Their high-end phones have such dark patterns that I will flat-out not buy Samsung anything.
Even if you pay [€$]1000+ for one of their Smart Phones, you can look forward to:
* Uninstallable cruft, as if they were a telcom and you were on a contract and had not just handed over a grand
* ...like a confusingly-similar-looking competitor to Google Contacts that will upload your info to their servers
* GDPR? LOL
* A hard button on the side of your phone located just below the "volume down" button, easy to press accidentally, that is hard-coded and unconfigurable, that will launch their AI assistant Bixby. Don't want to use Bixby? Tough shit. Nothing you can do about it.
* Constant badgering by the phone's native notification to sign up for "Samsung Members", a social media platform. No, you can't turn that off.
* Other, similar bullshit.
3nm? These are such sketchy practices I cannot imagine it won't affect, say, their high-end TVs (they would totally monitor your house and show you advertisements).
Seriously, avoid that company. No, paying for their high-end options will not insulate you from their nonsense.
In a world of garbage electronics they’re actually a name I trust on some level. They build pretty decent stuf- with stupid caveats.
My Galaxy Buds Plus are pretty good and have unparalleled battery life - but you can’t use the companion app on Android because it won’t work unless you give it access to your contacts.
My Samsung TV is quite snappy and, besides my model being a special edition that doesn’t come with Bluetooth and them not specifying it anywhere, it’s actually pretty alright. Cold-boots quickly, has a snappy UI, theoretically comes with all the smart features you want ... but it’s full of ads the moment you enable internet access, plus you know the spying allegations. I guess I’ll still have to figure out proper firewall rules.
I’m going to guess that their other appliances are similar. Pretty good hardware, pretty good software underpinnings, just severely held back by some anti-consumer software decisions.
You can at least turn off iCloud entirely on Apple devices. I have never enabled iCloud and I only get these screens when I update the OS to a new version.
A hard button on the side of your phone located just below the "volume down" button, ... Don't want to use Bixby? Tough shit. Nothing you can do about it.
That button is actually my favorite feature of the phone and it'll be very hard to give up. Obviously I'm not using it for Bixby. I have it mapped to play/pause on long press, toggle flashlight on double press and as a secondary unlock/lock button on simple press.
Edit: And yes, the pre-installed crap is super annoying. You can remove some, but not all of it via adb, it's a hassle. Samsung is hardly the only offender in this regard, though they may be among the worst (aside from Google and Apple which get a free pass).
I feel like this somewhat misses how conglomerates, especially the Japanese and Korean kind work. They're basically a bunch of hardly related corporations in a trench coat. Though you are probably right as far as TVs go, these likely come from closely related units.
Sure, you have a right to your opinion. IMO Samsung software is far worse than Apple's. Many reasons why, but for one, with an older Apple phone you will still get very timely upgrades to their latest software for many more years than you would with a Samsung phone.
It is far worse than the Google and apple experience. They routinely make inferior versions of an app that would be redicously easy to clone. They need to realize they are a hardware company, not a software company
And that goes for all of their product lines across the board. It's all garbage software. Its a shame they intentionally cripple excellent hardware with crap
Until they stop that practice they are not even a potential option for me. I don't get why they can't save the money and just make a good pure Android experience
Even if you pay [€$]1000+ for one of their Smart Phones, you can look forward to:
* Uninstallable cruft, as if they were a telcom and you were on a contract and had not just handed over a grand
* ...like a confusingly-similar-looking competitor to Google Contacts that will upload your info to their servers
* GDPR? LOL
* A hard button on the side of your phone located just below the "volume down" button, easy to press accidentally, that is hard-coded and unconfigurable, that will launch their AI assistant Bixby. Don't want to use Bixby? Tough shit. Nothing you can do about it.
* Constant badgering by the phone's native notification to sign up for "Samsung Members", a social media platform. No, you can't turn that off.
* Other, similar bullshit.
3nm? These are such sketchy practices I cannot imagine it won't affect, say, their high-end TVs (they would totally monitor your house and show you advertisements).
Seriously, avoid that company. No, paying for their high-end options will not insulate you from their nonsense.