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.)
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.
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.
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?
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?
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).
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 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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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!)
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 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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
>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:
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.
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.
> 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.
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...
> 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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
> 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"
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
> 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.
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'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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 293 ms ] threadhttps://www.theonion.com/fuck-everything-were-doing-five-bla...
That thing looks disturbingly ugly. This multi-lens thing is getting out of hand.
Several ISOs of Call of Duty: MW2 and a BluRay-rip of Jingle All the Way.
>It's the size of two Windows 11 installs, side by side. What could Samsung possibly be putting in there?!
> 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.
Anyway, now with a Pixel 7 Pro and would take a lot to make me go astray.
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.
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.
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:
https://e.foundation/
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?
So that 60GB is with additional apps the carrier forces onto you.
I also hate that they got rid of their headphone jacks and removable storage. They were the few differentiations that kept me on Samsung.
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.
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.
Even my Moto G7 came with a relatively unbothered experience.
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....
It feels like when you build more highway lanes. Induced demand.