I bought -- full price, retail -- a midrange Samsung phone for a relative recently. The amount of bloatware was incredible. Various social networks and shopping apps were preinstalled. In addition to all the Samsung apps that more or less duplicate the Google stack, poorly. The entire setup process was full of dark patterns designed to extract as much data from you as possible. No way a regular person gets through that without missing something.
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.
1. Samsung is able to sell phones like that legally.
2. People are not in jail.
3. Governments somehow think it's ok that random companies can see everything their citizens do online. National security risks maybe? Trade secret issues?
It's almost suspicious to the point where I would start thinking those third party spy companies are possibly (US/5 eyes) government run?
well websites ad-tech have been very able to track mouse movement/location, characters pressed (but not submitted) for 15 years at least; people are fine with this fact too (even if its 1 or 2 monopolies that phone home - and then share data lol)
android's have done similar for a very long time; customers have known about it, and turn a blind eye cuz its a new-shiney
Yes, but this "makes sense" considering that data is being sent to US companies that are basically integral part of the NSA by now.
So it makes sense from a US-gov perspective.
My point was that the Samsung spyware is sending data about (for example) US users to non-US companies and government (South Korea). I guess they're also integral part of the NSA by now. I have no other explanation :P
“Mind blowing” is too strong a word when every thread about Apple on HN is demanding the iPhone be opened up to the same, taking away non-tech people’s choice to buy a bloat free and privacy defaulted device designed to stay that way even if people more technically savvy try to hook in.
It’s a fine line, of course, since the same non-tech people love IAP and ad-supported, as shown by the folks opting into ads on Hulu, Netflix, and Amazon Prime decades after similarly opting into ads on paid cable. So how to let users have ad-tech supported apps, without ending up like the Android ecosystem?
> legally … not in jail
Apple’s approach was a curated ecosystem, and the level of hate for it tells you app makers aren’t worried they should be in jail, they’re worried iOS users have that sweet sweet “wallet share”. HN’s EU DMA threads tell you plenty voices don’t just want what they do legal, they want it illegal to slow their roll.
PS. A lot of big data and big analytics cross pollinates with the US government. Three letter agencies even do VC deals.
Meanwhile I'm over here on a rooted android phone with no pre installed anything and a custom build of chromium that let's me have ublock origin on my phone. And RCS still works cause I guess they can't detect my old version of magisk.
I suspect it's npt just Samsung. Both google and microsoft (SwiftKey) does the same thing.
The worst part is that the most used national ID-function now stops you from using third party "approved" keyboard due to (misguided) security reasons. Both AnySoftKeyboard and AOSP keyboard is banned.
I wouldn't mind so much of Google/Microsoft/Samsung etc collected all data in house (including subcontractor companies who won't share this information with anyone else). If they kept it to themselves and said "just trust me, bro" to advertisers and kept my data to themselves I don't think I'd mind too much. But clearly that's not what happens here. They don't have nearly enough leverage against the advertisers.
The need for stronger legislation is overdue by now.
There is already a Foss mobile OS, it's called Android, or more specifically a distribution of it like LineageOS. But installing it is so difficult that only 1% of people have the technical know how to even attempt it, and it's getting more difficult as manufacturers introduce more and more hurdles in this process.
Which is all irrelevant anyway because the vast majority of people done even realise that everything they see, do, or type on their phones is reported to hundreds of companies, processed, and te-sold to thousands of companies all over the world.
It's regulation that forces people into Google and Apple ecosystems. Due to the payment security regulation I'm no longer able to use Android phone without Google services. SMS authentication is gone and I must have a bank app that must be installed from Google Play and uses Google services, also it detects root and stops working. Also, my bank used to have an app that completely bypassed Google Pay and worked even offline, like a card would - also canceled by the regulation.
The issue here isn't that there is regulation, it's that the regulation is badly written. For essential services such as banking and government stuff, you shouldn't be forced to rely on things like the Google Play Store and Apple stuff. This kind of stuff should work even on a debloated, degoogled phone. And the regulation must be improved, not thrown away.
Politicians of course have hard time with technology, so of course the regulation will be terrible for users, especially given the Big Tech lobbying, but still. We should do better.
I'm a citizen of a small EU country that has voting power in the EU parliament near zero percent. They should do better, indeed, but what can I do. Much bigger fishes (even the banks) tried to convince the EU this is bad, it probably didn't even register on their radar. From my perspective, the regulation will always be bad, I can't do anything about it however hard I try, and so it shouldn't exist at all.
> I'm a citizen of a small EU country that has voting power in the EU parliament near zero percent. They should do better, indeed, but what can I do.
You can bring this to the attention of other EU citizens so that they too badger their representatives about this. It's not like any individuals vote in a larger EU country is worth more than yours.
The regulation says that system integrity has to be verified. Some banks don't comply, but many (every one I use) do.
BTW magisk has a way to hide from the apps, so that might be the reason - that doesn't mean there isn't a problem with the regulation. But 2 of my 3 banks see through that. And one of them doesn't want to load on LineageOS even if it's not rooted because it's compiled in some dev mode that might allow something...
> ...like LineageOS. But installing it is so difficult that only 1% of people have the technical know how to even attempt it...
Aside: there is also /e/OS (or MurenaOS - their naming is inconsistent). It is basically LineageOS that someone else installs for you so you get everything in a package [0].
They sell many phones, but it also runs nicely on Fairphones if you want a phone that you can repair (there is of course a compromise in price / performance there - depends on what matters to you the most).
What do you mean incompatible with LineageOS? In LineageOS you have to choice to install Google services like Google Play, or use the Aurora store.
In /e/os/ they have their own app store, App Lounge, with which you can install apps from Google Play through the Google Play API, similar to how the Aurora store does it. And you can also find open-source and PWA apps in it.
I use fdroid and aurora store for installing apps, and push notifications work nicely using microg. Of course microg needs to connect to G servers (no way around it), but at least it works and there is no G app running on the phone.
Ye it is strange that they abandon the simple, safe, cheap and idiot proof key device and go for some convoluted 2FA app that is run on the same device anyways.
I did the mistake of trying to find one via Google Play. It pushes so much malware to the top and wont allow you to filter the search. Discoverability there is zero.
It is like I always forgot I need to use fdroid and open Play by muscle memory.
Other alternatives: OpenBoard, FlorisBoard and HeliBoard (OpenBoard fork). Excluding FlorisBoard beta and HeliBoard, these also have quite infrequent releases like ASK.
Hmm, seems to not be available for my Pixel 6. The github looks very active but there hasnt been a release there (or Google Play or Fdroid) in over 2 years.
If you buy a laptop and the OEM has pre-installed a keylogger then it is still a keylogger. Most people don't choos their Android keyboard but use whatever is the default on the device they bought.
NoRoot Firewall app (I'm not affiliated). I must have brought it up in every Android security related post in HN that I've came across.
I use it on all my Android devices. I block all traffic in most apps.
Some Android phones allow you to allow/block Data and/or WiFi separately. My Samsung 4G tablet doesn't allow me to switch off Data or WiFi for some apps, especially the system ones.
This is where NoRoot Firewall does all its good work. It has Global Block list (all ads/trackers go there) and for each app I individually block or allow certain IPs.
So if "Samsung Keyboard" app wants to send your typing home, you block Data/WiFi and leave it trying :)
Indeed. 99% of people will never even realise this is happening. Its crazy that "reading everything typed in a person's device without that person's awareness" is not something that has been legislated into oblivion.
But there is no "privacy policy" on the Samsung keyboard about page.
The Samsungs privacy policy on the web states this:
Samsung Keyboard information: The words that you type when you enable “Predictive text”. This feature may be offered in connection with your Samsung account to synchronise the data for use on your other Samsung mobile devices. You can clear the data by going to the “Predictive text” settings.
I wouldn't doubt if it's changed a few times. The phone was a 2016 Galaxy J3 V. I no longer remember the name of the 3rd party they were using for predictive text at the time, but I know that in the past they've used SwiftKey and Grammarly
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.
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.
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.
I think it's sales channel dependent. Most carrier locked phones run carrier tailored OS that often include bloatware. Unlocked phones and/or phones sold in rights conscious regions would contain less.
I've used couple carrier branded phones, that `pm list` commands I posted in a different comment returns literally more than dozen of com.carrier.carriertrademark packages.
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.
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.
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'.
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.
"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.
> 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.
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.
> 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.
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.
I just bought a Motorola Moto G73 for $180, was 50% off as precious gen phones often are once the new comes out.
I got a Samsung S21 as my daily driver, but just wanted to check out a non-Samsung one over time.
So far I've been very impressed. It comes with Google apps for almost everything, the Moto specific stuff seems to be addons you can easily ignore.
Even came with a transparent protective case and audio jack.
Performance-wise I don't notice any difference in normal use, ie surfing, pictures and such. I don't play games though, there the S21 would blow it out of the water according to benchmarks.
Screen isn't quite as good, but close enough that I'd be happy with it as a primary phone.
Only thing that's a bit of a downer is they only do 3 years of security upgrades it seems. This is a bit short I feel.
Haven't tried any of the other brands over time in recent years, just adding my 2 cents.
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..)
Yup, there's a reason I'm still rocking it. Spec wise the 7a legitimately seems like a downgrade, and that's excluding the lack of headphone jack.
Other than the palm pre, my first smartphone was the galaxy nexus. It's still probably my favorite smartphone ever -- samsung hardware and google software both going full throttle really is the ideal, but for some reason they just don't play ball like that anymore.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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) - 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.
"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.)
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).
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?
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.
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.
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.
