I understand not everyone may like samsung's spin on basic apps and thats fine...
But to pretend the google ones are 'true android' and everyone else's are somehow inherently fake is approaching Apple's fan level of fanaticism.
Stock android is long dead and if you actually go into androids repository, all the basics app have been abandoned.
What you get with pixel is exactly the same what you get with samsung: closed source apps. One was made by Google and the other one by samsung. But ultimately they aren't any closer to 'pure android' then going into market place and just downloading a third-party calendar or calculator from there.
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.
My experience in owning Samsung products is that software quality control and support tends to be… less than ideal. They go all in with impressive visual that don’t translate across the platform, and then pull support some abysmally short time later.
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.
You should be careful judging all of samsung software based on their old software. Even in android, One UI was atrocious up to v2 but it's solid in its current iteration.
I still think google's design is more pleasing and consistent though.
I understand there may be developers on here that work for Samsung that take pride in what they do. Kudos to them.
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.”
All I know is my galaxy wants to download N gigabytes to update every month or two, do it again the same day after the first one, and revert every privacy setting to default (not private) in the process. I've resorted to DNS shenanigans to limit the abuse, only temporarily allowing some domains as necessary for wifi calling or whatever.
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.
The system update notification also randomly pops up fullscreen in front of whatever app you are actively using. And some vendor apps even have their own notifications outside the play store ones - why the fuck would I care about updating "Voice Recorder" that it needs its own notification when I have never used it and the only reason it's installed at all is because it came preinstalled and can't be removed. This is so infuriating that I refuse to update out of spite and will definitely not be buying a Samsung for my next phone.
Agreed. I generally prefer Android to be close to 'stock', but with my first Samsung device (an S8 Ultra bought at launch last year), I felt like a lot of what Samsung included by default was pretty sensible, with Dex being pretty great.
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.
Agreed. As someone who switches between the older s22+ and the recent pixel 7, I found the same problem on both - you can't remove the "stock" apps on either.
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.
I think you're correct in the closed source argument 100% but that can be true while Google is also the closest to 'true android'. In essense as far as conflict of interest of parties(google owning android) also in history of android development, it is in essence the purest form. That being said you're correct it's just as closed as anything else. I think both can be true, it's just the purest android now is a cloud locked proprietary thing. The truest philosophical android would be either an older version run or going for linux on phone if you want to get to the essence of OG android.
We've been through this with other operating systems such as Windows.
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
Except Windows is complete experience from the get go. AOSP really isn't, and if you want to see what a "true" android looks like, install AndroidStudio and launch an emulator with NoGoogleImage.
What would be much more apt analogy, are linux distros
I basically want something as close as possible to GrapheneOS but which can run Google Wallet (and which is guaranteed to run my banking apps). So a nice, clean, stock Android where the default apps are removable or as unobtrusive as possible (so I can install FOSS equivalents from F-Droid) would be nice.
I think that the bigger concern is mentioned here:
> 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.
Not really - the system partition is ROM, and they can be disabled. They just survive a factory reset, and putting apps that are supposed to survive factory reset in the system partition is what the Android developer documentation explicitly states you should do.
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.
They aren't really third party apps in a samsung device. They are often much more integrated than the usual, google developed apps. Though I still disagree with the GP, because even providing more apps shouldn't lead to a 60gb OS size.
The problem is that they aren't first party apps. Yes, they are made by the same company but they aren't inherently part of the system. It's like if you called MS office a "first party app" and use this argument in comparison to Google docs. Just because Microsoft made both office and windows, doesn't mean that office is somehow more "pure" then using Google docs. It's all preference.
1st party doesn't mean "part of the system", it means built by the same people who make the OS. I said nothing about purity. I'd argue people's preference for "stock" Android have nothing to do with purity; they just have a preference for the apps google makes for Android because they like the experience better. Android has always had the capability to switch your default app, but there is a subset of people who prefer the stock experience. I don't know why that has to be some sort of cult like obedience rather than a rational choice
But Pixel is the 1st party google experience, and that's what those people are looking for. I'd hazard a guess they don't care about what default applications are in AOSP.
Then if you say "I'm looking for 1st party google experience" that's all good. But when you equate AOSP experience with Google experience, or what's worse: criticize other vendors purely on basis of them not inherently being google - that's when the argument stops making any sense.
(And looking in this thread, many people do exactly that)
I used samsung phones and liked some of their default apps more than "stock" android apps; especially the camera/gallery, the audio player, the sms app more than google's app
Samsung hardware is top-notch, but the software bloat is ridiculous. The problem is they make some OS changes that are actually useful to the end-user, especially when Google seems to be asleep at the wheel.
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...
Man, HTC made some of my favorite phones. I wish they were still doing it.
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
I've had HTC phones since the HTC XDa IIs(Blue Angel/Harrier) Windows 2003 phone. It had Wifi and Bluetooth and a 400MHz processor. It was one of the most versatile phones of its time and helped spawn XDA developers. There were so many ROMs for this phone, even Android. I had a HTC Diamond after that and it was pretty amazing, lasting me over 6 years and i had a ton of maps downloaded to it and wikipedia. It helped a lot in Japan when wifi was just barely starting up and you need to get around with maps and train schedules.
Now Google Pixel has taken over most of the original HTC phone division, so you will have to look there for the spiritual successors.
I had a pixel previously. In general I liked it, especially the software, but I frequently missed the headphone jack and microSD slot.
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.
> Samsung hardware is top-notch, but the software bloat is ridiculous.
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.
Same. I had a TCL "smart" TV which was pretty straightforward to use, and then my teenage daughter decided to get tripped up on the cord. Ruined the TV, decided to buy one with sturdy feet that won't trip, ended up buying Samsung.
Man, the UI is a clusterfuck. A lovecraftian horror show.
Just wait until you try Sony. My mother required a television so I bought her one.
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.
I've been in the TV business and still have friends there.
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.
We bought a Sony with google tv a year or so back. I don't see the issue?
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.
1. The before times of CRTs? Go back much before their EOL period and they took a bit of time to switch on and warm up too. Plus if you hit the "TV" button on my sony it goes to the TV pretty quickly because it no longer needs to load the home screen elements.
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.
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.
I guess your needs are small, but I bet there will come a time where your YouTube on your TV suddenly becomes super slow and there’s nothing you can do about it.
> Sony is a good brand right? WiFi drops out at the most random times. The router is touching differences away.
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, this sucks. I currently have a Sony TV that I love (bought it c.2019). It's just clean Android TV, there were a few widgets for Sony streaming services that were easy to disable on the settings. I just use the Plex app, Netflix app, Youtube App, and NBA League Pass, without any shenanigans. Traditional simple buttons-only remote (no weird touchpad, no point to click nonsense). Brilliant display panel. It seems I will not be happy when I have to replace it.
They often fuck it up on purpose even. Like back then their legendary "mp3" players that wouldn't actually play mp3 files. Currently their ridiculously short security update available. 3 years only for their 1600$ phone. at least somewhat increase from the 2 years they offered previously.
It is really sad, they have the most issues back in the days of VCR/VHS and still persists. I swear most of the jokes about how things made in Japan are junk is from Sony. Their phones are equally bad, most of the demos in the stores are always frozen.
our samsung TV does this as well. You plug your computer into it and it takes like 15 seconds trying to figure out what it is. .Then you have to select manual, and PC.
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.
Oh, but it gets worse. Upon plugging a laptop into our TV, the image is displayed, then it overlays the 'detecting input' thing for about 5 seconds, then it switches back to the image.
Android has a bloat problem in general. I uninstalled almost everything on my new iPad. On my Pixel 6A, I can only disable stock apps (they are still there taking up space). Its 2023, I should be able to completely uninstall apps I don't need.
That's likely because Apple is doing the same thing but just lying to you about it. You can't uninstall stock apps because they came on a read-only system image that was signed by your device manufacturer.
This isn’t true. Deleting apps does actually remove that app and usually user data too. Associated system frameworks might stick around because other parts of the OS depend on them.
> This isn’t true. Deleting apps does actually remove that app and usually user data too.
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.
adb pm uninstall is pretty strong on stock unrooted Android
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!
pretty sure that just removes it for current user. the app still sits around on the image bloating things up that way. although it does save a little space.
True... but in that case isn't it the same thing as using the "uninstall" feature in Android app management settings for bundled apps that just deactivates and removes all updates, basically just keeping the bundled installer?
LineageOS (Android build without Google Play) is generally <500MiB. Google apps usually had on something like 500MiB-1.5GiB depending on what you install. Usually OEM devices have at least that much plus whatever their own stuff is piled on
> Their appliances (washer/dryer/etc) are notoriously unreliable
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"
We bought a Samsung washer and a Samsung dryer 6 months ago. Top of the line. I've never had a front loader before, didn't want one, but here were are.
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.
That is an awful experience. I guess I'm 'lucky' that I don't have that particular sensor (or at least it never malfunctions). But on my machine, the narrowest part of the drain system is were the hose from the tub connects into the filter box. So when something finally gets lodged there, you have to use really long pliers and then just pull as hard as you can and hope the box doesn't crack as it comes through.
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.
If I have a larger say in regarding our next machine it will be something like that speed queen. Whatever the medium commercial units are. Easy to service and replace parts. Few sensors. A dirty water pump that can move hair and solids.
Friends of mine own an appliance store. They begrudgingly sell Samsung appliances and TVs because that's what people want to buy. No matter how much they tell their customers that Samsung is crap, and that they'll be replacing their appliances in 18-24 months. Cue the customer's surprised when they're back 22 months later buying a new non-Samsung washing machine or dishwasher, paid out of pocket, because Samsung came up with some ridiculous reason why warranty won't cover it.
> my current TV is a big Samsung and it's been flawless.
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.
Samsung makes good components but they make lousy products. If you’re tempted by a Samsung TV, find another brand that has their panels (e.g. I know Sony used their QD-OLED panels).
That's a good piece of advice I hadn't thought of. I hope my Samsung TV lasts many more years, as it seems to be one of the last "smart" TVs that isn't preloaded with ads (and I've never connected it to the 'net, nor will I). That's going to be my major bit of research whenever it comes time to buy the next one. If I must, I'll get a commercial unit.
That's the only explanation I can think of. Out in the wild I hear nothing but bad reviews of Samsung appliances from other owners. On the repair forums, they have a similar reputation (they're great for business, if you are a repair pro).
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.
For anyone worried they were going to need to adjust their world view, don't worry. Samsung makes a line of "Smart" gas cooktops and managed to Samsung-ify them.
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.
Surveys seem like a reasonable methodology for products where you can get large user samples, like with appliances and cars, but I have often had reason to question how well they understand what they are doing. For example, in the days of pre-digital photography, I was a close follower of technical reports in magazines like Modern Photography. When CR would do testing of of photography equipment, they seemed to be relatively clueless.
As we are discussing anecdotes, my Samsung fridge is over 15 years old and still ticking along ok. I've cracked one of the plastic shelves and it's hard to get replacement parts, that's all.
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.
That's the one positive I can say for my 11 year old fridge, and yes it is an important one. It still makes things cold. It eats front displays like candy, so I stopped feeding it those, but as long as I can work around that then the fact that it still gets cold is why I haven't caved and bought my wife the new fancy fridge she's been eyeing.
Nice. I'm all for making the most of my purchases, and when the time comes I'll get something more efficient etc - nonetheless, fingers crossed that'll be another decade.
My hi-fi system is 25 coming up on 26 years old. Rotel. :)
Oh thanks! I didn't realise this was a possibility.
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.
Can speak to that. We went with a Samsung kitchen about ~5 years ago. 2 Dishwashers, 1 Refrigerator, 1 Robot Vacuum, and 2 Stoves later... well, we still have the 2nd Samsung Refrigerator (covered in dents though because the "stainless steel" is apparently super thin) and the Microwave (though we have been told it has a critical flaw, so treat the door gently), but everything else isn't Samsung anymore. It just all broke in one way or another. We also had a Galaxy Note9 in the family that became ludicrously slow after a year and started dropping phone calls - apparently a known software issue that randomly plagued people, absolutely no fix to this day, software reset will not fix.
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.
> Their appliances (washer/dryer/etc) are notoriously unreliable
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.
I think LG fixed their inverted linear compressor problem. I had to buy a few fridges a few years ago, and they all work great and completely silent still.
Since we're telling anecdotes on Samsung appliances, well I have to say my Samsung fridge bought in 2008 works just fine today. It's just a fridge though, not much to go wrong with that I guess.
> Their appliances (washer/dryer/etc) are notoriously unreliable […]
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:
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.
I agree re: the hardware but Google's OS feels pristine/top of class in the mobile world, Samsung (and other phone maker's) bloatware just seems annoying.
For a few phone generations, I thought Samsung's OS changes were superior to AOSP. But it seems like they've been degenerating back to the old clunky TouchWiz days lately. But if I'm being honest, I'm not happy with any phone manufacturer's hardware/software anymore.
TSMC doesn't have chips, they have chip factories; other people design them. That's the basis of their business, they promise not to compete with their customers.
The firmware is not available on the FOTA (OTA update metadata) server yet, but if you know the exact version number, you can download the firmware from Samsung FUS ("firmware update service").
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.
>* 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.
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.
According to this tweet, the 60GB is an illusory number that comes from Samsung hiding the gigabyte/gibibyte discrepancy under "System." In other words, the real reason is because a 512 GB memory chip doesn't actually have 512 GB usable storage.
This is the reason why I ended up with a non flagship, mid-tier, moto phone that allowed me to unlock the bootloader and root. Headphone jack and microsd card support was also a very high priority, and the reason why I didn't end up with a pixel. I want complete control over my device. With recent Android version it seems like Google is locking down the OS and making it closer to how iOS is.
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 think it's still possible to apply OTA updates but the process is not automatic. In my experience it doesn't successfully apply the update and unroot you, it just fails. This is a very unpopular thing to do, but I turned off OTA updates and I don't plan on upgrading form Android 11 anytime soon. Even security updates failed to apply automatically. Sometimes you have to reset the entire OS, including installed apps, in order to update. I think you need to reset during the rooting process as well, as oem and bootloader unlock forces a full data wipe. It makese sense from a security point of view, rooting shouldn't allow someone to gain access to information on an already encrypted device. I strongly dislike the way Android is becoming more locked down, I'd rather risk a wild security exploit compromising my device over not having root access to my own files. In my opinion, not having the ability to access your own files is the same as dealing with a virus. I wouldn't ever reccomend someone else do I am doing. But it's something to think about while considering rooting.
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.
Depends on the bank, every single financial app I use has always worked. My credit union app, Schwab mobile, TD Ameritrade, Think or Swim, Paypal (I have a CC from them), Robin hood, Coinbase, Venmo, CashApp, and Ally Bank all worked. I haven't used some of them in a couple of months but they all definitely worked as Nov 2022. Using the website instead is also an option. But I have read of issues related to it online, but I am not sure how they rooted and the method makes a difference.
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.
Would like to know this as well, I rooted my oneplus recently, and the moment the secure boot chain of trust broke, no security sensitive apps worked.
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.
Do you know if OnePlus uses the same A/B style OTA updates as Pixel devices and whether it supports setting a custom bootloader key?
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
true, it gets tricky when there's an online component to it, since they can just keep their key secret, if the service I'm using is also online. Would there be no way to spoof it? Like,
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 am not sure what you mean by security sensitive app. Something like Samsung Knox will not work after you unlock the bootloader but that's because of the assumptions it needs to make in order to promise user data integrity. It's similar to apps requiring TPM for data/disk encryption. Self signing wouldn't restore that chain of trust. Those apps breaking is working as intended, none of the financial apps I use were affected. There's option for systemless root.
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.
Just reread what you meant, yeah, I see that self-signing wouldn't neccesarilly solve the issue. As you say, it might also be that some apps use root status. After they updated our digital signing platform, a colleague who had a phone from china which wasn't even that old, stopped working, and I've had friends which had the same thing happen. They weren't rooted. So I don't know if there is some hardware component to it, like TPM that you mentioned?
It's worth saying, you cannot use banking apps here, without a valid digital signature, which proofs your identity. It's not just the financial app itself, it's the legal requirements we have here, which make the financial apps use this digital identity verification.
So if self signing cannot guarantee those assumptions that are being made, there's no way around it.
This kind of shit is why I've decided to avoid Samsung wherever possible. I bought a galaxy watch years ago and got sucked in with a galaxy flagship phone and the Samsung earbuds.
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.
Their software is terrible, but their hardware is pretty nice. Shame they've been paring it down over the years. Pinnacle of their hardware, IMO was the Galaxy Note 4. Had their "antiglare AMOLED" (admittedly still not ideal for long device lifespan and outdoor use), wacom stylus with hover and right click (awesome for local or remote desktop sessions), replaceable battery, IR blaster, blood oxygen sensor, pulse measurement, audio jack, physical buttons.
Nowdays I make do with their 2022 XCover6 - but I miss the features I lost.
I still have my Galaxy Note 4. It refuses to die, and manufacturers refuse to give it a competitor.
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.
The lack of touchscreen hover in modern devices is pure tragedy. I had an S5 as my first touchscreen phone and so many things have gone downhill since then. It had a removable battery, headphone jack, IR blaster, and just a ton of features.
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.
I was a huge Note fan, I'm using a Sony Xperia 1 III now which is not perfect but it's OK. Has a proper headphone jack at least, and the S7-style colour notification LED is really useful (although not quite as good as the S7's version).
I feel the exact opposite - after years of OnePlus phones, I got an S21 two years ago and jesus, finally an android phone that just works. No weird issues with bluetooth/wifi dropping out, no random crashes, good camera, it just works without a hitch. It feels like an iphone experience just with android.
While I don't know about his particular device, newer Samsung devices tend to permanently disable features (like the camera in the Fold devices) when you root them.
Snapdragon versions are usually harder to root, and my carrier s21u here in Canada does not even have the bootloader unlock option that exynos versions do. But Exynos are always worse when it comes to thermals, camera quality, and performance. So the choice is often between a much more performant but locked Snapdragon or a more open phone but with the sometimes atrocious downgrade that comes with Exynos SoCs. Exynos used to be harder for custom roms to get right, but I think that's not the case anymoee.
Even if your device lets you root it (many don't), you will trip the "Knox fuse." It's a small fuse inside the CPU that permanently burns out if you root, and permanently blocks Samsung Pay, Secure Folder, a few other Samsung security apps... and on the Galaxy Z Fold 3, your camera (though on the Z Fold 3, apparently, if you re-lock your bootloader the restriction goes away). Also said fuse cannot be reset so if you reinstall completely stock firmware, it's blown forever.
It seems that most Samsung phones are locked down in the US. Other models have no issue besides KNOX tripping.
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.
I don't think it's just a Samsung problem. I have an non-Samsung Android TV and it becomes intermittently non-responsive, apps sometimes crash, sometimes commands are queued up and then after a pause all happen in rapid succession.
People long for angular iPhone, I long for Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge form factor. I wish it would have been available today. Well, anyways, mine S10 (small one) is okay feature/bug/hassle free-wise within my scoped use-cases.
The real problem is, what do I replace it with? The open source options right now seem to be generally kind of crap for a daily driver. The best option I know is a pixel phone with a custom OS, but I feel bad about buying from Google.
That’s a good point, having a nice usable smartphone kind of requires selling your soul to a devil at the moment. I’ve sold mine to Apple, and despite the closed nature of its ecosystem, I am very happy with the day-to-day experience.
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 agree. I tried every other brand to avoid apple but came back to apple this year. Samsung is bloatware and janky and google pixel was incredible but had really poor battery life and somehow even though android looked great, iOS did tiny micro interactions so much better. E.g. when holding the space in iOS, the whole keyboard becomes a virtual touchpad vs android where you can only go left or right horizontally.
As someone who has used a S10e for 4 years and just ordered a S23 I think people are blowing the "bloatware" way out of proportion. I use the Samsung apps I want, the rest are disabled/tucked away in a folder. I never get bothered to update the ones I don't use. My wife has a pixel 6a, I don't see how my Samsung is any more bloated after 5 mins of setup. 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.
Depends on the phone. For Canadian Galaxy series, Samsung bakes in the carrier firmware into the base images and factory resets itself the first time you insert a SIM.
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.
Exactly. People have this weird idea that some how google's closed source, data grabbing "use our service please" implementation of file browser is more "pure android" then samsungs one. Where in fact it is either the same, or the samsung one is actually less 'in your face' with being a oem-made product
I think the only app I was concerned about is Facebook being installed. But I deactivated it right when I got the phone and never had to touch it again.
I have a Samsung S20 and I'll never buy another Samsung phone again unless they drastically change course.
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.
There's unfortunately no such thing as the perfect phone.
I think the initial effort of setting up a new phone/computer/whatever is a good trade-off it means afterwards I get the experience I want (or as close as I can get).
>i've never had to uninstall stuff from an iOS device.
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.
> agree to some Samsung TOS that I'm not even a part of
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.
Use the Universal Android Debloater. It makes your Samsung phone like the early Oneplus phones, clean and fast. Super happy with my S20 Ultra after having Oneplus for years.
Tip get a certified refurb from Amazon, 90 days to return if not happy.
The only sources for this article are two screenshots from Twitter. The article is written by someone who clearly has some beef with Samsung as well, which comes with a bunch of assertions about bloatware. Even if every user-interfaceable app were to have an entire copy of Chromium like many desktop apps these days do, you wouldn't end up with 60 whole gigabytes.
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".
From the article, it sounds like it's roughly half that on the Pixel 7 at least, around 7-8Gb, since they use an A/B os partition scheme to make OS updates work better.
> Samsung may want to give the appearance of having its own non-Google ecosystem, and to do that, it clones every Google app that comes with its devices. Samsung is contractually obligated to include the Google apps, so you get both the Google and Samsung versions.
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.
uninstalling should not work at all on at least some of those apps, as they will exist on the read-only system partition (that only gets touched when the phone updates).
The APK for the apps you 'uninstalled' via the 'pm uninstall' command still exist in the system/product/system_ext/etc partitions, that's why they still take up space.
No. I uninstalled them with adb's uninstall command. If I'd wanted to disable them then i would have used adb's disable command.
"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 was just reading about Digital Turbine over the weekend. That's the company Samsung and others use to conduct real time bidding for which apps are preinstalled (when a new phone is activated). They handle ads for other pieces of bloatware like built-in news feeds as well.
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.
Wow that is such a second rate thing to do. Delegate an important design choice to “the highest bidder” instead of curate the best experience for the user.
I usually look for a phone that has proper LineageOS support and a strong xda community of third party ROMs, Kernels and what not.
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.
These days it's very easy to use Google Play on LineageOS as if it were an official ROM. Usually because you're telling Google you are to pass SafetyNet.
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.
I enjoyed my Motorola devices in the past. Possibly a good amount of rose tinted glasses, but the 2014 Moto X was probably my favorite Android phone out of the box so far. They usually don't modify too much of the base Android experience and the few things they tend to add, such as the camera app and some gesture support, seem to work better than the AOSP stuff. I didn't like NFC support had been pushed to only their higher end devices, as I really enjoy tap to pay from my phone and other NFC features.
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 own a Motorola and I've had a very good experience (other than the fact that it's got Google in the OS, like all Androids, and the time I upgraded to Android 12 and decided I hated it).
One Plus is ok for a generic android experience, but there are some caveats.
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.
The OP6 was their last great phone. Now they're just generic android device that cost the same as any other brand and miss the same feature (Remember when OP were joking about apple removing the headphone jack. Guess what happened with the OP6T ?)
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
I think the major caveat for One Plus is that they are a Chinese company and are required to comply with Chinese law. Google is likely required to comply with various legal regimes as well, but they're not required to hand over my data to the CCP. One Plus is.
I've had a few Motorola phones and they've always seemed reasonably close to stock Android. A few oem shell addons, but nothing that I found annoying or intrusive. Currently using an Edge 20.
The Pixel 5 is still to me the most pleasant Android to use. It's made of non-cheap plastic that's really light, especially when carried without a case, and is the perfect size for me.
In several years, I haven't seen a flagship Android that's lighter, smaller or that isn't brittle glass.
>anything that gives smooth, AOSP, non-flashy experience?
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:
At least for the foreseeable future, I'm going to be buying a Pixel and immediately installing GrapheneOS on it whenever I need to upgrade my phone.
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.
My Pixel 5 is exactly what I wanted. The problem is that Google only gets it this right every few generations, and it doesn't always coincide with me needing a new phone.
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.
Beyond simple support for your carrier's specific cellular bands, a lot of smartphone functionality is tied into the carrier's implementation/integration with your phone.
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.
Only think making me hesitate to buy a Fairphone is the fact that the quality seems low for the price. I understand why that is, but I worry it would feel like too much of a downgrade coming from a Galaxy S10, and particularly if the whole idea is that it lasts a long time, how out of date will it feel in a few years time?
Do you have one, and if so does it feel reasonably snappy?
Feels reasonably snappy, but then again I always picked up midrange phones in the past.
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.
My spouse just got a pixel 7 in fall. Good price, adequate specs and zero carrier/vendor bloat. The only regret is living in a cold climate (Quebec!) where the glass over the camera could potentially shatter at any moment and google doesn't acknowledge the design defect. Oops.
I went from a "flagship" Pixel to a midrange Motorola (the moto g100), and I'm very happy with it. I got a nice performance upgrade, a microSD slot, a headphones jack, battery for days, and an unlockable bootloader - all for less than half of what I paid for my Pixel.
(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!)
Nova launcher on the Pixel is a great combo for a non-rooted clean Android experience. You can disable many Google tracking/privacy things at that point, have a clean UI and quick security updates. One issue I have run into is Google breaking app switching on occasion because they want to use their launcher as the app switcher. Haven't seen this issue in the last year thankfully.
I have an old refurb pixel 3 I bought to put linage OS on but it was a verizon device and has a locked bootloader. sigh so no alternate android for me.. Anyway I am using it as a daily driver with the stock pixel android package and have zero google accounts. I mainly use f-droid and adb.
For stuff that can't use fdroid, check out obtainium, it can pull releases directly from GitHub, etc. Shizuku is also useful for background-installing apps via some of the fdroid alternative clients (and some apps like Tachiyomi can use it for extensions and other local-adb things), as is App Manager for background-installing apps via local adb.
I have a Moto G5plus that I would still be using if only the battery hadn't died. So now I use it as an Internet radio and I bought a Moto G30: cheap, reliable, decent cameras, fast enough, 128 GB storage, dual sim, more than two day battery life unless I record hours of video. And Moto don't add much bloat.
It wasn't worth the effort when the Moto G30 with a much better cameras, four times as much storage, faster processor, was only 1199 NOK, less than 120 USD. Much less than I paid for the G5plus
It's convenient to use the G5plus as an almost dedicated Internet radio and podcast player.
So no one here seems to have actually used a recent Samsung device. "System" includes user apps and system apps unless "My Files" is granted the permission for usage access. Several comments on the article and in the Twitter thread have already pointed it out.
That would explain why they got rid of the 128 GB version. Insane the amount of disk space we waste when we managed to fit incredible games on a few KBs in the 80s.
It feels like when you build more highway lanes. Induced demand.
No you're not alone. Plus the zillion of alternatives which one can choose instead of complaining about app x. Why should I care they use space? My pictures use way more space... I selected Samsung based on camera reviews and it delivers just that.
you can uninstall apps via adb - if not my s8 would have ended up thrown in the bin as the stupid bixby button couldn't be disabled any other way at the time.
> A company like Facebook will buy a spot on Samsung's system partition, where it can get more intrusive system permissions that aren't granted to app store apps, letting it more effectively spy on users.
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.
I don't mind the size at all because it means a nice big battery. I can't tell you the difference between 350g and 200g while holding it. Has the weight ever been an issue where it's made your hand tired?
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.
> Has the weight ever been an issue where it's made your hand tired?
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.
I hate Qi and glass on the phone back. They are criminal about phone getting heavier. Qi is more problem because adopting Qi means it can't adopt metal back (see iPhone 7/8) so most manufacturers adopt heavier glass. I prefer plastics. Samsung is historically better about make it lightweight.
This overall trend towards massive phones is nuts. I recently bought a Pixel 6, but I didn't expect how much heavier it would be over my aging Pixel 3a (207g vs 147g). Pixel 6a is 178g, still not light.
It's disappointing how much junk gets shipped in non-Google ROMs and how little OEMs seem to care. I bought a Xiaomi phone several years ago and in addition to the usual bloatware it came complete with Qualcomm radio debugging tools running in the background, including a copy of tcpdump running on all interfaces constantly logging to the internal storage. I rooted and removed it, but after Google Pay and various other apps stopped working I decided to upgrade to the latest model last year. I was sure that in the three years since my old phone that someone at Xiaomi would have noticed battery-sapping debug tools running in the background of their ROM. Of course the new phone has the exact same problem.
Samsung makes great hardware, but their software is a deal breaker. If only they could leave stock Android in peace they could be making great phones...
But they make so much money shoveling bloatware and ads on every device that they create. That's enough to make me never give another penny to Samgsung. (Well at least directly, their hardware is often used to make other devices which are hard to avoid.)
It's sad. There are a lot of things I love about Samsung phones. Double-tapping the power button to turn the flashlight on, the Samsung TTS engine, DeX mode, always-on OTG functionality. I can't justify the continued anti-consumer behavior though.
While I agree that this requires criticism, this felt unnecessary from the author
> 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.
I genuinely do not understand why people protest others sharing negative opinions. The author dislikes Samsung's software and he's writing about it. I tend to agree with him, although I stopped buying Samsung years ago so maybe it's changed.
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?
The only people I've ever met that share the opinion the Samsung UI is good are people who have only ever used Samsung phones.
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.
Eh, I've used Nexus, LG and Motorola in the past. I liked my LG alright.
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.
I'm still running a (slowly dying due to increasing difficult with the charging port) LG v20. Best phone I have ever used (and I've used more recent phones such as the Samsung S22).
My immediate reaction was "But there both android, they are going to be nearly identical" but I have to admit I don't really know. Whats the difference between samsung android and google android?
Okay, but sometimes people deserve to have their work shat on. Not everything is worth defending. Sometimes shit just sucks, and after years of making the same criticisms it's tiring to repeat the reasoning ad infinitum since everybody already knows the conclusion.
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.
> Nobody is saying it needs to be defended. That’s something you’re implying that I never said.
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.
I can speak to the first half. I used to be the solo dev of a popular Android app and kept getting weird crash reports from Samsung devices.
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.
Coming from stock Fairphone Android which was absolutely lacking features, I'm relatively happy with Samsung's additions. It's still not as good as Cyanogenmod with Xposed and other mods, but it goes a long way.
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.
I don't think that it's unnecessary. Samsung's "Not-Invented-Here" syndrome causes legitimate problems, and it is increasingly becoming a notable reason to steer clear of their products.
For all the comments about "shovelware" here there's actually no way that all their software could take up all that space. It should be easy for someone with access to the phone to see what's actually in that partition.
What makes me upset is that the latest Galaxy has a horrific and completely unpredictable autocorrect which replaced a so-so but very usable and predictable predecessor.
The bloat apps are bad too but the autocorrect is what's really awful.
Android overall is a pretty terrible experience. Phone manufacturers will pay developers to make Android worse instead of just doing nothing. But presumably they get back the cash in ads or tracking from doing that.
I wish Apple still made a nice, inexpensive iPod Nano. That was my favorite "MP3 player", and I'd gladly go without a headphone jack on the phone if I could still have a separate portable music device that wasn't garbage.
One of the nicest android UI's I've used in recent years was on my Huawei Mate20 Pro. Really seamless integration and everything 'felt' really nice.
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 bought an s22 on fi because they offered a great deal. I really need a smaller phone and the smallest pixel just felt like garbage in the hand.
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.
> Another round of crapware will also be included if you buy a phone from a carrier, i.e., all the Verizon apps and whatever space they want to sell to third parties. The average amount users are reporting is 60GB, but crapware deals change across carriers and countries, so it will be different for everyone.
So that 60GB is with additional apps the carrier forces onto you.
Why is why no one should buy devices from the mobile network operators, in the US. That has been true ever since iPhone came out and broke their stranglehold on selling malware laden devices.
Samsung as a company is a terrible experience - horrible first party sales experience, unfathomably bad support. I can't bring myself to buy from them again.
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'm not sure why Samsung keeps doing this - there are many apps, their store conflicts often with Google Play Store. Yes, they offer stellar hardware, but I am now considering Pixel! And you can uninstall most of their "system" apps!
If anyone's looking for a decent Android phone, try Infinix. I just bought one and it's surprisingly good and cheap. 256GB/8GB RAM storage for less than $200.
It does not only take up space on disk, you also have to load all that stuff into memory, which costs time and money. You might make your caches less effective which costs performance or more money for larger caches. You have to download updates which cost time and bandwidth and maybe money. Of course that all depends on the exact source and nature of the bloat, but just saying that the disk space is just a couple of cents is probably not adequate.
Holy spacewasting shovelware batman! At what point would it make sense to mandate that the manufacturer has to put the net space on the packaging and on their product page? Advertising a phone with 128gb of storage and half is already gone right out of the box almost sounds like fraud.
This article is kind of content free :( I remember Ars Technica being actually technical?
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?
Your comment made me realize that reddit and HN and other semi-legit upvote/downvote sites are going to get even more important in the AI listicle era.
I'm unable to count how many times I bricked my and my family's Samsung phones in attempt to remove bloatware apps and services. You think it's as easy a one liner with service name and `adb uninstall`? oooops wrong service, now you have to hard reset and reinstall the device...
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.