• norske@lemmynsfw.com
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    1 year ago

    I hate that. One of the reasons I dislike Samsung phones. Last phone from them was a Note 8 and unless they go back to a pure Android experience, I won’t get another. We know that isn’t happening any time soon.

    Honestly I’m super over all our current choices. Im on an iPhone and while I like their privacy stuff slightly better than android, there are lots of things I don’t like.

    I also hate how much metadata the big G snorts up. Even just the location data they retain is out of this world.

    There just aren’t any options if you want something that doesn’t keep you boxed into a closed ecosystem or track every love you make.

    • HourglassHayden@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      You can get a Google pixel and sideload an operating system such as Grapheneos, and you won’t have to deal with any of Google’s bs spying. Highly recommend looking into it.

      • Comrat@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I recently made the switch and it’s great. Definitely takes a bit of understanding and research to know what you’re getting into, though.

      • norske@lemmynsfw.com
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        1 year ago

        Yeah. That’s what I’ve been looking into. I used to root and do roms and stuff. Back in the day I was pretty involved in the XDA community.

      • Xanvial@lemmy.one
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        1 year ago

        At that point why not just using Samsung phone and sideload the OS? Seems weird to do that on Pixel which has inferior hardware and good software (like its camera apps), and then remove the software

        • claudiop@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Simple reason being that there’s no notoriously good OS for Samsung phones.

          Graphene is highly focused on not being annoying while keeping privacy intact. You can, for example, have Google Play Services, within a sandbox. Everything can be denied network access, or any access really, on a per app basis.

          It also relies on Google’s security chip to keep the chain of trust intact. The boot sequence and your private keys are kept intact that way. Not everyone documents and opens their hardware as well as Google. Samsung is notoriously terrible and full of it when it comes to allowing you to do your own thing.

          • KuroJ@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I recently just bought a pixel 6 and have been interested in Graphene OS, but would I lose features like live translate and the hold for me feature?

            • claudiop@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              live translate

              What is that? Google translate listening and translating live? Google lens translating images? Both work.

              hold for me feature

              No clue about what that is.

              In general most things work just the same, and things that do not tend to be listed in the Graphene docs.

        • Ellie@lemmy.silkky.dev
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          1 year ago

          You can run Google Play services on GrapheneOS it’s called Sanboxed Google Play. It allows you to run Play services as a normal app without any special privileges so you can install it without sacrificing all of your phones data to google. Should allow you to use pretty much all Google apps.

          • Derproid@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            This isn’t enough for work apps that require Android Device Policy unfortunately. When I researched it in November I found that it would require too many permissions so GrapheneOS isn’t planning on supporting it.

    • nondescript_citizen@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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      1 year ago

      What about the fairphones? I was reading up on them and might get one. I like that they come with an android fork and open-source apps so you don’t have to deal with Google. Plus being fully repairable and sustainably-made. Does anyone have any experience with them?

    • EdibleFriend@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      wtf do you go with for a quality hardware android reasonably priced? LG got out of the phone game which sucks ass. Pixel can be great but they are all flagship prices. Samsung, while having horrible shit like this, is quality hardware and has lots of models under $200.

    • Reamen@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It’s really frustrating because Samsung is basically the leader in Android phones right now.

      I hope we get a bunch of new good options this year because I really need to upgrade and posts like this remind me why I don’t by Samsung.

  • grue@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Samsung has been a malicious bad actor for a while now. It’s not just phones; they also pulled shit like retroactively adding ads to people’s smart TVs etc.

    (Also, even their “dumb” products, like appliances, are designed to fail just outside warranty. If you don’t believe me, take a look at my washer’s spider arm, which failed catastrophically due to corrosion even though nothing else in the machine had so much of a speck of corrosion on it. Samsung is clearly capable of specifying corrosion-resistant materials and chose not to on purpose in order to create a failure point.)

    Everyone should completely boycott Samsung.

    • CmdrShepard@lemmy.one
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      1 year ago

      Your corrosion issue is due to dissimilar metals which, when in contact with one another, begin corroding immediately. They chose those materials knowing full well what would happen.

      Their appliances are absolute garbage and I’ve read that many repair places refuse to work on them because they’re built so poorly.

      • FordBeeblebrox@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Galvanic corrosion is a thing every shipyard on the planet has known about since we invented the propeller, of course they knew what they were doing.

        Never owned a Samsung phone but 5 minutes playing with the gf’s S22 was enough to keep me as an Apple fanboy for the foreseeable future

        • Ahri Boy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          1 year ago

          Two of Samsung fridges were busted even with 10-year warranty, with mine coming first before my uncle’s. I don’t have fridge anymore as my food is stored in my uncle’s new Samsung fridge. Also, he has a Samsung Smart TV, Tizen sucks anyway, he should get an Android TV instead.

          And also, Samsung is already losing it’s mid-range segment to Chinese OEMs.

        • Navigate@partizle.com
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          1 year ago

          Being an Apple fanboy is up to you, but I have to say that Apple and Samsung are not the only options. Android has many manufacturers with their own spin on things. Samsung’s spin happens to suck

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      1 year ago

      and you might think their TVs would be ok, but search for “Samsung TV vertical shadow” or some variant and find endless results for failed LED strips or power supplies. trash.

    • blueson@feddit.nu
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      1 year ago

      Let’s not ignore that they are one of the conglomerates that are making living in Korea so shitty for a lot of people.

    • Tag365@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      So does that washing machine still work, or is that spider arm critical to all useful functionality? Anyways, one part getting way more corrosion than the rest is suspicious design.

      • grue@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        The spider arm doesn’t do much: it just attaches the washing drum to the drive spindle so that it can spin to wash clothes. If you’re using the “let your dirty clothes sit still in a heap while the machine makes loud noises caused by the broken remains of the arm whacking and grinding against each other” setting, you don’t need it at all!

  • whoami@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I disabled my DNS block-list for 5 minutes to test something, and my Samsung TV used its newfound freedom to immediately go and automatically install the TikTok app from its app store. It no longer gets the privilege of an internet connection.

    • HughJanus@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Shouldn’t have ever connected it in the first place. I spent $30 on a Chromecast that gets plugged in and connected.

    • boonhet@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      That has to be an American-market thing, really.

      My Samsung TV has never pulled this shit. It used to have free Internet access, now it’s behind a DNS blocker because it wants to do phone home a LOT, but even when I unblocked it to download an app I wanted, it didn’t do shit that it shouldn’t have.

      It’s still likely the last Samsung TV I’ll ever own - I don’t like the app availability on Tizen much - but I just don’t see all this adware that everyone keeps talking about. Mine’s a 2019 model though, maybe it’s only newer ones?

      • whoami@lemmy.world
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        This was in Europe - 2019 model as well. Must have been around 2021 or so, when TikTok was just taking off.

  • coffeeguy@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Majorly infuriating.

    It’s not really your phone if it does things like this. This is Samsung’s phone you pay for their permission to carry for a few years.

    True ownership means fully possessing something and deciding how it operates including what software it runs, what data that software can access, and when it can access it. I would not be surprised if those apps had some very invasive default permissions.

    • ratsby@lemm.ee
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      There’s a difference between not having full ownership and not bothering to use it. There’s plenty of options from rooting to full custom ROMs, and as far as I know Samsung does nothing to prevent you using those, they just don’t do it for you / provide support and updates.

      • Zoidsberg
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        1 year ago

        My Canadian S10E has no way to unlock the bootloader.

      • ThrowawayOnLemmy@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Yeah, you shouldn’t have to root your phone to own it though. This is just straight up asshole design, there are plenty of people out there who aren’t technically savvy who don’t know how to do this stuff. They shouldn’t be forced to circumvent the default software just to remove an app they don’t want in the first place.

      • min_fapper@iusearchlinux.fyi
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        Last time I bothered researching, Google pixel was the only one that didn’t void the warranty when you unlock the bootloader.

        I remember Samsung being especially locked down with hardware e-fuses that blew if you ran any software not signed by their key. You could never reset back to stock afterwards.

    • Navigate@partizle.com
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      As mentioned above, these probably are malware depending on your standards. It just came from Samsung or their carrier

    • pazukaza@lemmy.ml
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      This is definetely malware. OP has probably been doing funky stuff with his phone.

        • Tag365@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Since when did carriers have permission to do this stuff? I don’t remember stuff like this happening in 2014…

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          Ah yeha, sorry, didn’t read the Mobile Services Manager. But this is a common malware attack though.

  • FarFarAway@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Stab in the dark…your on tmobile.

    It does this to me too. You disable the damn thing, then you get a carrier update and it reactivates and downloads stupid games no one wants.

    First time it did it to me, I thought I got a virus. Come to find out…nah it’s just a thing tmobile forces on you for fun.

    Assholes

    • MercuryUprising@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      This is the sorta shit that will likely be in the EUs sights soon. Installing applications nobody asked for because of the carrier? That sounds fucking insanely invasive. It’s like Adidas installing a camera in your apartment because you bought a pair of sneakers.

      • FightMilk@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        That’s kind of an extreme example lol unless the game is asking for insane permissions. Still I get your point and hopefully the EU acts on it. Especially since they appear to be humanity’s only hope against shit like this

        • MercuryUprising@lemmy.world
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          That’s probably because the EU generally isn’t run by a two party system, where both parties are actually just center-right neoliberals. If you want EU style protections, you have to actually fight for it, like pretty much every European country did.

          • FightMilk@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            The two party system isn’t the only problem though, there’s also:

            • Money being a form of speech – EU MEPs aren’t soliciting billionaires for money to spend on TV ads
            • The 10th amendment – prevents any national effort where the federal govt uses a power not explicitly granted to it in the constitution. Obamacare tripped up here for instance, and Obamacare is far from national socialized healthcare. It was a feature when people identified more with their local culture, but in an era when every American identifies as American-first, and engages the political system accordingly by only knowing or caring about national candidates and parties, it becomes a bug.
            • States that should have never been states – the US Senate took a heavy rural turn in the 19th century as vast, sparsely populated territories were given statehood. Nowadays this means to buy two US Senators you only need to gaslight ~600k people with advertising (the population of Wyoming). The founding fathers never really developed a solid plan for how the west would be settled, and it shows.
            • Powerful and unaccountable Court – the Supreme Court is given authority over both other branches, serving life terms, with few guidelines or restrictions. A party with the Presidency and Senate at the right time can gain a majority of the court and undo (or manufacture) precedent at the snap of a finger. The resulting system makes it far easier to capture the court than to pass a constitutional amendment. Think abortion should be legal? Here’s a roundabout legal justification for that. Oh the new majority thinks it shouldn’t be? Okay now it’s gone. It’s a chaotic way to handle bedrock rights like access to healthcare and privacy (neither of which are mentioned anywhere in the US constitution). The constitution should be malleable enough that the court is strictly tasked with interpreting the letter of the law. The US shouldn’t be relying on legal gymnastics to legalize abortion and gay marriage. It’s unstable and undemocratic.
            • Electoral College – the leader of the country, not just the Executive but the Head of State, is elected in a way that respects statehood more than personhood. It is more concerned with making sure Wyoming gets a fair vote than making sure John Doe in Queens does.
            • First past the post voting – this is another oversight by the founding fathers that many European republics were able to avoid, and it’s the root cause of the two party system. But it also makes gerrymandering possible, which completely breaks both state-level politics and the US House. It makes so many seats into “safe seats” that the “money is speech” briberies become much easier to allocate.
            • Racism – almost every dumb thing about American politics can be traced back in some form to slavery, segregation, or racism. Why is every state given 2 senators? Slavery. Why were some of those rural states admitted? Also slavery. Why did White Americans support progressive policies in the 30s, 40s, and 50s? Segregation. Why did the entire Deep South flip from Democrat to Republican in the late 60s? Also segregation. It’s America’s original sin and it’s still playing a role.

            Every one of those things plays a role in the US not adopting stricter privacy standards, or leading the way in anything except military might. It’s why American politics is so broken that even a majority of voters wanting to fix it isn’t enough.

      • woelkchen@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        This is the sorta shit that will likely be in the EUs sights soon.

        You mean the same regulator that unconditionally approved the buyout of Activision-Blizzard by convicted monopolist Microsoft? Yeah, no. Nothing is to be expected by EU regulators.

    • limelight79@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Yeah, I would like clarification if this came from the carrier or Samsung.

      I keep my Galaxy S21 up to date, and these have not been installed for me. But I haven’t had an update in the last few days, so it’s possible it’s an upcoming update I haven’t seen yet.

      But I bought my phone off Amazon; they’re usually cheaper that way, and it’s unlocked already. I don’t get them via my carrier (AT&T for what it’s worth).

    • deadlyremote@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Verizon does stuff like this too. It downloaded TikTok and other garbage every update. Once I couldn’t take it anymore I got rid of the app downloading it using ADB

  • AbsentApe@midwest.social
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    1 year ago

    It’s carrier based. I’ve had Samsung phones almost exclusively and as long as I buy unlocked I never get unwanted apps.

    • silent_squirrel@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      There is still a lot of stuff preinstalled which could be considered unwanted by a lot of people (TikTok, Netflix, Spofify, multiple MS apps, Disney+, Facebook, Meta Services, …)

      • AbsentApe@midwest.social
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        Pre-installed, yes mine had pre-installed. I don’t know anything that doesn’t have pre-installed bloatware. What the OP was complaining about was their phone randomly installing unwanted apps after they bought it. Mine has never installed an app without me telling it to. For the bloatware I just disabled it until I’m comfortable using ABD on a new phone.

        I have a S21 FE unlocked on AT&T in the USA by the way. #___

        • silent_squirrel@feddit.de
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          1 year ago

          Personally I wouldn’t mind a few preinstalled apps, if they can actually be uninstalled, not just disabled which seems to be the case for some.

          But the “Meta Services” thing seems shady af, its not showing up in the app drawer because its just a background service most people don’t even know it exists. Its also not needed, because all of the Meta apps work just fine without it. So realistically Meta just pays Samsung a lot of money for something that only has the purpose to collect a lot of user data (it can also access more data than regular apps because it’s installed as an system app)

    • JshKlsn@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Nah. My $2000 CAD unlocked directly from Samsung device had ads and bullshit pre-installed apps before I even inserted my SIM into it.

      I returned that phone so fast. Never seen anything like that on my Pixel.

        • JshKlsn@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          That’s how much Samsung S22 Ultra sells for. Or I guess did, before the S23 Ultra came out.

            • Zetaphor@zemmy.cc
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              It’s not free, the cost is built into your monthly payment. This is how all carrier supplied phones are funded. If they allowed you to bring your own unlocked device they could charge you less. They wouldn’t, but they could because they wouldn’t need to recoup the hardware expense.

              • dudebro@lemmy.world
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                Err, you’re wrong.

                I only pay $25/month for unlimited data. My bill didn’t go up, either.

                Whether they supplied me with a phone or not, I’d still be paying the same price.

                In fact, I was using my own phone initially but they offered me an upgrade for free.

                • Zetaphor@zemmy.cc
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                  Then that means the cost of the devices has already been factored into the base price of your contract. Nothing is free, companies don’t make money by giving away phones that they paid for. You’re just paying a higher base fee regardless of whether or not you get the hardware from them. By not taking the phone from them you’re increasing the profit margin they make on your monthly contract.

      • jiji@lemmy.world
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        iPhones come with a few apple-specific apps most people don’t want/need (think GarageBand, Apple Home, etc) but they’re all removable and don’t re-install themselves.

    • dan@upvote.au
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      1 year ago

      I wish manufacturers didn’t allow carriers to install junk on their phone.

      On the other hand, this is how carriers can give you a good deal on a phone… They have to subsidise it by making deals with the companies that make apps like these.

      • GoosLife@lemmy.world
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        If they have to trick you by installing unwanted apps on your phone, where you don’t even know it’s them doing it, then it sounds more like a scam than a great deal.

        • dan@upvote.au
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          I agree. That’s unfortunately how it is today though - either you pay full price for an unlocked phone (which some people can’t afford), or you get junk apps on it. You can usually disable the junk apps at least.

    • x4740N@lemmy.world
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      Yeah I have a Samsung phone and have never had this problem so I’m guessing it’s carrier stuff and op is unkowongly placing blame on the wrong company here

  • Rhabuko@feddit.de
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    1 year ago

    At this point I only buy Smartphones with Android One label (Stock Android without anything changed). Samsung especially is full of bloat.

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    One of the many reasons I will only ever buy Pixel phones. No bloatware.

        • I'm Hiding 🇦🇺@aussie.zone
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          Can you get away with MirrorLink? Truthfully I’ve never tried it, and I’m pretty sure it’s dead if not dying, but it was always going to be my fallback if I found a way to leave Google (or potentially Android entirely).

    • Swarfega@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      This is the main reason I’ve stuck with Nexus/Pixel. I’ve tried Samsung but everything on it is unwanted bloat. Amazing hardware screwed by bloat and duplicated apps. Shame.

    • Holzkohlen@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      I’m on a Pixel 4a right now running CalyxOS. I relly want to get a FairPhone next tho. Repairability is awesome

  • Sanctus@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Just uninstalled this after seeing this thread. If you’re on AT&T like I am the package name for Mobile Services Manager is com.dti.att and it has nothing to do with your actual mobile services. All it does is push and update bloatware. I also nuked every AT&T app that I could. I recommend everyone who has Android Studio do this to their phone its easy.