The Samsung Galaxy S23’s bloated Android build somehow uses 60GB of storage
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
But also, samsung does try to make stuff themselves, not just "copy" basic google apps: samsung Dex or Knox are features that are fairly unique when compared to other android vendors. Also, there is much more customization. So while it doesn't completely excuse the fact of using more space then pixels version of android, there are some feature differences that make this disparity less outrageous.
The 'bloat' being somewhat useful and the seemingly better cross-device communication features (compared to a non-Samsung phone with Samsung tablet) have led me to pre-order an S23 Ultra (I was due for a new phone soon anyway and Google Fi has a pretty good deal). Plus, having the phone support wacom just completes the set for me.
Case in point: I have a 10-year-old pre-Tizen Samsung Smart TV I’m keeping alive for reasons. It had a Netflix app. Two years after buying it, Netflix got updated with a new UI, but only on the US store (not in Canada). I called support at the time to say why is the app not in the Canadian store. Netflix says it’s Samsung’s problem; Samsung says it’s Netflix’s problem.
I recently did a factory reset and connected it back to the web. However, the “new” Netflix UI app doesn’t download anymore from the US store. The old app isn’t supported by Netflix either.
Using Google software at least has some predictability and that you can get binaries from sources. Dealing with Samsung is a black hole.
I still think google's design is more pleasing and consistent though.
I am also a consumer that got burned by a Kafkaesque experience with a certain company. I tend to follow the rule: “Fool me once, shame on you; Fool me twice, can’t get fooled again.”
Although Google does have a decent track record for device support lifetime, so long as you rely on a service that's getting completely canned.
That said, I actually prefer the experience on Samsung, their plus/note series development with the stylus feels great to use and I find myself going back to it than the new pixel.
As much as I want to like Google products, they seem to keep missing the mark with stuff like a janky finger sensor and poor swipe detection l.
You can. You can use the shell command `pm disable-user <package>` (over ADB) to completely disable a package, even if it won't let you uninstall it. We've actually bricked Samsung devices before by disabling Knox, which will cause the phone to completely lock you out. Luckily we were still in a shell so we could re-enable it before the phone was toast for good.
-Emily
(Apple fanboy who developed on Android)
Having used Samsungs before, switching to Pixels makes things so.... Clean.
My pixel 2 never had that sort of bullshit. I never had to figure out how to disable (because uninstalling isn't allowed and neither is root on a Samsung) Candy Crush, I never had to disable (every unwanted "update") location services and ads for my fucking builtin camera, and it had a general feeling of just working.
The stock Samsung apps weren't amazing, but ignoring the phoning home with my location and screenshot and recent conversations they weren't shockingly terrible, nevertheless that wasn't my issue with the experience by a longshot.
> That means two app stores, two browsers, two voice assistants, two text messaging apps, two keyboard apps, and on and on. These all get added to the system partition and often aren't removable.
Samsung is free to install software that they want on the phone, but they should make them removable. Having two versions of everything has implications for performance, security, and other non-functional requirements.
But if they're disabled they do not run, and can't run, so the implications for performance and security are zero. The only conceivable impact is that some storage is used up, but as seen in the other comments we are talking dozens of megabytes here, and the article is completely wrong about the partition size.
Microsoft can be problematic on its own, but once a vendor like Dell, HP or Lenovo starts adding crapplets to your OS you are going from the frying pan to the fire.
It's not that they can't make something which is useful, I had a Dell machine that had a pretty good utility for updating drivers but that utility started hassling me for an extended service plan once my machine reached "a certain age" and later started begging me to trade the computer in and get a new one.
In the past it was a lot worse, because of pushback from users and Microsoft I think PC vendors feel somewhat constrained, but left to their own devices PC vendors would crap up PCs with disastrously bad software. See
https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/craplets-could-damage-vista-...
What would be much more apt analogy, are linux distros
We got really really close for a couple years there when HTC was shipping excellent hardware (the HTC One line) along with an interface that felt like a barely-skinned vanilla Android operating system. But then they kept hemorrhaging money, losing market position, and sold off most of their engineers to Google. Oh well...
Sometimes. In some ways. Their appliances (washer/dryer/etc) are notoriously unreliable, and their phone batteries appear to swell more than others.
We basically went to all Bosch and Apple after that. Heaven help anyone who bought recent high-end Samsung SSDs and doesn't read the news.
Yep. I am in a house that is all Sanmsung appliances. The Dishwasher's intake valve started leaking, the Oven's LCD panel broke and only showed garbled information, and the dryer's heating source broke. These were all appliances bought in 2019.
Thankfully, I was able to get replacement parts for the first two and fix easily enough, but there was no way to easily fix the dryer (I ended up getting a new dryer).
There is no way I would buy a Samsung Appliance again, and it frankly makes me question the quality of anything they make.
To me that's more valuable than a 2 or 3 year warranty.
What I don't get about this is that consumer reports continues to frequently recommend their appliances. We bought a Samsung fridge, and that experience told me "don't buy any more Samsung appliances" but when we needed a new washer and dryer, CR rated a pair of Samsungs as top of the list. I thought "well, CR is supposed to be reliable, so maybe I am okay to get these."
Both broke within the first 18 months of ownership and left us unable to wash clothes until a repair could be scheduled.
Fool me twice, yep. I'm the fool. But I can learn, and never another Samsung appliance shall be brought into my house. With the possible exception of a TV; my current TV is a big Samsung and it's been flawless. I think it's actually a different company entirely, even though the appliances and electronics all claim to be "Samsung"
The TVs are better... but the OS was too much for me. Not only because it is full of ads and unlikely to get updates for very long, but also because it's Tizen (which one security researcher, admittedly in 2017, said "may be the worst code I've ever seen" and "Everything you can do wrong there, they do it." He also single-handedly found 40 separate flaws.) Considering Samsung's track record, I find it hard to believe that they would have improved in the last 5 years.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/04/samsungs-tizen-is-ri...
I still rely on CR, however, in the absence of personal experience, bias, or that of someone else I trust. I just bought a new induction cooktop and Samsung was nowhere to be found on their recommended list, so I thought maybe they were starting to get wise to all the problems, but I noticed that the top gas cooktops are Samsung. Maybe those particular models are that good, but I'd never risk finding out. Gas cooktops are awfully simple devices, though, so the risk is limited.
Lots of reviews of poor build and materials quality ("stainless" surfaces bubbling or being scratched by paper towels, knobs breaking, the finish on the grate coming off during regular use and it rusting, etc), burners failing, burners melting the knobs, samsung denying warranty for various and sundry reasons, service techs being unavailable in many areas, service techs saying samsung doesn't supply parts and half the cooktop needs to be replaced for these issues, etc.
In products ranging from a couple weeks to a year old.
I'm dreading the day when we have to replace our decades old propane cooktop + oven.
Sandwiched between "Fisher & Paykel" and Asko.
And for a nearby post: Older phone batteries tend to go out if stored fully charged and left for ages. Turning them off at 50% is the better option, especially if cycled once in a while.
My hi-fi system is 25 coming up on 26 years old. Rotel. :)
Edit: Ah the flat ones are still fine, they have decent glass in them - it's the plastic milk/bottle door bins (also called bottle shelves or guards) that are cracking up. Sorry my original post wasn't precise. Good to know about the actual flat shelves, they're the main thing.
Every month or so the bottom filter sensor says that its blocked. So you have a machine full of water that can't drain, and the lowest point in the machine saying there's a blockage. There's not. There never is. It's an optical sensor that gets dirty. The thing is, at that point, the only way to drain the machine and clean the sensor is by undoing a little 3mm ID hose and pulling the stopper out that they have helpfully supplied. You get water everywhere. Why on earth you would use an optical sensor in a machine built to handle dirty water, small solids, and is known to accumulate soap and detergent scum is absolutely beyond me.
To remedy that, I have a 12v laptop adapter + a 12v bilge pump for a boat and some spare drain hose, put the bilge pump in a baking tray, let the bilge pump take care of sending the water to the shower or sink, and drain the machine via the tiny hose. Clean off the sensor with water from a spray bottle, maybe a little vinegar or glass cleaner. Replace everything, and start the load.
Well over $1,500 of machine and in my mind it's a piece of crap. I wished for a small commercial top loader. It didn't match the nice theme. Now we have a Rube Goldberg disaster mitigation plan that gets actioned quite frequently.
Also, booking a Samsung service tech is hard.
And as you say, draining is a great big PITA. I've gotten okay at doing it without any water hitting the floor, but it took some flooding before I nailed my technique.
No more Samsungs. Every time ours fails my wife gets a little more amenable to the idea of a Speed Queen toploader.
Yale Appliances in Boston, MA, runs their own service department (instead of sub-contracting it out), and so have in-house statistics. According to them, Samsung are relatively reliable as compared to other brands they sell:
* https://blog.yaleappliance.com/are-samsung-appliances-reliab...
One thing they note is that Samsung has become quite popular, and so even if you have a low rate, if the total units are high, then you're going to get a number of service calls, which can raise visibility.
Mail or Calculator or Find My is just getting hidden.
It is true. Factory reset your iOS device and they will come back. That happens because the app is stored still, Apple just creates a second copy that it deletes when you remove the app.
On the other hand, now you have an old app version lingering
This functionality can ONLY be accessed via ADB. It is DIFFERENT from "hiding."
You can break lots of stuff, even Google spyware (Play framework), which is the evidence I need that adb pm uninstall actually works to disable prepackaged manufacturer malware!
Don't wait - try it today: https://github.com/0x192/universal-android-debloater
Yes it's not removed but at least the guarantee it won't run is quite strong.
Their self developed UIs are also garbage. My Samsung tv remote has no source button and source menu is hidden in home all the way to the left. If I make the mistake of clicking on an unrecognized device, it spends forever trying to detect it.
I may just be complaining about smart tvs in general, but my old TCL was not this much of a pain to use.
Man, the UI is a clusterfuck. A lovecraftian horror show.
At least the feet are stable.
Roku considers itself and ad company more than a hardware/software company, also.
Sony is a good brand right? WiFi drops out at the most random times. The router is touching differences away.
The UI lags as it tries to connect to netflix to download all the latest "trends". So you have to wait many-frustrating seconds upon turning on the TV to actually use any UI feature. You can't even change the channel during that time.
Firmware upgrades when it wants.
BBC iPlayer has a dogtag that appears on any BBC channel "Press Green to watch from beginning" that intrudes any program witb no opt-out setting.
Sigh.
Probably not your problem, but too close can actually be much worse than a moderate distance away. Radios struggle with dynamic range, and overly strong signals can be as bad as weak ones.
If its closer than 2m, attach a cable.
Never buy an older person something other than a Panasonic. You won't get bothered by your mom/dad/grandpa compared to any other TV manufacturer. The amount of TVs we've replaced with Panasonics because kids bought their parents a cheap TV and left them to their own was just sad.
I don't understand how anybody on this site would consider using the underpowered mess in their TV.
On my other television I have an Apple TV, and the only real difference is that I like the Apple remote more.
All smart tvs take a few seconds to start up, fill in the UI and that sort of stuff. My LG certainly does and samsungs seem to as well.
Firmware upgrades have so far all been "Would you like to update?"
And given it's basically android, I'm pretty confident that the apps won't go away after a couple of years like they seem to on most tv manufacturers proprietary OS's.
Personally I couldn't be happier.
2. In which case why single out Sony? This behaviour is common across all brands.
3. Pretty sure the "I want everything as separate devices that do their one thing well" war has been lost to a large extent. Apple TV seems popular but the number of separate devices sold is an order of magnitude lower than the number of TVs shifted per year. See also point and click cameras vs mobile phones.
Barring Playstations, I don't buy Sony anymore.
Wonderful hardware, always with a premium fit and finish. But there's always something wrong with a Sony product. Sometimes ridiculous software design, sometimes ridiculous and unreliable hardware design. But it's always fucking something with them. They always get 90% of the way to an amazing product, and then fuck it up.
Well, the camera and battery that is. My huawei and iphone vastly outperform the samsungs I had.
I grade Samsung on the same level as Sony Xperia: great phones, but one too many things that are failing to be acceptable
(Had a Samsung s7, s20 and now an s22 from work, not by choice)
I thought after a while I was imagining things, but I pluged my laptop into our old "dumb" sony and it was showing to the screen in less than one second.
Some of Motorola's mid-range phones are actually pretty good these days - the moto g100 has performance roughly on par with a flagship from a couple of years ago, a huge battery, a microSD slot, a headphones jack, USB-C video output with "Ready For" which is arguably better than Samsung Dex (aside from the name), and official LineageOS support. I got mine for ~$270 on ebay, and if it broke, I'd probably buy the same phone again.
The Sony Xperia 1 IV and 5 IV are also interesting, with many of those same features, but the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 CPU is hot garbage and Sony didn't provide sufficient cooling (or tuning) to keep it from overheating and thermally throttling after a few minutes of usage.
I too have had pretty good experiences with motorola lately. In early '21 I wanted a decent and metaphorically disposable phone so I got an unlocked moto G play from the local Target. I expected it to, like seemingly all others, have a locked bootloader and/or completely prevent root access. But I was pleasantly surprised! With a visit to motorola's website IMEI in hand and a couple hours of pulling up XDA pages (like the good old days) I had my device the way I wanted it.
It would be nice if mine didn't ship with the amount of bloatware that it did given that I couldn't find a replacement ROM at the time. But after some filesystem scouring and ADB commands it was cleaned up enough for me.
When I end up needing another new phone I'll likely hunt down another motorola, and probably the g100 given your positive experience; thanks for sharing it
Now Google Pixel has taken over most of the original HTC phone division, so you will have to look there for the spiritual successors.
Also, while mine initially had an unlockable bootloader, I sent it in for a repair of a broken USB-C port and they sent me back a phone with a permanently locked bootloader, essentially cutting it's usable lifespan in half.
I miss HTC.
It has been a decade already....
Looking at the European S23 Ultra (model: SM-S918B, sales code: EUX, version: S918BXXU1AWA6/S918BOXM1AWA6):
* The compressed firmware is 9.2 GiB.
* The total image size after decompression and desparsing is 12 GiB. I'm not sure why the device mentioned in the article would be reporting 60 GB, but I'm guessing it's counting some data in the userdata partition. Due to AVB's (Android Verified Boot) use of footers, the image size in the firmware package must match the actual partition size. So the 60 GB can't be the sum of all the read-only OS partitions.
* The biggest image is `super` -> `system` at 5.4 GiB.
* All of the images contained within the dm-linear `super` partition are formatted with the new erofs filesystem. I didn't know any devices shipped with that yet. Even the Pixel 7 series is still using ext4 for read-only partitions.
* The complete partition table and file list (after image extraction): https://gist.github.com/chenxiaolong/a4c70376f8e5ba0b4f41547...
I feel like this discussion could be easily resolved just by going to best buy and seeing how much free GB is on a 128gb demo device.
Looks like the launch will be on Feb 17, 2023 (11 days from today).
Several OEMs (apart from Huawei, who developed it) have been using EROFS in their mobile devices for a while now, notably Xiaomi and OPPO.
Google actually tried to make EROFS an Android 13 launch requirement, but they postponed this requirement (and didn't ship it on the Pixel 7) when they discovered a regression in app launch times.
https://mobile.twitter.com/Golden_Reviewer/status/1622851534...
It's becoming harder to find good phones that allow bootloader unlocks and rooting while also being supported by AT&T, which I am tied to because of a family plan. Samsung phones, even if you buy the US non-carrier variant, don't allow bootloader unlocking. AT&T provisions VoLTE and VoWifi based on a Whitelist of phone models so international variants won't work on the network at all. A microsd card slow wouldn't fix the underlying issue of bloat but would at least decrease the impact of it.
I've signed my own secure boot loader on Linux, but I don't know if you can do it on Android at all, since you don't have keys or can modify the secure storage easily.
Also, I know companies have used the root status as a form of DRM. That's not about user security, it's about protecting DRM security, like Widevine L1 or L3 and the android Netflix app. Financial apps haven't been an issue for me, I am running bootloader unlocked and rooted using Magisk.
So if self signing cannot guarantee those assumptions that are being made, there's no way around it.
If so, you might be able to use my avbroot project [1]. It roots the boot image, signs it with your own key, and replaces the OTA verification certificate with your own, so you can install future updates signed by your key while the bootloader is locked.
[1] https://github.com/chenxiaolong/avbroot
EDIT: I read a bit about OnePlus devices. Looks like they do indeed support locking the bootloader with a custom signing key installed. So I went ahead and added support for OnePlus' OTAs in avbroot: https://github.com/chenxiaolong/avbroot/pull/32. There are only minor differences compared to Pixel's OTA images.
Even if you could, Google's hardware attestation API is based on checking their keys against their cloud services, and that's what banking and DRM video apps will generally be testing for going forward.
Client (validate)-> server, requires a valid signature which I cannot sign unless I have access to their private key
Client <-(SpoofedAuthSuccess) SpoofServer, is also impossible if the client requires data from a server to work properly going forward. The only thing you could attain, is to unlock the client locally if you reverse engineered it, but any data not stored locally, is impossible to get. So wrt. games, since you mentioned DRM, it might be possible to unlock the content if it is local, given a clever reverse engineering solution? Even if they encrypted the data on disk, at some point, they have to decrypt it in-memory locally.
But for server, where all validation and data is gated behind an 'authoritative' server, I guess it's just game over for unlocking anything yourself with a certificate. Even if you manage to magically solve it, they will just issue a new certificate, and quickly invalidate the old one I guess.
I haven't had any issues using this device for 2 factor either, Google "sign in using device" is fine with it and so is Duo.
I've been missing AdAway in root mode, so I was wondering.
I use Viper4Android. I am thinking I might intentionally upgrade to an older flagship, when I do get a new phone, because there's no feature a new OS will get which will make me want to give up root and V4A.
AdAway is nice, since it is a set and forget app, I forgot I have it installed. Firefox+ublock, youtube vanced, and DNS or VPN level adblocking are usually good enough for me and don't require root.
Every Samsung device I've ever owned since the galaxy s4 has been utter trash. The watch was never useful because Samsung wanted to create their own app ecosystem and all but abandoned it. My note 10+ is full of bugs and rooting it is entirely out of the question. My earbuds have been nothing but trouble and are thankfully finally dead enough that I can justify replacing them.
Can't wait for this phone to finally die so I can replace it with something that I don't actively hate.
Nowdays I make do with their 2022 XCover6 - but I miss the features I lost.
It may be its last year though, even though it is perfectly functional, and I blame app developers for that. It runs Android 6, and for the last couple of years, developers have been dropping support. LineageOS is an option, though on that particular phone, it is not as good as stock, and know some apps are going to piss me off because of SafetyNet. It is also starting to lack in processing power, as apps get more and more demanding even though they don't offer more in terms of features.
My next phone is probably going to be the XCover6 too. Seems to be the only decent phone with a removeable battery, with the FairPhone, but the FairPhone has no SD card, no headphone jack, and I find it overpriced.
BTW, the S5 was also an excellent phone, a combination of the two would have been perfect. It lacked a stylus, but it was waterproof and built like a tank even though it wasn't a rugged phone. It it also supported hovering on its touchscreen (called Air View), a feature I don't understand why it isn't present in every phone today, if just for its ability to support "hover" target in web pages. Its hardware implementation is also pretty cheap and clever: it is just a particular way of driving the capacitive touchscreen.
Each time I get a new one there are less useful features. I had an S8 that had a mimicked home button press with haptic feedback (since they removed physical buttons, this was perfect IMO). They removed that feature. There was an extra button for Bixby that could be (awkwardly) used by Tasker to have custom controls. Gone. They moved the buttons to all be on the same side and now one handed screenshots are hard to take.
It's all a bit too much.
I'm looking forward to when my wife upgrades her phone, so I can root the S10e.
Yet another good reason to root your phone. You wouldn't catch me using any of this Samsung shovelware.
KNOX tripping only disable some features you probably won't need unless you have a corporate phone, and you probably shouldn't mess with these anyways. At least in Europe, tripping KNOX doesn't void your warranty.
Don’t torture yourself with this phone you hate, just splurge on a new one you’ll like.
Is it worth giving up my freedoms in the absence of a viable free alternative? I guess it is for me. If it’s not for you then I guess your stuck for now.
I'm never buying anything Android again.
For example if you buy a S23 unlocked from Costco and then insert a Telus SIM card, it factory resets itself to the firmware the that Telus has specces. That includes system level app MyTelus, Facebook, Netflix, Amazon, and a few others that I can't remember right now.l. So if you like to do setup before inserting a SIM card, all the changes you've made get blown away (supposed to only happen the first time though).
What's more, Samsung phones tend to be very unsolicited notification heavy the first few days to draw your attention to all of the new features that they have. Whether you care or not i.e. the S20 will throw a notification about how you can change the background wallpaper. On the Pixel at least Google chose to wait until you accessed a feature to start throwing these 'tips' at you.
So at least for me, Samsung phones aren't a pleasant experience to deal with.
>In fact OneUI allows you to make everything look a lot more minimal and cleaner than the default pixel setup with it's huge buttons, colours everywhere and the google search bar you can't get rid of.
Perhaps but it is still faster to install Nova launcher and tweak one or two settings to remove the search bar, then it is to disable 10 or so individual apps bundled in Samsung phones.
That is bad right? Still eating away the space?
Their dumb insistence on fighting Google at every turn means that Google Fi's Visual Voicemail is broken on Samsung devices. I also get regular nag notifications to create or log into a Samsung account, agree to some Samsung TOS that I'm not even a part of, or other nonsense.
The phone looks sleek, but the rounded edges mean that the edge of the screen is distorted and useless, and combined with the slick surfaces it practically catapult itself off of common household furnishing.
The much-touted, three-lens camera isn't even any good! The photos are dull, over-processed, and show lens distortion at various points across the image.
https://github.com/0x192/universal-android-debloater
I disabled most of samsung's stuff though, no nagging for a samsung account or anything.
1. Buy phone
2. Disable most stuff
3. Use some experimental third party tool to "debloat" phone
I don't know, that's the exact stuff that would make me the opposite of happy.
But if you decide to uninstall Apple Maps or Apple Calendar, you will find that they remain the default choices for the OS, even if yo uninstalled them.
And if you decide to "uninstall" (not enable) Siri, you won't be able to use Shortcuts.
And you can set another email client or browser as default https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT211336, albeit not a calendar app.
I checked the settings after 8 months and they actually added more hidden facebook apps without my knowledge or agreement.
Couldn't justify buying another one after that.
That one happens weekly and it deeply annoys me. I've paid premium money for your device and you're still engaging in this rent seeking relationship building crap and using _my_ device to persistently bother _me_ with it. What did I even pay you for?
I will absolutely be looking outside of Samsung for the next one.
Tip get a certified refurb from Amazon, 90 days to return if not happy.
I can see why everyone just wants to buy an iPhone instead.
As analyzed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34685858 the system partition and the apps that come with it are only a part of the reported size. I don't know why Samsung needs an ungodly 12 gigabytes of space but I'm not surprised given how much "desktop OS" features are built into it (DeX with input hardware is a capable desktop/laptop replacement for more people than you'd expect!)
My guess, because Samsung wouldn't be the first to make this mistake[1]: something may be logging constantly to a writeable OS partition, or caching something without size constraints. At first and during testing these logs take up megabytes of space, but during weeks or months of usage these logs may quickly grow out of control.
Android's space analysis can't attribute the log file to any specific system app, but it's in a place that only system apps can access to it would categorize this data as "system".
[1]: after a quick Google: https://community.oneplus.com/thread/1416848 https://androidforums.com/threads/system-data-growing-out-of... https://forum.xda-developers.com/t/system-data-keeps-expandi... https://forums.androidcentral.com/ask-question/1043714-why-s...
Several ISOs of Call of Duty: MW2 and a BluRay-rip of Jingle All the Way.
Unfortunately this is nothing new. I bought a Galaxy S7+ table nearly two years ago and it was infested with crappy Samsung apps (two calculators... why?).
Eventually I used adb to uninstall a bunch of stuff, but they're still taking up storage space even if I can't see them. Absurd.
Apart from the crapware it's a decent tablet though.
So you didn't uninstall them, you disabled them.
No, I installed them.
Samsung had marked them as being non-uninstallable via the Android Settings UI, so I used `adb -d shell pm uninstall --user 0 <packagename>` to forcibly uninstall them, although (as I said) the code is still in the rom.
Simply disabling them could be done using the UI, or with `adb -d shell pm disable <packagename>`, but they'd still be cluttering the apps list - which is not what I wanted.
I wrote some notes at https://andyjohnson.uk/blog/2021/07/17/cleaning-up-a-samsung...
The point of uninstalling them was to remove them from my experience of using the tablet.
The point of uninstalling them was to remove them from my experience of using the tablet.
"Uninstall" and "disable" have specific meanings wrt Android. If you have issues with the terminology then you should probably take it up with the Android team.
I had no idea the bloatware had become so advanced.
It sounds like Samsung inflicts plenty of additional damage with their own copies of google's apps.
Midrange motorola phones can also be clean and open.
No Google login yet have access to all apps without the hassle of adb
I personally use F-droid + Aurora Store.
https://github.com/ImranR98/Obtainium https://github.com/RikkaApps/Shizuku https://github.com/MuntashirAkon/AppManager
(While most Pixels have unlockable bootloaders, including mine initially, Google screwed me when I sent mine in to repair a broken USB-C port. The phone I got back had a permanently locked bootloader, which basically cut it's usable lifespan in half. Annoyingly, I replaced the battery shortly before realizing this!)
Edit because people apparently don't believe what I'm saying: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/01/google-pixel-7-users...
I usually go to LineageOS's download page, and browse through the phone list for a not so old phone that has builds for the newest version. Afterwards I check its xda page, read the specs for the phone, check reviews on YouTube and finally decide.
I used to like Pixel phones, but sometimes even the Google experience is too much for me.
These things are a matter of personal preference, take the community's opinions then decide on your own based on your use cases.
I've used Okta Verify on Lineage 19 without issue. Although I managed to get Okta to spit out a regular MFA string so I could dump Verify and use my regular MFA app.
IMO not having official carrier support is not worth any amount of fairness.
Apple keeps a list of supported carrier features on this page: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204039
This used to be more of a problem ~5-7 years ago or so. I'd buy an obscure Android phone and I couldn't use things like Visual Voicemail, Voice over LTE, or WiFi Calling.
Verizon used to be and may still be picky about which phones they activate as well. My Nexus 5X supported all the bands required to work with Verizon, but they refused to activate the phone on their network, despite ordering a plain SIM card for BYOD.
Do you have one, and if so does it feel reasonably snappy?
You really have to be sure that you want a Fairphone for their ethics. Display and camera are particularly very much not great. My past Nexus 5X made much better photos (not sure how much it's just Google's camera app processing at play).
And also if you're not in the EU I would definitely avoid getting one as there's gonna be a lot of hassle with warranty shipments.
At least in Germany they are relatively easy to find, even if not always on the shop floor, they tend to be available on the respective online sites.
The last two devices I've owned have been Pixel devices. They've been pretty solid. I still think I liked the 4a over the 6a; I've had some touch accuracy/sensitivity oddities with the 6a.
I couldn't for the longest time do simple things like scan a QR code. Everybody else in the world just points their camera app at the QR code and it works. I have to open Lens explicitly to do it.
It's still much better than Samsung's crapdroid experience. Google Assistant or ... Bixbsy routines? Nobody wants that shit, Samsung.
Really sad that mine got water damaged and no longer works. Even though it no longer had software update, running custom roms it was perfect. It was 3 years old and could probably served me at least another 3. I got the OPPO x3 lite but I miss my OP6 everyday. I'll probably end up fixing it when I get the time
There is some function bloat,but you learn to disable stuff you don't use and I think Samsung is getting better at making their crap useful crap.
In several years, I haven't seen a flagship Android that's lighter, smaller or that isn't brittle glass.
edit: phone has no fast charging though. I couldn't believe that when I got it.
It's convenient to use the G5plus as an almost dedicated Internet radio and podcast player.
The experience is not perfect, and especially if you opt to not even keep the sandboxed Google Play Services, lots of apps just won't work. But it's a trade-off I'm happy to make.
Either they forget the size of human hands, the EUR:USD exchange rate, or some other obvious thing that makes their current generation a no-go.
For that, I bought a used Galaxy S9, and but /e/ OS on it. The project essentially forked LineageOS, replaced Google references with their own services, and built a fully working out of the box experience out of it. It's not hard to install the OS yourself, but if you don't want to tinker, you can order phones with the system preinstalled:
It feels like when you build more highway lanes. Induced demand.
So it’s either both or just Google. And the want to differentiate (for better or worse) from stock Android.
I can’t see them ditching the play store, so here they are.
I prefer Samsung health so never click on Google Health.
Why should that drive me insane?
Wow! I never thought about this! If it is true that pre-installed apps will have a VIP, sudo-like permissions that are not granted to user-installed apps, then, they should be permanently disabled (since technically, you can't uninstall them), or at least, the ones having a proven spying record in the past.
The S23 at 168g is by far the lightest Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 phone(runner-up is 185g), but that's still heavy. What gives?
Although I think the right answer is simply that people prefer larger screens for video and phones today make much better use of empty space.
I understand the frustration of big screens though, I personally prefer them but I also haven't had issues reaching things with my thumbs regardless of phone size.
I had an Essential before my Pixel 5 and I hated the extra weight. The S23 lineup is actually quite reasonable here.
It becomes a problem when you're lying on your back. Also when it slips out of your hand, it's harder to catch. Not major concerns for most of the population I suppose, but it affects me.
As for dimensions large phones appear to be particularly difficult to use for women. My SO is getting her first-gen iPhone SE refurbished because it's the last such light and small offering from that manufacturer and up to very recently it could run the most recent iOS.
Anyway, now with a Pixel 7 Pro and would take a lot to make me go astray.
> We can take a few guesses as to why things are so big. First, Samsung is notorious for having a shoddy software division that pumps out low-quality code. The company tends to change everything in Android just for change's sake, and it's hard to imagine those changes are very good.
Why is it problematic for him to share something that many people agree with? Why can't people fucking complain about shit sucking? Are we going to give Meta the benefit of the doubt the next time they say they care about our privacy or are we going to learn from history and call out a company on their lazy practices?
Not if it isn't justified
They make arbitrary changes, with pretty much none of them being enhancements, just a change for the sake of change. Like silly stuff like moving the placement of the back button. It's better than it was, but pretty much every other manufacturer has learned to just stick to mostly the stock experience unless there's an actual improvement.
The Samsung is customizable enough, though they do change things from time to time. I am content that they provide me a way to adjust volume for different sound types easily, they allow me to choose media output quickly, and that the Always-On display can be configured to "only be on when I have new notifications" which functionally replaces notification LEDs for me.
I run Nova for the home app, so I'm immune to some aspects of Samsung's control.
A terrible shame LG got out of the phone market.
It’s shitting on the entirety of their work without trying to understand if they did certain things for specific user reasons or not.
I think it’s completely possible to complain about companies while still being constructive.
You're welcome to defend Samsung if you think they deserve it, but once you already have a bad reputation for something it seems you should expect to have to work to overcome it. I find it bizarre you think Samsung deserves some sort of special defense here. If anything I think the author was far too lenient.
Most of the things I've worked on in my life have been utter fucking shit. Instead of defending it, I learned from it and improved. I don't see Samsung doing the same.
I just said that it’s not a constructively critical view, it’s just a rant.
Fair. I apologize for being presumptuous.
> I just said that it’s not a constructively critical view, it’s just a rant.
Sure, but the rant is useful because it provides the context of Samsung sucking at the same thing consistently for years on end. You're right that it's not self-contained and if you were looking for that in the article you'd be disappointed. But at some point it just seems repetitive to have to explain things that have already been repeated for years. Like I don't really want to spend hours (not exaggerating as I've done it before) explaining why I hate cops every time I say so - most people are already well aware of the controversy surrounding cops and don't require an explanation even if they disagree.
Anyway, I guess we just see it differently. Cheers.
The main problems I have with their customizations are universal: background app killing (apps you actually want to run) is a problem on any Android above 4.4, and it comes with a ton of tracking software which is also pretty universal aside from microG builds.
Doesn't mean 60GB is justified, but I will never understand the love for a barebones skin that is faster but also makes half the things you do require twice as many interactions.
Only after decompiling the Samsung Android framework, I realized that one of the "features" they added kept making some unguarded `.equals()` comparison that kept throwing null-pointer exceptions because the String wasn't guaranteed to be non-null.
And not just phones: washers, dryers, refrigerators, TVs, dishwashers you name it.
Samsung is rarely a market leader, so you're basically never missing out by choosing someone else instead of them..
The bloat apps are bad too but the autocorrect is what's really awful.
Even my Moto G7 came with a relatively unbothered experience.
Just updated to a S22 Ultra and I freaking hate Samsung's UI. It all just feels slightly clunkier, in both function and in UX (back button location is a big one to get used to). It also tends to have a lot of input lag, particularly when scrolling in big apps like facebook or gmail. Really not happy with it as a purchase.
I really hate the limitations the samsung phones have but I really don't know what else to buy. It seems like a simple ask to have a smallish phone with good build quality but it simply doesn't exist, and if it does it will almost always never get updates.
The real reason is that Android's storage reporting is slightly buggy. Read linked comment for details.
So that 60GB is with additional apps the carrier forces onto you.
I know I’m comparing Apples to Oranges, err ummm Androids here, but still!
My guess is they just tick along from their tight vertical integration and competent hardware division that lets the rest of the company drag their feet.
I also hate that they got rid of their headphone jacks and removable storage. They were the few differentiations that kept me on Samsung.
However Samsung's HW is great. Hopefully they will make S23a in compact size. Then I'll gladly flash LionageOS or IodéOS here.
Why even obsess over a few cents of storage so much?
https://www.theonion.com/fuck-everything-were-doing-five-bla...
That thing looks disturbingly ugly. This multi-lens thing is getting out of hand.
The only actual information here is "Samsung Android is 60GB" and "Samsung doesn't use A/B paritioning". Which is nice, but can you give me more information? What is actually on there?
Short, less details, uninteresting, and a clickbait title.
>It's the size of two Windows 11 installs, side by side. What could Samsung possibly be putting in there?!