I hate that. One of the reasons I dislike Samsung phones. Last phone from them was a Note 8 and unless they go back to a pure Android experience, I won’t get another. We know that isn’t happening any time soon.
Honestly I’m super over all our current choices. Im on an iPhone and while I like their privacy stuff slightly better than android, there are lots of things I don’t like.
I also hate how much metadata the big G snorts up. Even just the location data they retain is out of this world.
There just aren’t any options if you want something that doesn’t keep you boxed into a closed ecosystem or track every love you make.
You can get a Google pixel and sideload an operating system such as Grapheneos, and you won’t have to deal with any of Google’s bs spying. Highly recommend looking into it.
I recently made the switch and it’s great. Definitely takes a bit of understanding and research to know what you’re getting into, though.
Yeah. That’s what I’ve been looking into. I used to root and do roms and stuff. Back in the day I was pretty involved in the XDA community.
At that point why not just using Samsung phone and sideload the OS? Seems weird to do that on Pixel which has inferior hardware and good software (like its camera apps), and then remove the software
Simple reason being that there’s no notoriously good OS for Samsung phones.
Graphene is highly focused on not being annoying while keeping privacy intact. You can, for example, have Google Play Services, within a sandbox. Everything can be denied network access, or any access really, on a per app basis.
It also relies on Google’s security chip to keep the chain of trust intact. The boot sequence and your private keys are kept intact that way. Not everyone documents and opens their hardware as well as Google. Samsung is notoriously terrible and full of it when it comes to allowing you to do your own thing.
I recently just bought a pixel 6 and have been interested in Graphene OS, but would I lose features like live translate and the hold for me feature?
I wanted to do that but need to use Google apps for work (specifically google chat won’t work).
You can run Google Play services on GrapheneOS it’s called Sanboxed Google Play. It allows you to run Play services as a normal app without any special privileges so you can install it without sacrificing all of your phones data to google. Should allow you to use pretty much all Google apps.
This isn’t enough for work apps that require Android Device Policy unfortunately. When I researched it in November I found that it would require too many permissions so GrapheneOS isn’t planning on supporting it.
What about the fairphones? I was reading up on them and might get one. I like that they come with an android fork and open-source apps so you don’t have to deal with Google. Plus being fully repairable and sustainably-made. Does anyone have any experience with them?
Apple’s biggest success is convincing people they care about your privacy.
wtf do you go with for a quality hardware android reasonably priced? LG got out of the phone game which sucks ass. Pixel can be great but they are all flagship prices. Samsung, while having horrible shit like this, is quality hardware and has lots of models under $200.
It’s really frustrating because Samsung is basically the leader in Android phones right now.
I hope we get a bunch of new good options this year because I really need to upgrade and posts like this remind me why I don’t by Samsung.
Straight up gambling apps too
Samsung has been a malicious bad actor for a while now. It’s not just phones; they also pulled shit like retroactively adding ads to people’s smart TVs etc.
(Also, even their “dumb” products, like appliances, are designed to fail just outside warranty. If you don’t believe me, take a look at my washer’s spider arm, which failed catastrophically due to corrosion even though nothing else in the machine had so much of a speck of corrosion on it. Samsung is clearly capable of specifying corrosion-resistant materials and chose not to on purpose in order to create a failure point.)
Everyone should completely boycott Samsung.
I disabled my DNS block-list for 5 minutes to test something, and my Samsung TV used its newfound freedom to immediately go and automatically install the TikTok app from its app store. It no longer gets the privilege of an internet connection.
Shouldn’t have ever connected it in the first place. I spent $30 on a Chromecast that gets plugged in and connected.
That has to be an American-market thing, really.
My Samsung TV has never pulled this shit. It used to have free Internet access, now it’s behind a DNS blocker because it wants to do phone home a LOT, but even when I unblocked it to download an app I wanted, it didn’t do shit that it shouldn’t have.
It’s still likely the last Samsung TV I’ll ever own - I don’t like the app availability on Tizen much - but I just don’t see all this adware that everyone keeps talking about. Mine’s a 2019 model though, maybe it’s only newer ones?
This was in Europe - 2019 model as well. Must have been around 2021 or so, when TikTok was just taking off.
Majorly infuriating.
It’s not really your phone if it does things like this. This is Samsung’s phone you pay for their permission to carry for a few years.
True ownership means fully possessing something and deciding how it operates including what software it runs, what data that software can access, and when it can access it. I would not be surprised if those apps had some very invasive default permissions.
There’s a difference between not having full ownership and not bothering to use it. There’s plenty of options from rooting to full custom ROMs, and as far as I know Samsung does nothing to prevent you using those, they just don’t do it for you / provide support and updates.
My Canadian S10E has no way to unlock the bootloader.
Yeah, you shouldn’t have to root your phone to own it though. This is just straight up asshole design, there are plenty of people out there who aren’t technically savvy who don’t know how to do this stuff. They shouldn’t be forced to circumvent the default software just to remove an app they don’t want in the first place.
Last time I bothered researching, Google pixel was the only one that didn’t void the warranty when you unlock the bootloader.
I remember Samsung being especially locked down with hardware e-fuses that blew if you ran any software not signed by their key. You could never reset back to stock afterwards.
If one of my relatives showed me this screen appearing on their phone I’d assume they have malware
Ah, that’s where you’re wrong: it’s not your phone.
One of the reasons that my last Samsung phone was an S5. Can’t reload a custom ROM on them anymore to get rid of OEM shit, as far as I know. Motorolas and Pixels are good for that now.
I did with my S10+, so you definitely could more recently.
Having said that I’m finding the crud much reduced on my S23, like they don’t try to push bixby down your throat every 10 seconds.
GSI roms are the solution! I have a Vanilla Lineageos on my A12 and it’s great! But for me, there is just one problem with it, everytime you unlock the phone, touch does not work for 4 or 5 second. :)
Stab in the dark…your on tmobile.
It does this to me too. You disable the damn thing, then you get a carrier update and it reactivates and downloads stupid games no one wants.
First time it did it to me, I thought I got a virus. Come to find out…nah it’s just a thing tmobile forces on you for fun.
Assholes
It’s carrier based. I’ve had Samsung phones almost exclusively and as long as I buy unlocked I never get unwanted apps.
The fact that one of those is some sort of a gambling app promotes that to very infuriating! 😡
I’m amazed by how many gambling ads and games are pushed these days. Really horrible imo.
Yeah but the Cesar’s app let’s you play without paying. You can, but it’s not necessary. Besides some of the games are fun to play without spending any money
It just seems like that might really be not cool to force such apps on someone struggling with a gambling addiction.
Disingenuous. What has that got to do with anything?Are they specifically targeting those people? Do you have proof they do? I thought the discussion was about the apps themselves, not the people getting them?
guess its carrier stuff?
At this point I only buy Smartphones with Android One label (Stock Android without anything changed). Samsung especially is full of bloat.
Is Android One still a thing? The Samsung bloat was why I moved to pixel devices. Pixels have never had premium hardware but the software was always 🤌
Xiaomi managed to kill Android One
At this point I only buy Smartphones with Android One label (Stock Android without anything changed). Samsung especially is full of bloat.
Bloat is bad enough but Samsung devices now have ad/crap/spyware baked into them and you can’t even disable some of it.
I switch between the pixel and the one plus
OP’s bloat is provider branding, not stock Samsung. Samsung phones have the second longest support timeframe after Fairphone (who recently announced 7 years of Android updates). Those “stock Android One” phones typically don’t get Android updates for very long.
Same here bud. I am tired of smartphone UI’s having tons of bloatware and all that shit.
One of the many reasons I will only ever buy Pixel phones. No bloatware.
Just uninstalled this after seeing this thread. If you’re on AT&T like I am the package name for Mobile Services Manager is com.dti.att and it has nothing to do with your actual mobile services. All it does is push and update bloatware. I also nuked every AT&T app that I could. I recommend everyone who has Android Studio do this to their phone its easy.
So it’s AT&T that does this and not Samsung?
Yes. On T Mobile I had to install their voicemail app before it stopped bugging me but no games.
Unbranded Samsung phones don’t have that.
Genuine question here, where are people buying phones that have all of this crap installed on them?
I have only ever bought unlocked phones directly from the manufacturer (pixel, nexus) or from a retailer like best buy and I have never had any carrier crap like this and I started with the nexus one.
I just get the phone and either transfered the physical sim or transferred the sim digitally, at no point has a carrier ever had the ability or permission to install apps on my phone.
I guess maybe because I never saw the point in buying carrier locked phones and always viewed that as a weird arbitrary lockdown(like buying a car that you can only drive on certain highways), I just avoided this? Is that where the bloat ware comes in?
When you buy them from mobile phone companies(T-Mobile, at&t,etc .)you get their bloat ware. This why I also get mine from the manufacturer. Fuck all that bloat ware and it’s unlocked as well.
I bought an unlocked phone directly from the manufacturer and still didn’t get the choice.
Inserting a SIM card wiped the phone and provisioned it, installing all sorts of carrier-provided apps with system-level permissions.
As far as I’ve found, there’s a few possible solutions:
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Unlock the bootloader and install a custom ROM that doesn’t automatically install carrier-provided apps. (Warning: This will blow the E-fuse on Samsung devices, disabling biometrics and other features provided by their proprietary HSM).
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Manually disable the apps after they’re forcibly installed for you. Install
adbon a computer and usepm disable-user --user 0 the.app.packageon every app you don’t want. If your OEM ROM is particularly scummy, it might go out of its way to periodically re-enable some of them, though. -
Find a SIM card for a carrier that doesn’t install any apps, then insert that into a fresh phone and hope that the phone doesn’t adopt the new carrier’s apps (or wipe the phone) when you insert your actual SIM.
Wait, inserting the SIM card WIPED the phone!? That’s insane!
For me inserting a SIM of a particular carrier did not wipe the phone but did install their bloatware on reboot.
Though, using adb to manually remove (actually remove not disable) all that bloatware plus DT Ignite did the trick. I have even rebooted my device and the bloatware did not return.
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In US it is common to buy carrier subsidized phones, and those come with their bloatware
Yes, its the carriers. It was extremely easy to remove though as long as you have Android Studio downloaded.
Don’t buy carrier models.
It was hard when they were the only model available at the time, but sure.
So wait. Like gamers waiting for sales
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