Still, my main ask is upstreamed support. Users should be able to maintain their own devices if they want to. From the start of ownership to beyond the products end of life. That means I should be able to build my own kernel and send them to the device, and I shouldn't need some vendor fork that will someday rot out to do it.
Google could have built a system like that from the start, where Google-certified Android means you have a vanilla base image, plus (openly available) drivers, plus whatever crap the manufacturer wants to layer on top. Basically not unlike Windows.
Unfortunately they didn't do that, so it's still a mess.
Not only is Google not making it more open, since 2020 they've been actively working to close the ecosystem down with hardware-backed SafetyNet attestations.
You may be able to build your own OS, but as soon as you unlock that bootloader to install it, all of your banking apps will stop working and there will be no workarounds once hw-backed attestation is mandated.
This is excellent news, especially since processors have been powerful enough for a while that we can easily expect most phones should be usable for much longer.
A good first step. The next one I’d like to see is a one-tap toggle that disables the bulk of Samsung OS customizations and “me too” apps/ecosystem cruft, as some other vendors have. Yes it can be removed manually, but with one of Android’s chief selling points being the choice it affords users, I shouldn’t need to do that, particularly on expensive flagship devices.
It's not a toggle, but Google Pixel phones (or at least the one I owned a few years ago) come with very few if any bloatware type apps, since the default Android apps are the Google apps anyway. Contrast with Samsung that duplicates a bunch of core apps/functionality.
Not sure what you mean by default Android apps but Google Pixel apps != AOSP's stock apps. AFAIK most apps can now be disabled in Settings on recent Samsung phones, I'm not a fan but I don't think they're that worse compared to Pixels, especially on the flagship devices.
Sony’s phones also come with minimally modified Android. They still have 3-4 bloatware apps to remove with ADB but it’s pretty manageable. I picked up an Xperia 1 V on discount to take the position of “flagship phone” in my Android app dev testing lineup and if I were switch my daily driver away from iOS, it would be in my list of considerations.
Motorola is also super minimal/mostly Google. I think the only bloatware on my newest was an app to control 'moto actions', which I find gimmicky but some tend to like.
Yeah, my previous Samsung I had to spend a half hour with adb to get all their junk disabled.
In my experience Samsung's flagship phones are top notch hardware with superb build quality. According to user reports on the internet the latest Google Pixel can't even manage to connect to the cellular networks reliably and without overheating. I wish Samsung would step their security game up to GrapheneOS standards because I just can't trust Google not to fuck the phones up.
It's not a global toggle, but Asus definitely has options to make things more stock-Androidy — you can basically turn the Settings app back into something resembling the stock version, and a bunch of their other UI enhancements and changes are also optional.
A long time Android user wouldn't have mistaken my Zenfone 9 for a Pixel at any more than a cursory glance, but you can get it pretty close, particularly in terms of feel.
Samsung's OS customizations and a lot of their apps are quite nice these days, I don't think there would be much of a point in such a toggle. Especially considering you can already change to a different launcher if you want.
Since 7 years I hear that Samsung apps are "quite nice theses days".
I never found it to be true.
I owned a Samsung S7, it was atrocious, people said it was great, the bloatware was painful, the gesture to open the apps drawer was conflicted with the gesture to open Samsung pay (which didn't worked with my bank), you can't disable Samsung pay, if you switch the launcher, it's still there. Searching the settings took literally 10 seconds. It's default behavior is to stay on while charging, the whole screen have the lock screen burned in now.
My mom own a Samsung 10e, people also said "Samsung software isn't ad now", they rewrote their own clock app. It doesn't support having multiple timers?!? Worse, asking Google assistant to add a timer, reset the previous one. This is due to Samsung bloatware, the stock android clock doesn't have this issue.
>Since 7 years I hear that Samsung apps are "quite nice theses days".
I never found it to be true. I owned a Samsung S7
To be fair that S7 from 2016 doesn't count as being from "these days" anymore, so your opinion is not up to date, as Samsung made pretty big strides in the last few years past 2020 compared to how it was when you last remember it with the nasty Touchwiz.
Yeah TouchWiz was horrible. OneUI is lovely and way better than native Google IMO. My S8 really became a much better phone with that update. Unfortunately it was also its last :'(
They are industry leading in Android for quite some time. They often have innovations first that then Google generalizes in Android itself. For example, lock screen customization, secure folder, even work profile was first available on Samsung devices. Samsung literally contributed work profile (Knox) to AOSP.
While I might one day leave Samsung for the lack of Bluetooth codecs, in 2024 the UI is really very nice and I would miss it on many other "more stock" Android devices.
I had similar feeling about Samsung in the past but I think it is quite better nowadays. But there definitely is some AOSP/Samsung duality you cannot escape. My current gripes with existing s23+ is usually one of following:
1. Some of their features are being offloaded to unknown 3rd party vendors (e.g call spam detection).
2. They really want you to install some sort of McAfee AV on your phone to get the "secure" tick.
3. They are usually about a month behind when it comes to Android security patches.
4. Phone comes pre-installed with crap.
Weird. Even my A52s which is both older and much cheaper (like a quarter of the price!) than your S22 Ultra is on 1 January 2024. It still gets timely monthly updates.
I wonder if it's your provider being difficult here. The problem with branded (or sometimes even sold with contract) phones is that the carrier wants to meddle in the updates because they're afraid of issues on their network or something. And this can cause huge delays.
I always buy my phones separately, mainly because I hate contracts so I'm on prepay always but having unrestricted updates is another big benefit.
Seems like anywhere between one to three weeks. I think the auto update is a bit lazy. Had to force update on mine just now to make it get January update.
If you've never installed a custom rom like lineageos on a samsung phone and see your battery life triple or more, i can see having this opinion. But, no, the samsung 'experience' is not quite nice.
Why not, it supports ad blockers so at least it is better than Chrome. Also it can put the URL bar at the bottom which makes much more sense on a phone.
At least I was not able to find a way to do that. That was the main reason I switched back to Firefox on mobile despite actually liking Samsung Internet more.
I tend to use my phone for personal research stuff mainly and Firefox on my desktop/laptop for work. I use bookmark syncing in Firefox, and that works great! But I generally don't need to synch from phone to desktop.
Having said this, I also had Firefox installed on my phone and on checking, see that ublock origin is available there!
I don't really like samsung internet, it totally sucks. The half-assed adblocker is okayish, and the picture in picture is somewhat better than edge (stopped chrome long ago and edge is my main desktop browser).
Tried Firefox mobile, while I love the ublock origin, it kept constantly crashing that I eventually had to let go off. But yeah I'd definitely love to have a minimal android
I have a galaxy fold 5 as my secondary phone and when I first got it I was trying to see what people were using on android in 2023, and fold users overwhelmingly suggested the Samsung internet browser on Reddit. It's.. fine, I was disappointed immediately as even my iPhone in native safari supports greasemonkey scripts.
> I was disappointed immediately as even my iPhone in native safari supports greasemonkey scripts
It feels totally upside-down that Safari for iOS has a better extensions story than Chrome for Android. For this reason one of the first things I grab when setting up a new Android device is Firefox.
I would applaud a toggle or install screen to give people a choice. But many, myself included, find the Samsung OS customizations an improvement over stock Android.
Google is terrible at doing UX and Samsung has had a chance to actually built a quality alternative app store. However all they have managed to do is to churn out unusable bloated apps like SHealth, SmartThings and Samsung Note.
I use Samsung note because majority of my notes are Screen Of Memos. I just don't like how they bring features and deprecate them or hide them somewhere undiscoverable. In the most recent instance of UX bug, the convert to text option for handwritten notes is gone!
Ah, slightly different use case then. I mainly use it to note down random ideas/do math in (where I'd like the benefits of handwriting without dealing with paper), so not doing much annotation and I don't use the convert to text feature so I didn't even notice that being removed.
No, the whole point of the "me too" apps is that Google forbids choice. The device has to have the Google apps pre installed and the only way vendors can attack this monopoly is by putting their apps in addition ("instead" is forbidden).
Sure, the vendor apps often suck, but that is no reason to support monopolies.
> A good first step. The next one I’d like to see is a one-tap toggle that disables the bulk of Samsung OS customizations and “me too” apps/ecosystem cruft, as some other vendors have.
What other vendors have that?
The fundamental problem in the android world is that OEMs have no market power, and that makes it impossible for them to do longterm investments like research and security updates.
What you see here is that using these "me too" apps, Samsung managed to acquire some market power, and so is able to do some of these longterm investments now.
Seems like you just want a Pixel phone with all-Google apps.
Samsung's built in apps are not "cruft" by any means.
The Notes app has pen support for sketching and PDF import/annotate, which lets me use a printable calendar digitally. The Browser app has dark mode and adblock; good luck with that on Google Chrome. The Music app doesn't try to upsell me to a YouTube Music plan.
I also use Bixby routines to quickly set custom timers for exercise, cooking etc.
Concur with Notes and Bixby Routines. Discovered and tinkered with them three months ago. I was missing a lot, actually.
Given I’m more Power User than average user, I’m also in favor of vanilla as possible, but it’s not like an extra icon away from home and Edge Panels is really uncomfortable for me, I don’t even feel the presence of a lot of those extra applications I don’t use.
I don't think customization is a chief selling point, not for 99% of people. It's only a selling point for the types of people who talk about the selling points of operating systems.
It seems this is only for the new S24 series.
I hope this gradually extends to lower ranges. Personally, I find a 2023 phone at 1/8th of the price [1] to be sufficient for my use (spec-wise)
Now a removable battery and Less "freezing" [2] please.
Great point! I have a "cheap" Samsung M32 that I bought for about $170. One reason I chose this Samsung phone over a similarly priced phone from a competitor was that I wrongly believed that Samsung provided several years more OS and security updates. After buying the phone I realized that longer support only applied to flagship models :/
Devil's advocate question: How did you expect Samsung could fund SW dev costs to support 7 years of updates on the margins of a $170 phone while still turning a profit?
Not sure how much you were expecting at $170 but you might have been penny wise and pound foolish here trying to scrape the bottom of the barrel as nobody else gives you more than 2 years of updates at those rock bottom prices. Sometimes it pays to spend a bit more and get something worthwile.
Samsung's other budget phones from last year in the ~300 Euro range, like the A54 have 5 years of guaranteed support. Maybe the mid rangers of 2024 will also get 7 years of updates which would be killer value.
"In 2022 alone, the South Korean company sold almost 260 million smartphones worldwide."
Say there's a model that sold 10m total. I think it's fair to say Samsung could reasonably increase the price by $1 (~0.75c minus tax) for 10 years of support instead of ~3 years.
That's $7.5m. I used to flash Cyanogenmod on my phones (motorola defy etc.), IIRC it was often a single guy making the roms, I guess part time, doing a decent job of it. $1m/year for years 4-10 should cover a team of 5.
I think difficulties arose when newer kernals wouldn't work with the older hardware drivers that were available. But there's fewer SOCs than smartphone models.. I guess maybe $0.10 to Qualcomm for every SOC sale should cover updating drivers.
Not sure I'd want to be using a 10yo (2013) phone now, but a 5yo (2018) phone with fresh software would be fine. Todays higher-end phones should still be usuable beyond 5 years.
> I think difficulties arose when newer kernals wouldn't work with the older hardware drivers that were available.
That's a problem of Samsungs own doing. They can mainline their drivers and force their subcontractors to do the same if they want to sell to them. They're definitely big enough to be able to do it if they wanted to.
> How did you expect Samsung could fund SW dev costs to support 7 years of updates on the margins of a $170 phone while still turning a profit?
Release the source code and accept patches. Nobody even cares if you provide further updates at all if you release enough code or documentation to begin with that third parties can feasibly get up to date versions of stock Android running on it.
I can absolutely use an A as my daily driver, but M I will not touch. And you paid way too much for an M series phone, I would say they are worth $80-100.
Based on that, I can see why they can't give you 7 years of support. Besides, most M series use some unknown Chinese CPU that will never receive any kernel updates after release.
I was genuinely hoping that this would extend back to at least the 10 series. I'm still daily driving my S10+ that I got when it first came out with no major issues other than the eventual lack of updates. Battery life is still great, very minimal wear and tear. Only real complaint I have at this point is that, post TMobile-Sprint merger, signal strength is rather odd at work now.
Yep, same boat. I didn't realize the S10 went out of support last year. Other than the battery having less charge, it works well. Wonder how much longer it is safe to use?
Now for a phone that has a battery that will last that long. That would really be news. I find that I don't replace a phone because it can't function or is no longer secure. I replace it because it can't hold a charge long enough for regular daily use.
That's an inherent limitation of modern lithium batteries with a smartphone's constraints of density, size, packaging, charge current, and a bunch of other requirements. Replacing a battery every 18-24 months costs ~$75 (or 1 hour and $35 if you're comfortable with DIY), which is a reasonable maintenance cost considering smartphones cost $300-$1300. Many car owners don't sell/scrap their car until repairs exceed the value of the car, we should apply the same philosophy to smartphones.
I've replaced the batteries on several phones (at authorized places) and, while I like the idea, they all started displaying weird behavior. I guess they are glued so hard that the heating needed to open them up must cause some tiny damage. Just a guess.
I haven't had any issues with a Samsung S7, Samsung S9 (although I broke HDMI output), and Sony Xperia 5 Mark II (very pleasant to repair). iPhones have been much more troublesome for me, as I have destroyed three during repair attempts. All the issues were from damage to ribbon cables, as they are fragile and easily damaged from being bent. So I'd advise avoiding devices with tight tolerances like iPhones, and minimizing interaction with ribbon cables.
Correct me if I’m wrong but limiting my charging to 80% (and minimum to say 20%) can increase the charge cycles of a battery by about 5x. This exists on laptops (Thinkpads and Franeworks at least), phones should also offer it.
I would love if this was "fine-tunable" on iOS. On macOS there are various ways to cap the maximum charge percentage. On iOS (and macOS by default) it tries to learn your charging habits and do various things based on that, but it never actually caps you to 80%. For example, it knows I plug my phone in over night, so it charges to 80%, pauses, then does the remaining 20% right before I wake up.
This exists on Samsung. I've used it on my S10 Lite since day one and I am not sure if it's directly related but my battery is fine approaching 4 years now. All my previous phones had issues with the batter around the 2 years mark. (It might just be improved battery tech too)
I usually use Chinese knockoffs. Brands like Cameron Sino and Nohon are growing brands who accurately state capacity, make good batteries, and don't pretend to be OEMs.
As for official batteries, California's Right to Repair law compels manufacturers to sell parts like batteries for as long as they sell battery replacement services, up to 7 years. Apple still replaces batteries for the iPhone 5S, a 10-year-old phone, so they 2022+ phones should have official batteries available for a long while (and the prices seem quite fair). Google also sells genuine batteries for the Pixel 2, a 6-year-old phone, through iFixit. Samsung only offers batteries attached to a midframe and display assembly, for the S20 and newer, through iFixit for $200+. So the former 2 brands seem like good options.
this could definitely open me back up to android. I got tired of my device becoming hacker friendly and went over to iphone after my perfectly useful android device was outside of feature/security updates. I didn't want to install another OS android or root my device, I just want to use it and stick it back in my pocket. I will definitely look at samsung again with my next mobile "era" when my iphone dies/is too slow.
What budget phones right now have a decent number of years for security updates and run stock Android?
I tried to get this info a couple of years ago and it took some serious digging to find when each phone was released and how long updates are meant to last as there's no central place to find this. Maybe there's a good resource for this now?
Nokia phones are meant to be nearly stock Android I think with 3 years of updates but longer would be nice.
For anyone looking at budget android phones, probably the most important thing is to look at the CPU on gsmarena (or elsewhere) and make sure it has at least 2 a7N cores (the higher the N, the better, eg. a72<a78<a720), because android OEMs are still selling phones with 8 a53 (or a55) cores which are unusably slow (8x a53 cpus were terrible a decade ago, and they're even worse now). For qualcomm cpus you might have to check the wikipedia article [1] to figure out what the kryo cores actually correspond to.
I know this isn't exactly the answer to your question, but it's sorta adjacent and might be useful.
Pixel devices can run a number of Roms that go much longer than Google's support period (DivestOS, PostMarketOS, Lineage, etc). Older models can probably be found on sale from Google for ~$200 occasionally or even cheaper used, and with Lineage offer a really long support period on an OS that resembles AOSP with or without G Services.
How much of this is good faith, how much public backlash, and how much just not pushing out revolutionary new hardware every year due to the long awaited death of Moore's law.
what we really need is a way to disable forced updates. how people are not more upset by that is beyond me. every time I say that people scream "BUT MUH SECURITY", as if thats the only thing that matters and nothing else should even be considered.
I am an adult. if I want to disable updates, I should be able to do so. give me multiple, loud warnings before doing so, fine, but dont stop people outright. otherwise its no longer an operating system, but a toy for babies.
Even better, start a company creating real phones for adults. That's what adults do when they face a problem - they solve it and maybe even make money.
7 years of updates for what? The S24 models and up? Or all phones up to 7 years ago? It doesn't specify, and the cynic in me makes me think it's only on 2024 models as a selling point.
It's likely going to be recent devices. Older devices Android was tightly coupled to kernel version, didn't have a good hardware abstraction layer for drivers, etc. Basically android has been working on restructing itself under the hood over the years to be more maintainable. Further, older devices will be on LTS kernels which will already be outside their support window, so there's a ton work to be done updating the device tree to upgrade to a newer LTS kernel.
Short windows made sense simply because it was a lot of work to maintain old devices. Now that there's a more solid separation of concerns, longer support windows make sense.
I maintain https://endoflife.date/samsung-mobile and this is extremely frustrating. Google was clear when they bumped the support that it only applied to Pixel 8 and above. Why can't Samsung clearly publish a press release.
Where can one go to verify these claims straight from the source? the Internet is full of "mobile news" sites that claim Samsung are doing this or Google are doing that, but they are impossible to verify. I would hope that Samsung would at least put out a press release, or there'd be a link to some release note, or _something_, but nothing.
Where do other HN readers go to verify these types of stories?
"The latest flagship continues Samsung’s commitment to extending the product lifecycle, offering seven generations of OS upgrades and seven years of security updates..."
Ah, but that sentence is footnoted, and the footnote simply says, "Availability and timing of Android OS upgrades and security updates may vary by device model and market."
Which doesnt tell me, for example, whether a reader with an arbitrary Samsung phone is in- or outside the tent. And is therefore something of a nothingburger.
Seems like these only applies to S24 series, will be nice if they do these for S23 series also or at least flagships.
Although I'm thinking as the next gen leaps are getting diminished year by year and smartphone like Pixel 8 are already more pricy than it should have been, companies can just jack their prices with even less innovation saying 7 years security updates but how long does an average user keeps phone anyway and will batteries are going to last that long.
Phone hardware most likely would've turned to crap in 3-4 years. But if one does keep it up and running despite all odds for 7 years they can keep it secure. I guess its great.
I'm still using an iPhone 11 Pro that I bought used, it's now almost 5 years old and still very, very usable. I did have the battery replaced about a year ago, but unless I break it/loose it, but I can see myself using it until Apple stops making OS updates for it. Even then, they seem decent at pushing out security fixes for old phones (I believe the 6s got a patch recently even though it's 2 versions behind the latest version).
Now if they only allowed you to unlock the bootloader. Samsung makes great hardware* but it's disappointing see locked down and bloated devices that only gets security updates for a few years IF you pay full price when they come out.
Long support periods are great, with that fixed it probably brings Samsung phones to Apple levels of quality, but I've enjoyed using my phone like a real computer instead of a locked down smart device that's disposable after a few (or 5-7) years.
Maybe I'm not the target audience of these manufacturers, but man has having a phone that let's me use it like a tiny ARM desktop (pixel) been really nice.
* At least they did, no experience with recent hardware. Last time I bought a Samsung device was a tablet in 2016. It's still a great device, but I don't use it a lot given it ran out of support ages ago despite still being a great priece of hardware.
Oh, cool, for some reason I thought they didn't let you unlock the bootloader. Did they stop you from doing it for a while and then re-enable it at some point or am I just misremembering?
Either way, always good to be wrong about something when I'm complaining about the state of tech.
This is a very positive trend. I'm glad we are moving away from "2,5 years of updates" e-waste. I might even pick Samsung as my next smartphone (curious about DeX).
The headline does not restrict this to specific models. I’ll be impressed if they actually update old models. If it’s another go forward promise - I’ll be a bit skeptical until they actually deliver for a bit.
Apple historically (with no big announcements I’m aware of) has an actual history of pushing updates - iPhone 6s from like 9 years ago still getting updates
Oh shit I must have missed that one, which one is that?
The EU are fucking killing it these days actually. So happy to see it. We had a scare there with Chat Control 2.0 but thankfully it was shot down, besides that we've gotten GDPR, USB-C charging ports, the Digital Markets Act, eIDAS is coming which looks like it could be pretty great, digital drivers licenses, etc. A lot of good stuff.
I agree they are going good things with GDPR and DMA/DSA.
But the fact that they even proposed ChatControl and it really had to be fought to be defeated, doesn't instill a lot of confidence in continued progress and vision towards privacy. It feels like the winds could turn just like that.
It is very said that people are celebrating digital drivers licenses of all things, how far we have fallen in the battle for privacy and freedom from government intrusion in our lives that we are now celebrating massive authoritarian policies and control as "wins" because they have made our lives more convenient...
What's the difference from the previous state? You had to carry a driving license but the government had all the info anyway.
If you didn't have the license on you, they'd find you in the DB anyway. Possibly you get a €10 fine. The electronic driving license is just a simplification to me. You don't have to carry anything.
Many people hear digitised and they think big brother is watching, I honestly don't know where they get it from because as you say the data we're talking about is already data the government keeps by necessity, that it's now in your phone doesn't automatically make it nefarious.
That said, there are things in the category of surveillance that having it in an app do enable. For this reason I would personally like to require that the implementation of these apps is open source, unfortunately I know there was some resistance on that front with regards to eIDAS...
While removing the driving license carriage requirement is a strict removal of a hassle, I understand where people don't trust the electronic ID card.
Unlike the driving license, you still need to carry it, either in plastic or as an app in your phone. And it's becoming a bit complicated. It's not a self-contained QR code with an electronic signature. It's a whole system that allows you to share only part of the info to someone (e.g. only age in the pub). It also remembers who asked for that info.
Experience from CZ and very fresh. The electronic ID app for instance is still only a few days old.
The records were already digitized given the police's ability to look up the license for you if you provided name and date of birth. So digital licenses are just taking away the physical abstraction. There's a concern over what happens if the systems or networks go down, but presumably physical ID isn't completely outlawed yet.
From what I've heard about things like eIDAS there is considerable technical competence behind the specifications for these laws, I would expect there to be mechanisms for cryptographically secure offline validation.
As I understand it the validation happens online to avoid tracking. Nowadays banks and telcos share a lot of information on their clients. So instead of giving out the unchanging personal ID number (containing the date of birth), you're supposed to give out the number of your ID card that changes every five or ten years. Or, in the online world, the bank gets a unique token.
I don't think it will fulfill that purpose in practice. The name plus date of birth is a very good tracking identifier and people will be still giving DOB to these companies.
There are even cooler ways of doing this, look up eIDAS and/or Zero-Knowledge Proofs.
Basically, with the right cryptography, my app can prove my license is valid without revealing any PII. Or in the case of eIDAS, binary questions like "is rekoil 18 years or older?".
In September 2022, the Samsung S10 went over 150 days without a security patch being available. That caused my work to kick my phone off it's network. Samsung promised quarterly updates before that. So I have been burned by their broken promises. Hopefully they keep them this time.
To be fair there are endpoint protection solutions that provide phone (instance) information that can be used to decide if the particular device is secure enough to be allowed on the network.
There are a number of MDMs out there that will report patch level of mobile devices. If I was buying an MDM for an enterprise, I wouldn't buy one that lacked this. Ensuring devices are up to date is a pretty critical part of a good security posture.
This is good news (and honestly not a huge surprise given the current trajectory)
But what is with all the negative comments here? People are complaining about completely irrelevant things just so don't have to say anything positive about Samsung?
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[ 5.2 ms ] story [ 196 ms ] threadStill, my main ask is upstreamed support. Users should be able to maintain their own devices if they want to. From the start of ownership to beyond the products end of life. That means I should be able to build my own kernel and send them to the device, and I shouldn't need some vendor fork that will someday rot out to do it.
Unfortunately they didn't do that, so it's still a mess.
https://groups.google.com/g/safetynet-api-clients/c/lpDXBNeV...
You may be able to build your own OS, but as soon as you unlock that bootloader to install it, all of your banking apps will stop working and there will be no workarounds once hw-backed attestation is mandated.
They install plenty of bloatware on google devices, but since it’s all background surveillance stuff, it doesn’t clutter the UI.
Yeah, my previous Samsung I had to spend a half hour with adb to get all their junk disabled.
A long time Android user wouldn't have mistaken my Zenfone 9 for a Pixel at any more than a cursory glance, but you can get it pretty close, particularly in terms of feel.
I never found it to be true.
I owned a Samsung S7, it was atrocious, people said it was great, the bloatware was painful, the gesture to open the apps drawer was conflicted with the gesture to open Samsung pay (which didn't worked with my bank), you can't disable Samsung pay, if you switch the launcher, it's still there. Searching the settings took literally 10 seconds. It's default behavior is to stay on while charging, the whole screen have the lock screen burned in now.
My mom own a Samsung 10e, people also said "Samsung software isn't ad now", they rewrote their own clock app. It doesn't support having multiple timers?!? Worse, asking Google assistant to add a timer, reset the previous one. This is due to Samsung bloatware, the stock android clock doesn't have this issue.
To be fair that S7 from 2016 doesn't count as being from "these days" anymore, so your opinion is not up to date, as Samsung made pretty big strides in the last few years past 2020 compared to how it was when you last remember it with the nasty Touchwiz.
I'm in love with the new drop down settings screen especially.
For browser I'm Firefox all the way though!
> even work profile was first available on Samsung devices
Work profiles are available since Android 5.
This is a stock Android feature. I just plugged in my Pixel 6 and it indicated in the lockscreen it will be fully recharged in 21 minutes.
1. Some of their features are being offloaded to unknown 3rd party vendors (e.g call spam detection). 2. They really want you to install some sort of McAfee AV on your phone to get the "secure" tick. 3. They are usually about a month behind when it comes to Android security patches. 4. Phone comes pre-installed with crap.
But they're not really behind. I already got the 1 January Android security update a few days ago on my S23.
Considering they need to do testing and possible modifications I don't think this is very slow.
I wonder if it's your provider being difficult here. The problem with branded (or sometimes even sold with contract) phones is that the carrier wants to meddle in the updates because they're afraid of issues on their network or something. And this can cause huge delays.
I always buy my phones separately, mainly because I hate contracts so I'm on prepay always but having unrestricted updates is another big benefit.
Seems like anywhere between one to three weeks. I think the auto update is a bit lazy. Had to force update on mine just now to make it get January update.
It's not perfect but I like it now (In the TouchWiz days Samsung was really bad at updates, they've improved a lot)
And I have owned several S generation phones.
At least I was not able to find a way to do that. That was the main reason I switched back to Firefox on mobile despite actually liking Samsung Internet more.
I tend to use my phone for personal research stuff mainly and Firefox on my desktop/laptop for work. I use bookmark syncing in Firefox, and that works great! But I generally don't need to synch from phone to desktop.
Having said this, I also had Firefox installed on my phone and on checking, see that ublock origin is available there!
Will give it a shot now. :-)
Tried Firefox mobile, while I love the ublock origin, it kept constantly crashing that I eventually had to let go off. But yeah I'd definitely love to have a minimal android
E: I also have a pixel 6a
It feels totally upside-down that Safari for iOS has a better extensions story than Chrome for Android. For this reason one of the first things I grab when setting up a new Android device is Firefox.
it is the other way around.
They are not trying to do the right thing, they are maintaining a data stream, and the updates will continue to update that equation to their benefit.
I think of this like vizio, which makes more collecting data from your television than selling you the hardware.
Sure, the vendor apps often suck, but that is no reason to support monopolies.
What other vendors have that?
The fundamental problem in the android world is that OEMs have no market power, and that makes it impossible for them to do longterm investments like research and security updates.
What you see here is that using these "me too" apps, Samsung managed to acquire some market power, and so is able to do some of these longterm investments now.
Samsung's built in apps are not "cruft" by any means.
The Notes app has pen support for sketching and PDF import/annotate, which lets me use a printable calendar digitally. The Browser app has dark mode and adblock; good luck with that on Google Chrome. The Music app doesn't try to upsell me to a YouTube Music plan.
I also use Bixby routines to quickly set custom timers for exercise, cooking etc.
Given I’m more Power User than average user, I’m also in favor of vanilla as possible, but it’s not like an extra icon away from home and Edge Panels is really uncomfortable for me, I don’t even feel the presence of a lot of those extra applications I don’t use.
Now a removable battery and Less "freezing" [2] please.
[1] https://www.gsmarena.com/compare.php3?idPhone1=12583&idPhone...
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38995719
Not sure how much you were expecting at $170 but you might have been penny wise and pound foolish here trying to scrape the bottom of the barrel as nobody else gives you more than 2 years of updates at those rock bottom prices. Sometimes it pays to spend a bit more and get something worthwile.
Samsung's other budget phones from last year in the ~300 Euro range, like the A54 have 5 years of guaranteed support. Maybe the mid rangers of 2024 will also get 7 years of updates which would be killer value.
Say there's a model that sold 10m total. I think it's fair to say Samsung could reasonably increase the price by $1 (~0.75c minus tax) for 10 years of support instead of ~3 years.
That's $7.5m. I used to flash Cyanogenmod on my phones (motorola defy etc.), IIRC it was often a single guy making the roms, I guess part time, doing a decent job of it. $1m/year for years 4-10 should cover a team of 5.
I think difficulties arose when newer kernals wouldn't work with the older hardware drivers that were available. But there's fewer SOCs than smartphone models.. I guess maybe $0.10 to Qualcomm for every SOC sale should cover updating drivers.
Not sure I'd want to be using a 10yo (2013) phone now, but a 5yo (2018) phone with fresh software would be fine. Todays higher-end phones should still be usuable beyond 5 years.
Here's Android 12 on Samsung S4 (2013), looks okay but probably marginal once you put a few chonky apps: https://youtu.be/lySu841rNgg?si=LyONyyUP8mcCa67L&t=783
That's a problem of Samsungs own doing. They can mainline their drivers and force their subcontractors to do the same if they want to sell to them. They're definitely big enough to be able to do it if they wanted to.
Samsung doesn't see this as a problem.
Release the source code and accept patches. Nobody even cares if you provide further updates at all if you release enough code or documentation to begin with that third parties can feasibly get up to date versions of stock Android running on it.
S: flagship
A: mid range
M: mostly garbage
I can absolutely use an A as my daily driver, but M I will not touch. And you paid way too much for an M series phone, I would say they are worth $80-100.
Based on that, I can see why they can't give you 7 years of support. Besides, most M series use some unknown Chinese CPU that will never receive any kernel updates after release.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/108055
Samsung should back their word by keeping a stock of replacement parts.
As for official batteries, California's Right to Repair law compels manufacturers to sell parts like batteries for as long as they sell battery replacement services, up to 7 years. Apple still replaces batteries for the iPhone 5S, a 10-year-old phone, so they 2022+ phones should have official batteries available for a long while (and the prices seem quite fair). Google also sells genuine batteries for the Pixel 2, a 6-year-old phone, through iFixit. Samsung only offers batteries attached to a midframe and display assembly, for the S20 and newer, through iFixit for $200+. So the former 2 brands seem like good options.
I tried to get this info a couple of years ago and it took some serious digging to find when each phone was released and how long updates are meant to last as there's no central place to find this. Maybe there's a good resource for this now?
Nokia phones are meant to be nearly stock Android I think with 3 years of updates but longer would be nice.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kryo
Pixel devices can run a number of Roms that go much longer than Google's support period (DivestOS, PostMarketOS, Lineage, etc). Older models can probably be found on sale from Google for ~$200 occasionally or even cheaper used, and with Lineage offer a really long support period on an OS that resembles AOSP with or without G Services.
I am an adult. if I want to disable updates, I should be able to do so. give me multiple, loud warnings before doing so, fine, but dont stop people outright. otherwise its no longer an operating system, but a toy for babies.
Even better, start a company creating real phones for adults. That's what adults do when they face a problem - they solve it and maybe even make money.
Short windows made sense simply because it was a lot of work to maintain old devices. Now that there's a more solid separation of concerns, longer support windows make sense.
https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/4457705?hl=en
GrapheneOS end-of-support info (for Google Pixels):
https://grapheneos.org/faq#device-support
Where do other HN readers go to verify these types of stories?
"The latest flagship continues Samsung’s commitment to extending the product lifecycle, offering seven generations of OS upgrades and seven years of security updates..."
Which doesnt tell me, for example, whether a reader with an arbitrary Samsung phone is in- or outside the tent. And is therefore something of a nothingburger.
Long support periods are great, with that fixed it probably brings Samsung phones to Apple levels of quality, but I've enjoyed using my phone like a real computer instead of a locked down smart device that's disposable after a few (or 5-7) years.
Maybe I'm not the target audience of these manufacturers, but man has having a phone that let's me use it like a tiny ARM desktop (pixel) been really nice.
* At least they did, no experience with recent hardware. Last time I bought a Samsung device was a tablet in 2016. It's still a great device, but I don't use it a lot given it ran out of support ages ago despite still being a great priece of hardware.
Either way, always good to be wrong about something when I'm complaining about the state of tech.
The headline does not restrict this to specific models. I’ll be impressed if they actually update old models. If it’s another go forward promise - I’ll be a bit skeptical until they actually deliver for a bit.
Apple historically (with no big announcements I’m aware of) has an actual history of pushing updates - iPhone 6s from like 9 years ago still getting updates
The EU are fucking killing it these days actually. So happy to see it. We had a scare there with Chat Control 2.0 but thankfully it was shot down, besides that we've gotten GDPR, USB-C charging ports, the Digital Markets Act, eIDAS is coming which looks like it could be pretty great, digital drivers licenses, etc. A lot of good stuff.
What did I miss?
But the fact that they even proposed ChatControl and it really had to be fought to be defeated, doesn't instill a lot of confidence in continued progress and vision towards privacy. It feels like the winds could turn just like that.
The devils deal of convenience over freedom...
If you didn't have the license on you, they'd find you in the DB anyway. Possibly you get a €10 fine. The electronic driving license is just a simplification to me. You don't have to carry anything.
That said, there are things in the category of surveillance that having it in an app do enable. For this reason I would personally like to require that the implementation of these apps is open source, unfortunately I know there was some resistance on that front with regards to eIDAS...
Unlike the driving license, you still need to carry it, either in plastic or as an app in your phone. And it's becoming a bit complicated. It's not a self-contained QR code with an electronic signature. It's a whole system that allows you to share only part of the info to someone (e.g. only age in the pub). It also remembers who asked for that info.
Experience from CZ and very fresh. The electronic ID app for instance is still only a few days old.
Me too, the reason I trust it is that I understand the (really cool) cryptography behind it, and most don't.
I don't think it will fulfill that purpose in practice. The name plus date of birth is a very good tracking identifier and people will be still giving DOB to these companies.
Basically, with the right cryptography, my app can prove my license is valid without revealing any PII. Or in the case of eIDAS, binary questions like "is rekoil 18 years or older?".
But what is with all the negative comments here? People are complaining about completely irrelevant things just so don't have to say anything positive about Samsung?