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Comment by rcarmo | Hacker News Reader

I've managed to mostly excise Samsung from my digital life (except for phones that family buys without my knowledge and that I have to troubleshoot), and I have been happier for it for many decades now.

(This was after direct exposure to their Tizen engineering team back in the early 2000s)

I stayed away from their phones, SmartTVs, everything.

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They were caught uploading screenshots from content played on smart TVs. Ostensibly to sell ad tracking info like a Nielsen TV, but I'm pretty sure it meant they were capturing people's desktops with confidential corporate info etc. if you used the TV as a monitor.

https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/samsung-smart-tvs...

This isn't just Samsung! Nearly all of them use ACR [1].

[1] https://www.consumerreports.org/electronics/privacy/how-to-t...

Tizen was launched in 2012, not sure that would count as early 2000s! But I had colleagues who were also working with the Tizen team, and that's when I learned it'll never fly. Samsung just didn't have the software engineering mindset required for it.

The short version of the story is that I was working with one of the Samsung mobile engineering teams for Vodafone 360 (look it up). The other team was the Galaxy team.

What phones do you recommend? I have an S21 FE I got free from Metro PCS (I got laid off, had to return company S20 phone). Others in the family have Pixel / moto. I get the feeling the later galaxy phones are much worse than the S21?

iPhone. Android is so crap laden.

i've been using android since the iphone 4s (i had one of those and thought it was very cool). i wanted freedom. but these days i'm thinking of changing up, back to iphone, and getting a mac laptop to replace this old thinkpad ashtray. i won't ash on the mac, at least not to start with. i'm tired of the crap. ubuntu is crap. why am i using a janky kde connect? i'd like to try xcode and other apple stuff. seriously, i think apple is going to start getting more marketshare in both phones and computers. i think people are tired of google and microsoft, and linux desktop distros. ps. i'm too old to care about pc gaming. i have a playstation for that.

Second hand Pixels which then get GrapheneOS installed on them (GrapheneOS doesn't support Google Wallet payments via NFC, which can be a deal-breaker for a lot of people).

Interesting, what about the Tizen team or ecosystem turned you away?

I used to have the watch, and was interested enough in the OS to work toward making personal apps for it.

What alternative phone manufacturer would you recommend as well, if you don't mind.

> except for phones that family buys without my knowledge and that I have to troubleshoot

It's okay to say no. After decades of being the computer tech in my family, I started saying no and have been a lot happier for it.

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