I didn’t even know you could use it without one.
To use the what now?
I have no idea how Samsung phones are so popular. They are aesthetically pleasing I guess, but their insistence on bloat ware has driven me away since day 1. I almost got the 1 bloat free phone they ever made which was the S4 Google Play edition, but opted for the HTC One Google Play edition instead. Since then, every phone has been loaded with unremovable garbage apps that you can’t get rid of without rooting. I refuse to buy a phone with garbage apps that no one uses with the sole purpose of data collection. Say what you will about Google (I know) but at least their apps are helpful.
My mom has a Samsung Smart TV that recently kept turning on by itself to play their shitty TV+app which was pre installed on the TV, and never once opened (not on purpose at least) by anyone in the household. Apparently this is a common issue. I had to disconnect it completely from the internet, perform a factory reset, sign her Samsung account out, and plug in a Chromecast to replace the UI of the TV just to get everything working for her, and not waste electricity by having the TV randomly turn on every 30 minutes. It’s one thing if they were bloating their UI with good apps, but forcing a bunch of absolutely useless apps onto us is ridiculous.
I don’t have a particular liking for Samsung, but I’ve been using their devices for many years since their features best match my needs.
I never got any bloat, quite the contrary, I go out of my way to install some of their apps because they provide android functionality that is rare to find otherwise (e.g. audio multi-app sound, sound output to different devices, individual app volume control, etc.).
There are no preinstalled games, 3rd party apps or anything really other than the basic Google & default apps like a browser.From reading online, it seems to be a feature of some segments of the US market.
I’m currently using my first Samsung device in a while (handed down by someone who didn’t like it) and it’s just like any other phone.
I’m not in the US though.
What I could hold against them is how some of their devices have extra features enabled within the brand’s ecosystem. I understand it’s a basic way to keep users with the brand without being too harsh (everything still works with another appliance after all), but it’s still a bit crummy.
I have some really old ones running Lineage that still work great. They used to make solid phones. The tablet has been good but its software sucked.
Oh no! Anyway…
Came here for this :) Now, if Samsung could punish my unregistered ass by uninstalling the samsung store from my phone too…
Hahaha.
Who the fuck uses Samsung store anyway?
I never owned a Sammy phone in my life! The sheer double app bloatware is enough to scare me away.
Plain vanilla for me.
But why would I want to use the Galaxy store?
I think the Galaxy Store occasionally has some offers, like 50% discount on purchases and stuff. If you play gacha games, you can “save” a lot of money.
If you use a samsung phone that’s where goodlock is
And what’s that?
A really cool app that brings new functionality and customization options for a Samsung phone.
I sense lots of people creating accounts with gibberish@gibberish emails just to download GoodLock lol
There are seriously a bunch of bots here saying all exactly the same thing about Goodlock
Yeah but what does it do?
Ok, good point. Here’s some screenshots with descriptions of what it can do. Sorry, I’m too lazy to type all of this on my phone.
When I search for good lock it only finds “nice catch” some other thing and a ton of crap ware. How do I get to that page?
Ah, so it is PowerToys, but for Samsung phones.
EDIT: nvm. I thought this was a Samsung app, but turns out it is third party.
It’s first-party, but somehow not installed by default on Samsung devices.
Honestly, one of these look enticing enough to deal with the galaxy app store to me.
Especially since most of those features should just be part of the phone, and not walled behind a 3rd party app store.
Nova does a lot of this doesn’t it
It brings new functionality and customization options for a Samsung phone. It’s a really cool app.
A really cool app that brings new functionality and customization options for a Samsung phone.
Made by samsung
I mean you can get it other places as well, finelock, nicelock, and goodlock region-free are all available online and will do the same things.
Im aware, but most people think its only on the galaxy store
For the ‘edge touch’ app that lets you fix that curved screen bullshit that fucks you up every time you’re typing.
It goes to my pile of reasons for not using it, currently, I have:
- Blocks VPNs
- Popup ad at startup
- There’s nothing interesting on it
- Now it requires an account
Wait what
The first two are real?
Yeah everytime I open it for updates it shows me a popup ad. For the VPN my only reference point is Proton VPN premium servers, when using it the downloads don’t move, disable it, and it starts going instantly
OK i have a stock tab s6 and it doesn’t do either of those thankfully. It sucks in other ways. Have to keep this one stock but with lineage it is so much better
I’m sorry, the fucking wha– oh right, the first app that I disabled and hid on my last Smasnug.
Yo, how did you disable it? It won’t let me.
Settings, Apps, Galaxy Store, Disable. It should revert it to the stock version and disable it. Unless your phone has some additional restrictions that prevents disabling it.
Seems I’ve got those restrictions. Note 20 ultra.
Adb time
?
Use adb and see if you can flush those apps
Or instead I can not spend all that time and effort messing with my phone that holds all of my data and instead but a moondrop phone and never show Samsung my wallet again.
How can you disable it without affecting your system apps installed from there
No idea, I never used it. The day I got that phone, I disabled/uninstalled all Smasnug and most Google apps.
You could try getting the APKs from APKMirror and installing them from a file manager.
I suppose that’s an option
Lineage. Certainly made my Tab S6 usable
Unfortunately not an option for my phone :(
Yeah I’ve got two tablets and have to keep one stock. Its infuriating
Yeah. My plan in the future is to get a phone I can put divestos on
this will affect 300 people heavily, and the other 99 % will just create an account then lol
I dont have a smasnug(not a typo, inside joke) but do people actually use OEM stores?
Oh SMASNUG!
oh no, my pkcell
I have one.
I have only ever used the Samsung store to install a single official customisation app that I used once and never again.
As far as I’m concerned it only exists to occasionally annoy me with notifications about apps with updates that I installed from other stores.
This is the way to update the Samsung apps
Who uses that anyway? Back when I was using a Samsung phone, I was always annoyed because I couldn’t uninstall this bullshit
The Pixel with GrapheneOS is simply superior. No ads, no tracking, no bloatware, no bullshit, just 100% FOSS software with privacy and security in mind.
and nothing of value was lost
Unfortunate. The Samsung store is probably the biggest non-Chinese competitor to Google Play, and now it’s picking up Google’s annoying practices.
I know people like to be dismissive about every app they don’t personally use, but the Samsung Store really isn’t all that bad. A whole bunch of paid apps can be bought there for cheap or even gotten for free sometimes. I wish more people used it so Google would actually feel pressure to make the Play Store better.
Its not an actual competitor considering you need both a samsung smartphone and the galaxy store app to actually download apps. The discounted apps are limited to samsung smartphones. Meanwhile, those brought on Playstore can be installed on any google play services compatible smartphone.
Its a total ghost town in the Samsung Store though its pretty much useless anyways.
For anyone who doesn’t know, you can remove the Galaxy Store and any other Samsung bloatware you don’t want using ADB. Root isn’t required, but be careful when removing apps, you could accidentally remove something that’s a dependency on something else you actually use. For me I desperately needed to stop the constant notification from the Samsung Account app telling me to sign in to continue.
There’s a simple and intuitive application called Universal Android Debloater which does everything for you
It’s free and open source on GitHub: https://github.com/Universal-Debloater-Alliance/universal-android-debloater-next-generation
TIL Samsung has a Galaxy Store.
Updates uninstalled, all available permissions turned off, auto-update turned off for Galaxy Store. That app has done nothing but get in my way. Thanks for the reminder, Samsung.
