compact size. Then I'll gladly flash LionageOS or IodéOS here.

perryizgr8 4y ago

https://old.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/10vfdbx/bloatware_pushes_the_galaxy_s23_android_os_to_an/j7i1p0f/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/10vfdbx/bloatware_... The real reason is that Android's storage reporting is slightly buggy. Read linked comment for details.

tonymet 4y ago

Xbox series S OS build uses 152GB / 512GB storage = 30% of storage for the OS