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from the if-you-don't-like-it-you-can-keep-it dept.
Samsung is facing a battle with end users concerning its agreements with software companies to set some preinstalled software on Samsung mobile phones to be undeletable. Users have found that applications like Facebook can't be uninstalled, which has caused some distress given the recent data breaches and lack of respect Facebook has shown towards its users in the past decade. Some users have sworn off getting another Samsung phone if apps can't be uninstalled. The argument that users can just hack the phone to get root access, and then force remove the apps does not hold with non-technical users and anyone who can't risk bricking their device. Samsung has refused to comment on this, and specifically will not provide details about agreements it has with software vendors to force their applications to always be installed on Samsung phones. By comparison, the iPhone does not ever come with pre-installed third party applications.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 09 2019, @09:12PM
My first cell phone was Siemens C35i with its terrible Internet pop-up from menu, killable with settings. Next, a small blue-lit Nokia (I don't remember model) was quite OK. With a good experience with this Nokia I bought my first "smartphone": E61 with Symbian. To remove some proprietary apps which kept popping up I had to use a security hole made by antivirus plug-in. Literally I had to hack into my phone. I sold it quickly, getting a Samsung dumbphone thick like two E61s, and I still have it, as it was possible to just delete all Java apps, install my own (picture viewer and resistor color code translator) and disable Internet function by deleting its connectivity options.
When my friends got iPhones and Android devices, I tried these phones and I found that their phones are not theirs anymore. Just like in a shell account - if you're not root this is not your system, and of course not your data. What more, while in these shell systems there usually was something like "being a d*ck factor" of sysop/root, here it exceeds maximum and license agreements change like in this "frog boiling" story: First it was analyzing users' data for maintenance purposes, then advertisement, now I see a complete passing of own work's copyright. So I decided to wait for an acceptable smartphone with any user control in 2007 or 2008... and I still wait.
What I recommend as a workaround, is to buy an UMPC and install Linux on it. Much better control, and comparing to some phones, longer battery life.