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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.

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  • (Score: 2) by dry on Tuesday August 24 2021, @03:09AM (1 child)

    by dry (223) on Tuesday August 24 2021, @03:09AM (#1170133) Journal

    Perhaps the best thing is to buy a cheap phone that doesn't have ads or unwanted apps. I have a hundred dollar Moto E, other then the usual Google junk, it has a couple of useful apps (FM radio, file manager, a help app and a gesture program) which can likely be removed. Oh, it did have a facebook app that I immediately deleted.

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  • (Score: 2) by vux984 on Tuesday August 24 2021, @05:58PM

    by vux984 (5045) on Tuesday August 24 2021, @05:58PM (#1170447)

    I buy an 'expensive phone' because they have the nicest screens and the best cameras, i like the stylus support on my Note, etc.

    I don't get any ads on it. All the preinstalled stuff can be disabled, i whitelist the apps that can create notifications, and i don't use a single app that displays ads. (I've paid for a couple apps to get ad free versions.)

    I approve of samsung's move to remove ads from its apps, because now i might actually consider looking at those apps. But they weren't a problem for me before, I simply disabled/blocked/hid/ or removed them on day one and never gave them a 2nd thought.