Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

Samsung Says it Will Stop Loading its $1,000 Smartphones with Ads

posted by janrinok on Friday August 20 2021, @02:44AM   Printer-friendly

upstart writes:

No preloading. No promises what's next.

Samsung says it will stop loading its $1,000 smartphones with ads:

Samsung says it will cut down on the ads it shows on its smartphones. The announcement was first reported by Korean news agency Yonhap and was later confirmed by Samsung in a statement to The Verge. The official line from the industry giant is "Samsung has made a decision to cease the advertisement on proprietary apps, including Samsung Weather, Samsung Pay, and Samsung Theme." The company added, "The update will be ready by later this year."

Samsung ships Android on all its smartphones, but it changes the experience with a "One UI" skin and includes several Samsung-developed packed-in apps. Many of these apps—like Bixby, Samsung Health, and Weather—contain big banner ads, sometimes right at the top of the app, where you would normally expect to find an app logo or navigation information. The worst offenders are notification ads—a Samsung app will spawn a notification to entice you to buy a new gadget or install a new app.

[...] A "later this year" launch date would mean that the first new ad-free Samsung phone will be the Galaxy S22.

Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Samsung Says it Will Stop Loading its $1,000 Smartphones with Ads | Log In/Create an Account | Top | 13 comments | Search Discussion
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 20 2021, @12:22PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 20 2021, @12:22PM (#1168796)

    Why do people bother?

    Do ad blockers help?

    Can you uninstall the apps?

  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 20 2021, @02:14PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 20 2021, @02:14PM (#1168831)

    > Can you uninstall the apps?

    On most Android phones the "preinstalled apps" put there by the maker are "privileged" apps and you, the lowly user and supposed owner, are not allowed to uninstall them.

    The best you can hope for is that they let you "disable" them (i.e., Moto phones, which hides them, but you don't get to free up the memory used to store them). And 'disable' is not even allowed on some phones (i.e. Samsung models).

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by Freeman on Friday August 20 2021, @04:02PM (1 child)

      by Freeman (732) on Friday August 20 2021, @04:02PM (#1168865) Journal

      'eh, to be fair, there's junk on my iPhone that I would be happy to do without, but is "built-in".

      Android doesn't have a corner on that market.

      --
      Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"

      • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 20 2021, @04:14PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 20 2021, @04:14PM (#1168873)

        Don't have an Apple phone -- therefore did not feel competent to comment re. what Apple phones do or do not do.

        Thanks for the clarification.