Hacker News Reader

Comment by peterangular | Hacker News Reader

Yep - zero trust is exactly right... I bought a Samsung smart watch for Black Friday for $280-ish. Figured "hey - this will probably have better calendar/application support than my Garmin watch!"

Nope. Literally can't get it to vibrate/alert when a notification comes through unless it's through Samsung's SPECIFIC applications. So my HipChat messages, Gmail inbox, etc have ZERO notifications even though it WILL show as a new notification on the watch face. Before anyone gives me crap saying "you screwed up the settings" - trust me, I didn't, and I've tried everything.

I learned my lesson - Samsung is a faceless company with zero attention to user experience, and customer support. It is of no surprise that they outright lie about their features - which is EXACTLY what using a DSLR stock photo for this marketing is. An outright lie.

I will stick with my Garmin devices from here on-out and am looking to switch ecosystems for my phone as I'm on an S8+ that disgusts me as a user (Bixby, bloatware blah blah).

ZERO trust for Samsung.

View on HN

Samsung is completely untrustworthy. I might buy another television from them in the future as the screen quality on my Samsung televisions has always been great. But their smart appliances are a joke. Read the reviews for any of the required Samsung "Smart" Apps and you'll find terrible software that doesn't work. Where it does work, at best it technically meets the advertised criteria, but in other cases it seems like bald-faced lies.

I've got a Samsung washer/dryer. They're fine. But the advertised smart features don't work without the app, the App basically doesn't work, and while they say they can be connected to the Wi-Fi, they can only be connected to Wi-Fi via WPS. If that was ever justified, it certainly wasn't justified in 2015/2016 when I bought them. Had I bought them for these features I'd have been furious.

I keep hoping someone will kickstart a display company that sells just really amazing displays and none of the “smart” garbage. I read that some manufacturers even serve up ads in their latest smart UIs. That’s infuriating!

Have you looked at Monoprice's stuff? They sell displays using the same panels as some of the nice name brand stuff, and I'd personally be surprised if they packaged the same BS into their house brand displays.

monoprice qa is awful. would not recommend for larger ticket items. they're great for cables and accessories tho

Someone else mentioned that to me too but all I see on their site are Vizio TVs and I refuse to buy one of those. I bought a Vizio a few years ago and it was the worst TV I've ever owned. Replaced it with a Sony and never looked back.

Where do I get the Monoprice TVs?

Is it the same panels though? I've heard that a lot of these new TV vendors are buying panels that might not have met the QA standards of Samsung, Apple, Sony, etc, but still function. Rather than trashing the unit, it gets sold off to a different company.

IF you like a smart TV but not the smart features (but have no dumb alternative), then don't connect it to the Internet. Now it's just a dumb TV.

I guess the smart features don't add a huge amount to the purchase price but it would be nice not to have to pay for a bunch of features I don't need.

No TV tuner, no WiFi, no ethernet, no loudspeakers. Just a great quality display with a few HDMIs please.

> guess the smart features don't add a huge amount to the purchase price

They reduce it, because having one do-it-all device increases units/SKU and decreases the contribution of fixed costs to the minimum unit cost needed to break even, and competition prevents charging excessive premiums across most commodity models.

I think that’s called a computer monitor

I know why you're getting down voted, but you're not exactly wrong. There used to be TVs and video monitors, and then there were computer monitors. They were all CRTs. The computer monitors were way more expensive than TVs partly due to being progressive scan vs interlaced. Televisions had low resolution and included things like speakers and tuners. Video monitors could be had with much higher resolution for post/broadcast facilities even though they were still interlaced.

It wasn't until everything went flat screen where "TVs", computer monitors, video monitors became so interchangeable. However, there's really not many 72" computer monitors to fill up the space in my living room.

For a while, computer monitors were limited by the HDTV specs, but a computer monitor usually has better specs - often resolution, refresh rate, display lag, connectivity options, etc.

Except of course that dumb TVs used to at least offer programme guide. Now you can't even get that without an internet connection

The only program guide I've seen on a dumb TV is the scrolling display from my cable provider - which it displays over HDMI, not internet.

If it's displaying anything from the internet, then I don't think it's still a "dumb TV".

In countries that use DVB-T or ISDB-T broadcasts there is over the air programme guide information for the TV to show

In the UK certainly, the programme guide is available over the air on dumb TVs.

There is a system for TV Meta Data to be sent over the air and TVs with tuners used to be able to read this data and create an on screen guide. I had this on one of the first HDTVs I got but haven't seen it since

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Program_and_System_Information...

They still do. My ota setup gets it just fine

The smart TVs still have a slow and clunky UI before you connect them to the internet.

You can get professional displays, they're just big monitors with HDMI, VGA, RGB inputs, those are also supposedly made to whitstand heavier usage but a bigger price tag.

Look into "NEC Commercial Displays". They're intended for use as signage and things, but most of them are full TVs with ATSC tuners, remote controls, speakers, and everything. They generally do not have any smart functionality, but often have serial ports or interfaces for adding your own. They are often slightly more expensive than the more encumbered displays, but not by much.

The biggest problem that I've found with them is that they're not available at your local store, so you pretty much have to just buy one sight-unseen and hope it looks good when it arrives.

I got the NEC E554 from Amazon, and left a 3-star review for it there.

Seconded. I have a NEC P461 as a secondary/movie display in my office. It's the thin bezeled NEC that you see in airports worldwide. Love it.

EDIT: as a followup, I should mention that circa 2018 there aren't really any commercial/signage displays that have 4k resolution. There are lots of "4k signage solutions" but they are all groups of quad monitors. It appears there is not yet demand (or sufficient product dev) in 2018 for 4k signage monitors. It sort of makes sense given that a departures/arrivals screen doesn't really need 4k ...

Looks like NEC has added some very recently, like the C651Q-AVT2, which is a 65" 4K display with an ATSC tuner.

https://www.necdisplay.com/p/displays/c651q-avt2

Do any of the TV review sites test these? That would be very helpful since you can't showroom them.

Look at the less sturdy versions of digital signage devices. Iiyama is one of these manufacturers that in my experience doesn't sell bullshit, but results always wary and I don't buy a new screen that often, nor does (close) family/friends where one'd notice badly behaving devices.

I haven't yet found large OLED screens with none of the smart BS though, so if that's what you want, good luck.

Here's how I solved this for now: I've kept around my 10yo dumb 32'' TV from Samsung for casual viewing, like showing a video to our kid (we hardly every use it otherwise). For something serious I made a beamer cart that I can roll everywhere, with a PS4, a Nintendo Switch, and a place to put a laptop. Beamers can mostly still be had without any connectivity. A decent 1080p one from BenQ costs you around 600-700 bucks and that's plenty enough for me to have full bluray quality movie experiences. For sound I just bought an Avantree AptX low latency bluetooth receiver, and I plan on extending this with an HDMI audio splitter and low latency transmitter with optical input to get full stereo quality on a nice pair of speakers. Screw surround, screw 4K, keep your 3D crap, I'm getting too old for this.

A 700USD beamer to protect your privacy? Surely you can just broadcast your computer on to the tv?

Get a receiver with HDMI passthrough so the sound comes out your hifi speakers and the video signal gets sent on to the TV. No need for bluetooth, splitters, optical input

it's not just to protect my privacy, it's just generally how I've come to think about consuming media in my house.

* a beamer gives you a viewing angle as wide as you'd want to have in a cinema (wider than this is uncomfortable).

* therefore immersion in movies and games is about the strongest you can have for non-VR content in your home.

* cinema is (a) rarely showing what I want anymore and (b) incovenient now that we've got a small kid, so this solves that as well.

* a beamer on a cart is mobile - sometimes I just roll it to the end of our bed, lie down and play Zelda or whatever for half an hour to relax a bit.

* beamers are mostly still dumb, so there's not much to break that I cannot fix and not much to annoy me, like "go online to get the full experience (and our ads)" and all that crap.

* when we're done the beamer can be rolled out of sight, so you don't have a giant black hole in the middle of your living room, constantly telling you you should probably do something with it to make it worthwhile.

* setting up the beamer is a bit of an act, and that's good, so we do it about once every week and have enough activities in our life other than passive media viewing. with the cart it's still quick enough to not be very inconvenient, I can just plug in one power cable and push a couple of buttons and it's done.

Is beamer quality decent? Every time I've seen one in action (I admit last time was years ago) it was nowhere near the quality of TV and the room also needed to be very dark.

When the bulbs break they're quite pricey to replace no?

It depends on how you want to use it. With good lighting conditions it totally is, and this matches the way in which I use our beamer quite well (during the day there's no time anyways). If you want something that works during the day and rolling down blinds is too annoying for you, then yes, it's not the best choice. But beamers have become much better than 5-10y ago for a given price. DLP technology has become affordable for high resolutions and its rainbow effect has been treated quite effectively, giving you very sharp images. Strong light bulbs are also much more prevalent. Yes you gotta replace them, but I'm anticipating many years until I run out of their 1000+ hours of lifetime, and 150 bucks or so every couple of years seems quite fine for me, more realistically it's probably going to be a new device every 5-10 years like with TVs.

What is a beamer?

German (and possibly neighboring languages) term for a video projector. One of the weird "english-but-not-actually" words we have.

Thanks for clearing that up - the times when loan words mess up your foreign language skills... ;)

Unfortunately most TVs are "smart" TVs (the dumbest idea ever, seen from a tech's point of view - you're stuck with whatever is in the TV, unlike if you just connect your Pi (or even Chromecast) etc. through HDMI). But non-"smart" TVs are still out there, fortunately. I found a very nice Philips DVB-T "dumb" TV. And it was quite a bit cheaper than the equivalent sized Samsung "smart" TV. It does everything I need (and the guide is broadcasted over DVB-T, so no net is needed for that. A Pi connected to HDMI makes it smart, but my way.)

When I bought my smart TV I've decided to not connect it to my WLAN and didn't plug in the Ethernet. So it isn't able to send information or install anything. Everything I watch on it is through my home theater PC. If I ever wanted to update it I would connect it with Ethernet and then remove the ethernet cable after the update.

I’ve been complaining about this for a few years as well. When I went to buy a new TV last year my options were so horrifically limited that I gave up, bought a highly regarded model and have purposefully never connected it to any networks.

It’s getting worse, we couldn’t even find a new fridge with the options we wanted that wasn’t ‘smart’. I wound up taking apart my LG fridge to disable the WiFi module after we bought it. Not connecting it to the WiFi wasn’t enough, the damn thing broadcasts it’s own wireless network and I got sick and tired of seeing it. Shocker, there was no way to turn it off.

Sounds like they should stick to hardware innovation and stop trying so hard on software.

Actually the Samsung dryers use some material in the drum that react over time and eventually fail. There was a good rundown by someone with the knowhow to explain why they fail. If I can find the video I'll link it.

Different video than I saw, but same explanation: https://youtu.be/0uDQaHiEfbA?t=29

This is classic galvanic corrosion. The manufacturing engineer in me understands why they made this choice, but the materials engineer in me is surprised they did. (And, yes, I own a Samsung washer).

If you want to learn more about the electrochemistry here, Google "Pourbaix Diagram"

Could you clarify what the manufacturing angle and the materials angle is for this choice? Thanks.

The short version is that it is much easier to form complicated shapes in aluminum than stainless. Easier to form and more processes to do so.

On the materials side, When you connect dissimilar metals, their is a potential that forms between them (long topic). This drives redox reactions at the surfaces of the two metals, and the stable species depend on the pH of the water they are in. In this case the aluminum will preferentially dissolve into solution. If you must connect dissimilar metals, you want the surface area of the more Noble (i.e. SS) to be small, and the metal that corrodes large. This is because you actually care about current density (current/area) on the part that is corroding. Here you have a lot of surface area of stainless, which, in broad strokes, is probably not a good decision.

"I've got a Samsung washer/dryer. They're fine. But the advertised smart features don't work without the app ..."

Lucky you!

Very high end (or commercial) appliances are the only ones left that don't have spyware/crapware/IoT so you really lucked out there ...

I had a Samsung Dryer whose heating element died three years after I purchased it brand new. They only have a warrenty of one year, I could only find grey market parts, and I would have had to completely disassemble it to replace it.

It was far easier to replace it, and I will not buy Samsung appliances again.

Surprise - modern appliances aren't made with easy maintenance in mind -- I had to disassemble my entire dryer to replace a $15 guide wheel. Took me nearly an entire day to do it, and would have been cost prohibitive to pay someone else to do it. (and indeed, if I priced out my own time it wouldn't have been worth it, but I liked the challenge)

My Samsung washer-dryer heater element broke pithing the first month of ownership (or was DOA) and it too over six months to be repaired under warranty. That was just over 2 years ago, it it's just failed again.

My first and last Samsung product.

Samsung internet connected TVs monitor what's on your screen and send super low res snapshots up to their servers - just enough that they can automatically work out what you're watching. Your IP can then be cross-correlated with other web companies like google so they can keep a record against your full identity of everything you watch. So even their TVs aren't safe if you care about privacy.

https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2015/02/samsung-lg-...

That's going to be interesting if they still do that in a post-GDPR world without positive informed consent.

Far out, that's the scariest thing I've read today.

These companies are putting spy bugs in citizens homes.

Every single TV manufacturer does that. In US, Vizio the largest HDTV brand openly sells this as a service to media agencies. Samsung and Japanese TV manufacturer data is much harder to access to and Japanese brands are generally scrupulous over permissions. No one matches any personally identifying info with this viewership data... It's all anonymized.

Source: work in ad-tech and have personally worked with this kind of data from different firms.

> I've got a Samsung washer/dryer. They're fine.

I would not be so sure, they have a recall on a number of units:

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/man-saves-hom...

Samsung is the one company I've decided to never get a TV from because of their privacy issues but also because they are so intrusive in their efforts to push ads. Buying a Samsung TV is like asking for commercials in the middle of every bluray or DVD you watch.

https://www.theverge.com/2015/2/11/8017771/samsung-smart-tvs...

I have a Samsung "smart TV" and have no intention of ever letting it on my LAN. It does not get the wifi password and has no Ethernet cable. It's used as a dumb display hooked up to a home theatre receiver and Xbox one x, home theatre pc, etc.

Do not trust the software on these things.

I do the same. And the next step will be wrapping everything in alu foil, because it is cheap for companies to include gsm module. Only half kidding, unfortunately. :-/

I bought a Samsung phone (S9) over black Friday. Returned it already. Their apps were incredibly heavy handed and invasive.

The photo app had a hard coded button on top of my camera viewing area which linked a way to buy things via a samsung app. I was appalled. I also couldn't turn off the Bixby assistant without first making a new Samsung account.

Do you mean the shopping integration for Bixby vision? That can be disabled. In fact I think it is disabled by default.

Heh - I was stuck at Costco getting tires installed the other day and ended up buying one of those watches. My favorite part so far is the Bixby app, which presents itself as a Siri-like assistant that collects all of my contacts and GPS data, because hey, but fails on everything I ask it, including dead simple questions like "Where's the closest Starbucks?"

I'm just going to take a hammer to it. I know it's unreasonable but I'm that p'd off.

My assumption is that the Bixby app is the point. It's the only way they can get recurring revenue out of you, the TV is a loss-leader to grease its installation.

Are there more trustworthy options for Android smartphones in the US? I was recently shopping for an upgrade from my LG G4 and settled for the S9+. I'm pretty satisfied, actually, but it really felt like I had an extremely limited selection

From my understanding, the only flagship-level choices that aren't big hassles to to get are Samsung (Galaxy/Note), Google (Pixel), OnePlus, LG. Of those, LG seems to be the only one that's not constantly plagued by trust/privacy issues (although in my case, I wanted to try a different brand so I didn't end up going with it).

I've been looking into Blackberry (Key2 specifically) because they seem to be putting security first and I don't mind if my platform is a tiny bit behind on the raw system specs. If anyone has experiences to share I am ALL ears!

I was actually about to get a KeyOne when I was shopping! The primary concerns I had that stopped me from going through with it were: 1) not sure if I'd actually like the keyboard enough to be worth the screen size tradeoff, and 2) I'd read bad things about the build quality (screens falling off?!?) since Blackberry apparently has little oversight over the actual production. I'd be glad to hear from someone else if these concerns were justified.

You could do a lot better than Blackberry from a security standpoint. The URLs tell a pretty scary story all on their own:

https://www.zdnet.com/article/canadian-police-obtained-black...

https://thenextweb.com/asia/2013/07/10/after-a-lengthy-battl...

https://www.extremetech.com/mobile/219661-blackberry-ceo-bla...

IMO, the times I've tried Android it always ended up being a mistake to use something other than the Nexus and now Pixel. Android and privacy is whole other situation though.

I've settled on my iPhoneX for now.

Not in the US, but I'm happy with my Sony Xperia XZ1 Compact. (It's a year old now.)

I was able to disable almost all the Sony apps with little difficulty, and the "What's new?" notification that appears every 2-3 months I just swipe away.

(Of flagship-level Android phones that aren't huge, i.e. fit in my pocket without bending even while cycling or sitting, the Sony ### Compacts have been the only choice for the last few years.)

The "What's new" annoyance will go away in a year or two, when they stop making upgrades for your phone. :-/

After my Nexus 5's power button finally gave out (third battery.) I upgraded to a LG V30. Had a similar feeling of lack of selection. Wanted to wait for the pixel 3 but it was way too far away.

The slippery glass back and round sides kills me. (Ducttapped the back panel/sides as a decent fix, black tape nobody ever asks, probly just think I'm poor eh)

Not happy with the weight on my pinky either. (Two hands required.) Size similar issue, can't type with one hand like I could with the nexus 5. There is a screen shrink feature but it's awkward and the weight is the real issue.

Software being non stock is annoying but you get used to it quick enough.

Other than those issues it's pretty decent.

Enjoying the 4k video, wide angle photos and software stabilizer a lot.

The dual Sim or sim+ micro SD feature comes in handy for travel/video shooting.

I probably wouldn't recommend unless you have money to burn or really need the video.

Something cheaper probably has relatively same specs/features.

Grab a cheap protection sticker for the back of your phone from eBay. They usually offer better grip than the slippery glass, and look more presentable than black duck tape.

Motorola has started providing ifixit and other 3rd party repairs with official parts for phones out of warranty. That was enough for me to decide to buy one of their lower end phones (Moto g6 plus).

The low end shows sometimes, but I am generally very satisfied. They also provide decent apps and not too much extra on top of stock Android. Upgrades could be better.

I bought a new Samsung Android tablet for the kid in September 2016. It came with Android 4.4.4 and assumed that it could be updated to at least 5.1 or possibly 6.x since it was a device that was shipping new from the company.

E-mail from Samsung support (I'm in the UK) simply said

> please be advised that updates are released in batches, release dates can also vary by region, network and device. As of the moment, if the updates are not yet showing on your device, then we may have to wait until it becomes available and we are unable to confirm when will that be.

Of course, there never was any update.

My first Android device, I was not impressed.

Was it the SM-T230NU? I think its called the Samsung Tab 7 inch?

Looked into lineage at all? I have a Samsung tablet that works well with that and I am happy.

After being a loyal Nexus Android phone user, made the mistake of getting a recent Samsung Galaxy phone. Never again. Updates will undo menu settings and break user settings arbitrarily, that if if Samsung even respects your settings configurations. Don't get me started on the uninstallable Samsung bloatware that is redundant to Google apps (calendar, photo gallery etc) that breaks all the time and backs up your data on its own if your aren't careful.

Well, did Samsung promise this notification feature in their marketing campaign? I considered buying one for this exact feature, but decided not to buy it after TMobile sales folks confirmed that notification worked with Samsung apps only. I don't think however Samsung deliberately misled or lied. Now that isn't to say Samsung support is wonderful -- I personally wouldn't recommend buying anything other than TVs from Samsung.

> Well, did Samsung promise this notification feature in their marketing campaign?

Nope - but it's something I would expect any smartwatch to do. It's just a dark pattern and they don't GAF for any actual use-case.

> I don't think however Samsung deliberately misled

Yea this is where we disagree. It's a dark pattern to force users to use their ecosystem fully. What about my corp. Outlook, HipChat, G-suite products, etc etc!? If it shows a notification on the phone - it should show a notification on the watch like my Garmin. Period.

That's strange, did something change drastically for the latest Galaxy Watch? I have a Gear S2 from a few years ago, and I can get Outlook / GMail / WeChat / Kakaotalk notifications just fine. In fact, I was getting notifications from so many random apps, I started silencing most of them.

> Nope. Literally can't get it to vibrate/alert when a notification comes through unless it's through Samsung's SPECIFIC applications. So my HipChat messages, Gmail inbox, etc have ZERO notifications even though it WILL show as a new notification on the watch face. Before anyone gives me crap saying "you screwed up the settings" - trust me, I didn't, and I've tried everything.

You screwed up the settings. It defaults to only allowing a short list of (mostly Samsung) applications, but you can configure it. Galaxy Wearable > Settings > Notifications > Manage Notifications and enable those applications you want to see notifications from.

Unless I'm mistaken, the key difference is that he can see the notifications fine, but the error is that they do not vibrate. Only the notifications from the Samsung apps vibrate.

I have a Garmin forerunner 235, and there's no way I will ever replace it with any of those "smartwatches" nor apple or Samsung, the user base they target are absolutely to different (Garmin is a fitness watch with some smart capabilities, Apple/Samsung is a smart watch with some fitness capabilities).

Hmm. My Samsung watch does this just fine. E.g. it vibrates when I receive a Slack message.

I have a Samsung Gear S3 Frontier smart-watch, paired with a Sony Xperia X Compact (i.e. no samsung). My friend has a Samsung Galaxy Wear, paired with a Sony Xperia XZ Compact. Neither of us use any Samsung applications other than the required "gear"/"galaxy" app.

I'm getting Gmail, Telegram, Slack, and all sorts of other notifications just fine, and can reply to them.

So while their software sucks (unlike the hardware, their smartwatches are by far the bets ones out there), you did indeed fuck up your settings. Or you use an iPhone, which there is poor support for.

Also, while it's not a particularly trustworthy company, this specifically has nothing to do with trust.

Do they vibrate the watch? GP is saying the notifications come through but only samsung apps vibrate.

Yes. Any notification causes vibration, wakes up the watch to show the notification (or if the watch is in use, show it as a small overlay), from which one can read the content and take actions, including replying straight from the watch.

I always have the watch on silent, so no notification tone. I have no Samsung apps short of the Gear app and Samsung Health.

Samsung makes great displays, that's about it.

how many weeks it's battery life? no problems with notifications btw

Amazfit Bip owner

Reply on news.ycombinator.com