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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Readit News
Sure, the vendor apps often suck, but that is no reason to support monopolies.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Deleted Comment
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?
The devils deal of convenience over freedom...
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.
https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/4457705?hl=en
GrapheneOS end-of-support info (for Google Pixels):
https://grapheneos.org/faq#device-support
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.
Samsung should back their word by keeping a stock of replacement parts.
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.
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.
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.