Israeli-founded app preloaded on Samsung phones is attracting controversy

I recently bought a cheap android device because I needed to test something on Android. The setup was about 3 hours of the device starting up, asking me questions, installing apps I explicitly told it not to, and then all sorts of other apps and OS updates trying to do their thing seemingly at once. I wasn't even transferring data, just a brand new phone, new google account.

What a horrible experience you get with some providers and phones.

It's to the point that I think there should be some sort of regulation that involves you getting a baseline experience on the OS rather than a bunch of malware out of the box.

My guess is, those auto installs is exactly how they keep the costs down, by subsidizing the cost with getting paid by companies to auto-install garbage.

It's the same with Smart TVs, they've gotten so cheap because of all the other slimy stuff the manufacturers do, like sell your watch data, or pre-install apps.

The problem is that you do not get the option to pay off the subsidy to get a clean install.

I've heard this theory before, but is an individual data point really worth enough to make this argument?

its not just your data point its everyones data point

Nah its the corporate greed and disregard for avoiding amoral behavior at the first place, since clearly its punished much less than rewards are (just look at all the slaps on the wrist of FAANGs and similar), then followed by race to the bottom with the price.

Economies of scale do bring costs of everything much further than stealing user's data can, but good luck explaining some long term vision to C-suites who only care about short term bonuses.

This is true, it’s not an individual datapoint. When smartphones, like the iPhone, originally debuted carriers had a conniption fit because they couldn’t preload a ton of garbage apps to help subsidize the cost. Apple has been able to avoid this, but for your average smartphone this is absolutely how both the manufacturer and carrier are able to sell them so cheaply.

Every experience may not be as bad as the one the OP had, but it’s surely well within reality. Both carriers and handset manufacturers are glad to sell anything and everything about someone to make a quick buck. They’ve literally been doing it for 25+ years.

You need to think about the aggregate data. Whole trends can be seen in almost real-time.

Here’s a made up example, and it’s probably not even the best one. - Show Teckno-Detectives shows a “Cameo” of Grapple’s newest mixed-reality glasses. The data shows that 3.9 million additional people watched the episode. Investment firms who pay for the data notice and buy extra Grapple shares to cash in on the expected sales bump.

I suppose the "paying off the subsidy" is to buy a more expensive phone. Or getting a Google Pixel. I've heard those are as much stock android as possible.

I agree, and that's the exact point I would make. The problem though, is I want a small phone with a headphone jack (and a physical keyboard, but that's orthogonal to the point).

Many OEMs sell their flagship as a shiny glass slab with only BT or USB-C for audio, and ship 3.5mm jacks and other "antiquated niceties" like a uSD card reader, on their lower-end models.

It's difficult to square the circle of "I want these specific features, but on a phone that's not working against me (any more than modern phones already do)"

I suspect the apparent reduction in price on these devices is a lot less than what they earn from the slimy stuff.

But the premium devices (especially TVs) are starting to do this too now via software updates. I had to turn off a bunch of crap in the settings on my LG CX TVs some time ago. Now they are just off the internet and can only connect to my NAS.

I must admit, I don’t get the wish for 3.5mm headphone jacks in 2025. Already six years ago, with a phone that actually still had a headphone jack, I bought myself for just a few euro a Bluetooth DAC (a FiiO) that had superior sound quality to any phone’s audio-out that I had ever used. With a Bluetooth DAC (or with any USB-C to 3.5mm converter that costs pennies) you can still use whatever wired headphones you want to use.

Physical keyboards were nice back in an era when the web welcomed longform text, and I miss my Nokia N900. Nowadays, though, the web ecosystem that one typically uses from a phone is a cesspool, and for serious things I’ll just use my real computer.

I bought a USB-C to 3.5mm jack for around $20. It works well but does tend to get caught on things more easily than a pure jack.

> they've gotten so cheap because of all the other slimy stuff

Not really, they've gotten so cheap because the individual components they are made of have become much cheaper due to economies of scale.

The same thing happened with computer monitors, and those don't ship with the bloatware.

As well as easily getting misplaced…

Bluetooth wastes batteries / alter soubd.

I have a similar FiiO gadget and it makes less sense for me than a direct wired connection to the phone. It's a relatively bulky device that needs to be charged way too often, also it reduces voice call quality (like any other BT Classic device).

Compare monitors to TVs of similar spec, in price and bloatware.

The "Sony Xperia 5 V" (I have the previous "Sony Xperia 5 IV") has a headphone jack, takes a uSD card, and is somewhat compact. (And no silly camera cutout in the screen, it's in a reasonably small bezel.)

EDIT: also see the Xperia 10 VII for a phone that isn't 2 years old (I haven't been keeping up, I buy phones to use for 4+ years)

This is not a valid cause. They spend insane amounts of money on advertising and also make insane amounts of revenue. Don’t think “them keeping the cost down” is relevant in this context.

That would make Samsung's business model not viable. :D

pretty much why I switched to iphone. I used pixels before for the same reason but good luck getting your pixel warranty honored outside the united states

Sounds like the average carrier locked Samsung device experience in the US. Oh you didn't want Clash of Clans installed? We'll reinstall that for you next OS update. Running updates through carriers was a serious mistake.

> I bought myself for just a few euro a Bluetooth DAC (a FiiO) that had superior sound quality to any phone’s audio-out that I had ever used.

I hate the 3.5'' jack myself (see below), but I can already tell you that mentioning some unscientific definition of "superior sound quality" that likely no one amongst us is humanly able to distinguish is not going to win any minds over. Proponents of 3.5'' like it because it is ridiculously simple to use, intuitive, cheap, doesn't have a lot of things that can go wrong (e.g. no batteries) and despite that is overall effective.

The reason I dislike 3.5'' is because the _socket_ part (i.e. the part on the expensive device) wears out very quickly, becoming fragile and generating distracting artifacts even with slight cable pulls/movements, as the springs in the connector start to fail. This annoys me to no end, much more than any issues with other interfaces.

Talking about “superior sound quality” in the context of mobile phones isn’t controversial, it’s not like a home-stereo audiophile snake oil debate. It is well known that DACs are an area where mid-range and low-end phone makers have cut corners, choosing chips that are quite flawed for anyone who uses their phone to listen to music where pristine sound quality is valued.

And easily internally shorted, leading to the dreadful 'wiggle around in your pocket until the headphones are detected again, and then press play again'...

This is why custom ROM support is the first question I ask when buying a new Android phone

According to the specs it's 154 x 68 x 8.6 mm and 182 grams, so it's more compact than most phones of 2025 but not really compact. My Samsung A40 is smaller and lighter but it's 4 years older.

I'm conflicted about this matter. I use a Bluetooth earpiece on my phone because it's more convenient: you can move around a room with the phone on a table, no pockets, and you can wear and unwear t-shirts and sweaters. When I can't find the x with the earpieces I plug in in a wired one.

On the other hand a wired headphone always work, had maybe better quality and almost surely a better latency. I use one of them when doing calls from my laptop.

Running remote updates in general was a serious mistake. Other manufacturers are no better and give you all kinds of crap for their income streams at the expense of your convenience whilst claiming the opposite.

The last time I saw an update that just fixed security bugs and improved performance was... never.

I took this seriously and thought back to the most recent actually-useful-bugfixes-and-security-improvements release that I can remember. OSX Snow Leopard perhaps?

Cheap devices get subsidized by shitty adware. The cheaper the device, the more likely that it's full of terrible adware.

Consumers often have a choice, at least between "filled to the brim with crap" and "a modicum of crap", by choosing between buying their phone from a store or from a carrier. Carriers have better deals but shovel their phones full of the worst apps you can imagine. Still, people will buy the crap-filled experience that makes you want to tear your hair out because they like the idea of scoring a better deal.

Nothing like unadulterated greed combined with short-sighed consumer behaviour at scale to drive a market segment into an awful race to the bottom.

Serendipity happens. Maybe you almost want this https://liliputing.com/zinwa-q27-prototype-brings-classic-bl... Keyboard but it seems no 3.5" jack.

Name and shame please. I'm shopping for a cheap first phone for my 13 year old.

I'm looking at HMD or Motorola.

The premium devices still have the bloatware.

I remember back when the iPhone came out, this was perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of it, at least to me. We were so used to phones coming with crap on them and tightly coupled to the carrier. If the carrier didn't want something on the phone, it never got there. So Apple comes along and says "Hey, AT&T, we will make you the exclusive carrier for the iPhone iff you leave the entire experience under our control."

There were lots of downsides to that deal, of course, but I appreciate that it broke the carriers' exclusive control over mobile phones.

I haven't bought an android device for a few years, but the last time I did, it was also a very cheap one for testing. I chose an "Android One" to avoid all these issues. Is something like that still an option?

I was wondering why this thankfully hasn't been my experience until you said "carrier locked"... I always buy unlocked. Does that really make a difference?

"I was so happy to get locked into a different eco system" is all I hear.

Your best bet might be one of the Pixel "a" series, which are Google's budget-oriented models. Stock vanilla Android with as little bloat as you can hope for.

Yes, the carriers load up the phones with apps that you cannot remove (at least not without rooting the phone).

You can usually disable them, but they are still there.

I kind of like Motorola in the cheap android phone space. I have a moto-g stylus in my pocket now, and it's big (which I like), has a heaphone jack, and has an sd-card port. I thought I'd like the stylus, but I rarely use it.

It pre-installs some games, but you can uninstall them. The only thing it forces on you is a weather app which you can deactivate but not uninstall.

Sounds like a Samsung phone... no end of dark patterns and pushing Bixby AI and whatever else. And then once you have the phone set up you get to spend the next 10 minutes uninstalling a load of pre-loadded apps that you didn't want.

Fortunately Android is a pretty diverse range and Samsung is just one player. I had much more user-friendly experiences with Fairphone and Motorola.

You wouldn't get a phone in 2007 that didn't lock you in to something; the question is whose ecosystem you'd prefer to deal with.

I remember the Verizon crapware phone experience well.

I would say their comment had a lot more nuance and thought put in to it than yours did.

Wasn’t that also Apple’s last paid OS?

Yeah, even the iPhone bundles/bakes in google junk

Well dang, that's another good reason to buy unlocked :P

I actually ordered the Q20 revival by the same team back in May or so! Very excited, should ship this week

> subsidized

What's a better word here? Adverts cost the consumer, however I'm sure the consumer doesn't get equal recompense. Theoretically a SmartTV with adverts costs less money ("subsidised" due to price competition), but is the consumer actually ($,time) better off?

The costs are invisible and the consumer cannot actually measure the costs (the vendors do measure profitability but this is not legible).

I reckon most people are terrible at judging the value of their own time (especially children and retirees).

I mean sure, but Androids been following Apple's lead, not tother way tround.

Spinning up a competing carrier has a much higher barrier of entry, though, than creating a new mobile phone. If my only choices are carrier-controlled or manufacturer-controlled, I will choose the latter. Gives me way more options.

The elephant in the room for me is "microphonics" or the noise piped to your head via the wire any time anything touches it.

You demand higher quality, yet don't care about the loud noise created with every small movement of your body? I have heard this dismissed before as "doesn't bother me" and it's hardly ever mentioned in discussions about good audio vs Bluetooth.

I'm bewildered why wireless audio isn't praised for completely eliminating this source of noise that plagues every wired headphone, earbud, and IEM.

I remember when Verizon got deliberately hobbled phones on top of that. Some of the Windows Mobile phones came with up to half the RAM if you dared buy it on Verizon, and they locked the GPS out to use VZ Navigator instead of being able to just throw TomTom on 'em.

When you think of old phones, think of the touch interface on a printer.

I don't like Apple either, they are DEFINITELY rent seeking and violating their users' privacy at the same time. There is no excuse for that. I think what the parent post was talking about is something historical. An iPhone at that time was a large step above a Nokia or a Sony Ericsson in terms of flexibility.

Rather refurbished, because those are longer on market thus development of custom ROM (like LineageOS) is more likely. And of course you save a lot of money.

Those Pixels have options to open bootloader and after flashing custom ROM that is much cleaner (GrapheneOS) to lock it again. Which is currently most secure way to have clean and secure android device.

Totally, by "new" I mean refurbished or used, but new to me :)

This regulation should've happened 25 years ago, because the same thing was done with laptops.

Hold on a sec. Nokia and Ericsson made lots and lots of phone modeles. If you're comparing with cheap ordinary models everyone had, then sure, first iphone was great, but that's not a fair comparison. This is:

http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=iphone

Yes, but to make it worthwhile you need a lot of data and the price scales linearly.

Let's say my phone gets $10 cheaper because of all this crap ware. If you have the aggregate of 1000 people that cost someone $10000. Is that really worth it? Is 100000 people worth $1000000? Is there some point at which the aggregate data becomes so valuable it overtakes the per-user cost?

That's what I mean - the marginal value of one person needs to be quite big for this whole thing to make sense.