8 ms·

I bought -- full price, retail -- a midrange Samsung phone for a relative recently. The amount of bloatware was incredible. Various social networks and shopping

• daniel_reetz 3y ago
  I was furious when I found out that the default keyboard was infested with Grammarly, sending all my keystrokes without consent. Embarrassing for a $1200 flagship device.
  • resource_waste 3y ago
    This is a user/psychology problem. No one in their right mind is suggesting Samsung. Heck, similar to Apple, you have swaths of people warning you about Samsung. Samsung lives and dies off their huge marketing budget. Buying their phone is more of a psychology thing, than 'I did lots of research and I bought a high quality phone'.
    • blfr 3y ago
      I have a Samsung tablet (Galaxy Tab S9+) and I not only suggest but downright recommend it. Sure, right away I switched away from their default apps (launcher, notes, keyboard, etc) but it wasn't difficult. Maybe they got me with their clever marketing but there doesn't seem to be competitive hardware in this class (fast, oled screen, 5g, overall build quality) available from another manufacturer.
    • morsch 3y ago
      I've had multiple Samsung Android devices before buying the midrange phone. The hardware, I found, was universally pretty good. They were one of the few manufacturers with a moderately sized flagship device (the new Pixel 8 also qualifies, which is great). I bought the midrange device because it was one of a few phones priced around 300 EUR with more than two or three years of updates.
      • bboygravity 3y ago
        [dead]
    • Semaphor 3y ago
      Isn’t it more that Samsung, almost like apple, has great cameras? At least that’s what I often heard, I don’t go near flagship devices and root everything, so no personal experience.
    • tayo42 3y ago
      What android brand are people going with? I thought Samsung was the biggest alternative to pixels
      • hughesjj 3y ago
        I'm real tempted to go asus because of how good their other devices have been, will see what happens this time. Tired of my pixels constantly overheating when trying to take pictures after navigating to a place i want to take pictures with the 4a+5a. It's not just a bad phone, I've inevitably broken a screen or submerged one and had to replace it (apparently the ip68 isn't fool proof either..)
        • resource_waste 3y ago
          I'll be trying Asus since they have been the best when it comes to laptops. They also have lots of nice hardware like Aux ports. Google Pixel 5a... The last Google product before they went full Apple.
          • kirenida 3y ago
            Check out the official Asus support forums before you buy. I got a ZenFone8 when it came out and was very satisfied with it at the time. Then, a month later, posts started popping up with people reporting that their phones just randomly rebooting and bricking. I think there were a few hundred cases reported. To this day, there is no official response from Asus. I used to carry a backup phone with me every time I was away from home for longer than a day because I was afraid that my phone could die at any moment. Also, every update seemed to introduce a new bug that only got fixed in a month or so with the next update. So we had broken face unlock for a month, broken Google Pay, broken notifications, among other things. I haven't been following reports for the ZF9 or ZF10, but I think they had similar problems. To top it all off, the official unlocker / root tool from ASUS has been disabled for over a year by now, and nobody knows when it will work again. All in all, ASUS phones (at least the ZenFone line) do have great hardware, but official support is abysmal.
          • hughesjj 3y ago
    • lozenge 3y ago
      "No one in their right mind is suggesting Samsung. Heck, similar to Apple, you have swaths of people warning you about Samsung." Apple and Samsung are the two most popular phone brands in the world, so it's not like "everybody knows not to use them" as you suggest. Actually, it's the complete opposite.
    • rchaud 3y ago
      > Samsung lives and dies off their huge marketing budget. This is a ridiculous take. Samsung is the entire reason Android didn't go the way of WebOS and Windows Phone. Samsung had pressure-sensitive pen support on Android 5 years before iOS. Samsung DEX desktop environment can turn my phone into a proper work machine with just a USB-C display cable and a lapdock. They've also had folding phones that can turn your phone into a tablet for several years, but I suppose we'll need to wait until 2030 when Apple launches it "the right way" to recognize it as an innovative form factor.
      • geraldhh 3y ago
        is dex actually useful? it sounds fantastic hence i suppose there is a catch
        • rchaud 3y ago
          Yes it is. Floating window support makes a big difference for actual multitasking. In Dex you can also drag and drop files and images, which is not supported on Android. Considering that you can use Termux for web dev work, with a proper desktop environment, it becomes an actual computer instead of a locked down Google Docs type of device. The catch with Dex is that it's only offered on the high end models: Galaxy S and Galaxy Z Fold series phones.
    • TeMPOraL 3y ago
      > Buying their phone is more of a psychology thing, than 'I did lots of research and I bought a high quality phone'. For me it's more of "I'm no longer a kid so I don't have time to do lots of research". Samsung gets my money because their flagships are reliably good.
      • naasking 3y ago
        You can't spend a couple of days researching an essential, expensive device you're going to use for at least the next 2-3 years?
        • throwaway11460 3y ago
          What better hardware is there?
          • naasking 3y ago
            The hardware doesn't have to be better, could be equivalent but with less spyware or bloatware.
            • throwaway11460 3y ago
              What equivalent hardware is there?
      • geraldhh 3y ago
        supposedly there will come a time after "no longer a kid" where due diligence is the among the top things worth doing
        • TeMPOraL 3y ago
          That's called retirement, where once again one has too much time and too little money.
      • 1oooqooq 3y ago
  • magicalhippo 3y ago
    On my S21 it's an option. I can't recall turning it off, but it (and the other 3rd parties) are off. Perhaps I did so indirectly during initial setup.
• autoexec 3y ago
  The first time I had a samsung phone I noticed after about two weeks that every single word I typed into any application was being collected and sent to a third party whose privacy policy said it was used to collect data about my interests, my social life, to make guesses about my intelligence level and education, and that the data would be sold for "market research" among other things. No user would ever suspect that the keyboard that came with their cell phone would be letting third parties read all their texts and emails to do those things. I'd assumed the keyboard was just a part of the OS. I only found out after I just happened to long press a key long enough to get an "about samsung keyboard" window and clicking around to find a privacy policy that said which company they were sending keystrokes to, and then reading that company's privacy policy. I immediately found an open source keyboard to replace samsung's with. I'll say one thing for them, collecting everything everyone types into their devices meant that the samsung keyboard had really good spellchecking/predictive text capabilities. I'd never go back to using it, but there are times I wish the keyboard I replaced it with had a better spellchecker.
  • rightbyte 3y ago
    Oh dear. I had disabled the Samsung keyboard for some other, but it seems it got reenabled again. Maybe Google broke some API endpoint and the old keyboard didn't do the update grind. No warning what so ever for their spyware taking over the keyboard functionally. The need for some FOSS mobile is really over due by now. Edit: > I immediately found an open source keyboard to replace samsung's with Which keyboard did you pick?
    • autoexec 3y ago
      AnySoftKeyboard I've been using it ever since. It's got a lot of customization options and all the keys I need.
      • 9029 3y ago
        Other alternatives: OpenBoard, FlorisBoard and HeliBoard (OpenBoard fork). Excluding FlorisBoard beta and HeliBoard, these also have quite infrequent releases like ASK.
• resource_waste 3y ago
  I'm amazed people buy Samsung anything. I only had 1 poor quality phone that cost $400, 10 years ago, and I was traumatized. Occasionally I get a work Samsung phone and they really are the Apple of Android.
  • geraldhh 3y ago
    imho the galaxy s4 mini was peak smartphone and thou the specs got better, the devices became increasingly bigger, heavier and less useful
  • gjm11 3y ago
    "the Apple of Android" doesn't communicate anything to me other than that you dislike both Samsung and Apple; there are any number of things someone might dislike about Apple and so far as I know there isn't the sort of general consensus that would make such a phrase meaningful. (I get the impression from your comments in this thread that maybe you're trying to create such a consensus or the illusion thereof, to get people used to seeing Apple casually referred to as an exemplar of some unstated kind of badness, or something like that. That sort of thing never works.)
• silversmith 3y ago
  Could it be that it's a US-specific thing? My last three phones have been EU-sold Samsung S series, and the only things I'd consider "third party bloat" were pre-installed versions of Facebook and MS Office, both easily removable. The Samsung replacement apps is down to personal preference, I find them easier to use than Google "originals". Having casually interacted with phones from other brands, I consider Samsung among the best Android options as far as software and UX goes.
  • morsch 3y ago
    This was in Germany, so no. It's probably a midrange vs flagship thing, or it has gotten worse over time. I had an S10 and I don't remember it being so bad.
    • almostnormal 3y ago
      Enterprise edition, maybe? The keyboard itself does not seem to have a privacy policy ("about" shows intellectual properties and open source licenses), but the voice-input has. Third-party options are disabled by default. But even with everything disabled (predictive text, spell checker (as may be obvious reading this), ...), it does cause network traffic. Any login-data ever used can now be considered leaked. Great.
  • Flex247A 3y ago
    I don't think it's US specific. Have faced a similar situation with the last two budget phones I bought in India.
  • rightbyte 3y ago
    It is not an US thing. You got a "Bixby" button right? You can't remap it to something usefull. There should be a gesture to swipe up "Samsung Pay", etc.
    • mFixman 3y ago
      I was able to remap my Bixby button on my previous Samsung Phones. I usually put it to Google search and double click to the camera. The newer phones (since ~2019) don't have Bixby, and Google Pay launches automatically when touching an NFC posnet.
• Symbiote 3y ago
  My phone is Sony, and came pre installed with the Microsoft SwiftKey keyboard. > First, please note that unless you have opted in to use a Microsoft SwiftKey Account on your Android device, all personal and language data generated by Microsoft SwiftKey is stored locally on your device and is never transferred. I use it since it seamlessly swaps between enabled languages. I can write something like "meet me at Østerport Station" smoothly.
  • onli 3y ago
    Thanks, I was searching a keyboard that supports this properly for a while. Sadly no Foss option out there I know about :/
• rapnie 3y ago
  Bloatware, dark patterns, opted-in privacy invasions, and unavoidable privacy infringement.. I feel that Samsung is somewhere in the top of that spectrum. Which commodity Android device vendor has the least of that out-of-the-box?
  • bboygravity 3y ago
    Unihertz
  • tilsammans 3y ago
    Motorola
  • smellf 3y ago
    Don't know how it compares to other manufacturers, but I've been pretty happy with the minimal BS that comes on my last two Sony phones.
  • as1mov 3y ago
    Asus? Though I'm not sure what's it sending in the background, but there was no legal jargon that I had to agree to, to use any of the apps. There were barely any custom apps, it pretty much relies on the stock Android apps.
• yard2010 3y ago
  Welcome to the future. It will be A cyberpunk dystopia just like in Cyberpunk 2077, but much sooner than 2077 IMHO.
  • theandrewbailey 3y ago
    We've been in the cyberpunk dystopia timeline for at least 10 years, maybe since the 90s.
    • brookst 3y ago
      My grandparents assured me we’ve been heading to dystopia since the invention of the television. Pretty sure their parents said the same thing about radio. Presumably if you go far enough back you’d find warnings of dystopia applied to coming down from the trees.
      • yard2010 3y ago
        I am a grandparent myself I just don't have any grand children nor children just yet.
• Defletter 3y ago
  > dark patterns designed to extract as much data from you as possible It's insane how prevalent this is. The other day, I opened my calculator app and was met with a cookie banner (https://imgur.com/a/njJEiqY https://imgur.com/a/njJEiqY) - I uninstalled it on the spot out of sheer incredulity. The irony was that I originally installed Simple Calculator because it was simple and open source, so I presumed it would escape being a trojan horse for data collection. I guess not.
  • Dudhbbh3343 3y ago
    All the "Simple" apps were recently sold to a company that's apparently filling them with ads. There's a group that forked the original open source apps: https://github.com/orgs/FossifyOrg/repositories https://github.com/orgs/FossifyOrg/repositories
    • crtasm 3y ago
      Wow, terrible news aboue the sale. I trust the copies I installed from f-droid won't be updated then.
• osmsucks 3y ago
  I had a similarly appalling experience with a Samsung smartphone in, I think, 2012? Since then, I swore to never but anything Samsung again.
• coolg54321 3y ago
  For me i've felt Samsung flagships have the best hardware, OneUI is very good compared those TouchWiz days. Then you have these bloatwares, first thing i do after getting any Samsung phone is doing `pm uninstall –k ––user 0 <bloatware.apps>` the linked tool does the same in a more user friendly way. One thing which that still blocks is i see you can't still remove some things like samsung account stuff, knox related stuff..etc, unless you flash a custom rom.
• rchaud 3y ago
  In Canada, Samsung phones sometimes have the Facebook app pre-installed, but that can be disabled, and won't show up again. Besides that, there's no bloatware on my phone other than the default Google apps (Google Meet, Google Pay etc).
• microflash 3y ago
  Samsung's SMS and Phone apps also upload user data to some shady data broker. Never buy Samsung. If by any stroke of misfortune you're forced to use it, debloat it as much as possible and use a firewall with internet connection disabled by default.
• l33tman 3y ago
  Weird, I've had Samsungs flagship phones since 10 years back and never had any app on them that would be considered bloatware. There are a bunch of low-key note-taking apps etc that you can just ignore. Like another poster wrote, maybe it's a US-thing? I actually use the Samsung web browser, because it allows ad-blocking out of the box, which Chrome on Android won't allow... I've always used gboard as a keyboard (googles keyboard) and disabled the options to get really predictive and smart as I'm sure that makes it learn more closely and potentially send back data to google etc.
• xnx 3y ago
  What are the reasons someone would want to buy any Android device beside a new or used Google Pixel?
  • morsch 3y ago
    Combination of price and length of software support.
  • as1mov 3y ago
    The bloat depends on the manufacturer. I've used a bunch of Android phones over the course of the last 15 years. Sony Ericsson, Motorola - Pretty much stock Android. Though this was almost a decade ago, so not sure what's their state now. Xiaomi - Absolutely filled with bloat, but really cheap + flagship specs. Easily fixed by flashing LineageOS. Pixel 1st gen - No bloat, stock Asus - My current phone. No bloat, though it has a lightweight skin + QoL stuff that I don't mind. I use it non-rooted + stock OS
  • throwaway11460 3y ago
    Don't want to give money to Google. And the hardware is sad compared to any recent Samsung flagship.
• npteljes 3y ago
  Same experience with Samsung, only several years behind. The build quality is excellent, but the bundleware level is unbelievable. And the Samsung software seemed like a cheap bolted-on thing, on top of the perfectly good Android base.