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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: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday January 09 2019, @10:50PM
Oh, I fight it, but of late, I've been losing that one. I hacked an old Samsung Galaxy tablet to put Cyanogenmod on it. Had to, as the last version of official Android available was 4.0, and I wanted some features that weren't available until 4.1. Like, the very simple ability to go full screen, really full screen, and have no space at all taken up by that so called "awesome" bar. With Cyanogenmod, I get the equivalent of 4.4. From what I read, there's no point upgrading that tablet more even if possible, as it doesn't have the hardware to support Android 5 or later.
My phone is Android 6, and I'm not much liking it. It's hard to know who's responsible for the bloatware. Is it Google? Seems unlikely. Is it the phone manufacturer? Or the service provider? Could be either.
The part that annoyed me greatly was the tease with what they call "virtual voicemail". Download your voicemails to your phone. Android 6 is the first version to have it built in. I upgraded my phone from 5 to 6 to get that feature. And my phone had it for a brief while. Then what seemed a routine update quietly took away the virtual voicemail without so much as a notification. At first, I thought I had merely misremembered where it was. Took me some time to figure out what had happened. It infuriated me so much I canceled that phone service and didn't even take the number with me. I was also motivated by the apparent lack of any way to root the d*** thing. That's a huge problem with a lot of phones. Now I don't trust updates, and often refuse them.
Anyhow, I've since decided I don't want voicemail at all, since these spammers who fake having the same area code and exchange can leave voice messages. Only way to stop that is not have voicemail. I heard a while ago that they can now go straight to your voicemail without making your phone ring, all the more reason to kill voicemail dead, dead, dead.