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Comment by jessriedel | Hacker News Reader

Can anyone speak to success or usefulness of any of this Samsung software? In my experience, these are usually terrible and are in any case always worse than the Google equivalent. The first hour I own a Samsung phone is spent stripping these back as much as allowed.

Do people really use these? Does Samsung really make money from them? Naively it seems like they must if they exist, but I wonder if it's just a continuing bet Samsung is making that has never paid off.

EDIT: To be clear, if experts consider the apps to be worse but consumers still use them, this would explain why Samsung builds them. My question is whether they are actually used and, if not, why Samsung does this.

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My experience as an Android developer is that samsung phones are garbage.

The ones I tested perform so much worse than same generation Google devices that it feels like a joke.

Samsung also does freaky stuff to AOSP, like making some random fields static, leading to some nice samsung bugs.

As far as the OS features and apps, I don't really expect anything better from them. Think of a feature, Samsung has probably already implemented it. It is probably going to be clunky and badly thought out but it will be there.

Sometimes it leads to interesting things though, like larger phones.

There are other shitty OEMs, but since Samsung has such large sales, it makes them all the more annoying to deal with.

Back when I was developing Android apps I grew to dislike Samsung for these very reasons.

At least they are now letting people put the "back" button on the left.

As a user, my experience is the opposite (Note 3). And that's what matters in the long run. The question is more whether they can keep up bringing new stuff into their high-end phones. Apple was not able to do so.

Note 3 here too, currently looking at the S8+ with rational techno lust. I am a samsung fanboy, as I wouldn't buy any other Android phone. I may wait to see what the iPhone 8 looks like before I jump... although the pre-order with GearVR seems like a really good deal.

I'm actually considering just buying a new battery for my Note 3 and S8+ is way out of my price range for maybe two years and the competitors are offering interesting phones at very low price-point. I'm amazed how ahead of time the Note 3 was and is such a perfect phone still. (For example a lot of cores for sharing network connections etc.) It only lacks the fingerprint reader and water-proofing that I'd like. And I'd rather have a phone that allows easily replacing the battery but we'll see.

> they can keep up bringing new stuff into their high-end phones

Please no .. if they could start bringing less features but well integrated and thought out ones, that would be awesome.

Right now they seem to see their products as a collection of random gimmicks without thought or cohesion.

The placement of the sensor of their new phone makes me think that they have not changed their way of thinking just yet ...

As of what matters in the long run, sure they can get away with mediocre products right now. After all, even the worst phone on the planet (and I am not saying that it is necessarily a samsung phone) is still a marvel of technology.

However, it makes them open to competitors bringing better products.. IMO the low margin game is what really protects them and matters right now.

> Can anyone speak to success or usefulness of any of this Samsung software?

I'm one of those people who typically roots their phones and deletes all the carrier crap. My Samsung Tab S 8.4 came with so much crap that I literally spent an entire day uninstalling and disabling apps that it came with and I removed almost 50% of everything installed.

However, I recently got a Samsung S7 and I was really surprised that I actually liked a lot of the built in software. S Health is a really good health app and, in my opinion, better than Google fit.

I just wish Samsung would keep choice available -- it's really hard to use Google now/Assistant on Samsung phones to their full extent and their own S Voice isn't very good.

I went Samsung s2, s3, 3 different nexus phones, back with s7 edge now.

I don't find there is much bloatware now. And they had good multi-window support, long before nougat update to s7.

Samsung apps are used because Samsung makes it hard to avoid using their apps and custom skins without a bit of dedication and persistence of a reasonably technically savvy user. (Think why people used early versions of IE and then imagine if windows had also gone out of the way to automatically reset the default browser to IE if the user changed it.)

I don't bother with Samsung phones after my first, after I found that their custom keyboards started crashing and freezing (Chinese mode), and then started to reappearing over the Google ones I set after each automatic app update. My only regret, is that I didn't pay the Apple tax earlier. (I'm sure there is a more permanent solution to that phone, but why should I sink more time when I'm one update away from fixing some other issue again.)

If it weren't for the manufacturers, I'd like how you can customize an Android phone. Its the best feature of Android vs IOS. However, between the poor quality customizations and the delayed to non-existant updates it leads to, it's also Android's worst feature.

> I don't bother with Samsung phones after my first, after I found that their custom keyboards started crashing and freezing (Chinese mode), and then started to reappearing over the Google ones I set after each automatic app update. My only regret, is that I didn't pay the Apple tax earlier. (I'm sure there is a more permanent solution to that phone, but why should I sink more time when I'm one update away from fixing some other issue again.)

Huh? Replacement keyboards are notoriously[1] buggy[2] and[3] limited[4] on iOS. I'm at my wit's end trying to find even a temporary solution. If Apple doesn't sufficiently improve the keyboard experience by iOS 11 this summer I will have to switch to Android.

[1] https://www.macstories.net/roundups/my-favorite-ios-8-keyboa...

[2] http://www.hanselman.com/blog/iOS83rdPartyKeyboardsReviewsSw...

[3] http://bgr.com/2017/02/07/android-vs-iphone-comparison-stole...

[4] https://www.macstories.net/notes/on-the-limitations-of-ios-c...

The counterpoint is that iOSs keyboards were good!

I think there's still no way to type Japanese in AOSP Android (you have to download a Google keyboard or some third party thing)

The counterpoint to the 'you have to download a google keyboard...' comment is that Google have started pushing more stuff into add-on apps rather than pushing into AOSP is that vendors control OS updates, so pushes to AOSP take a long time to get to consumers.

It's a lot easier to push an app update through the Play store vs. convincing vendors to push out timely OS updates. And Google have been slowly moving non core OS features into updatable apps.

It's arguably a loss to AOSP, but at least in the short term helpful to consumers. I say short-term because the features are no longer open-sourced, which is a shame and a loss in the longer-term.

For me, the main frustration has been that Google has its one keyboard (Gboard) for latin languages and then the Japanese IME as separate keyboards. I use English, French, and Japanese keyboards and switch between pretty often, but it's a bit of a pain.

There's noticable lag when switching keyboards that seem endemic in the model of "multiple app keyboards", whereas a more integrated experience would benefit some

Agreed that the "Play Store" model is better for consumers on phones that don't get updates (been there). I hope they try to pull stuff into the core project as well, though. Kinda sad to see Android becoming what people always thought it would end up (a Google-centric venture)

As much as I preferred the swipe type keyboards on android to the plain IOS one, that doesn't compensate for a keyboard crashing and freezing. It wouldn't have been an issue on my Samsung except they kept updating and reasserting their buggy one over Google's.

Based on the users that use our dating web app - about 10% of our revenue comes from the Samsung browser. Which says to me that lay people can't be bothered to use anything but the default "productivity" apps that come pre-installed on the phone. It has "Internet" so installing Chrome doesn't matter to them.

Samsung's browser is complete garbage too. It's the IE of Android and I hate supporting it.

> Samsung's browser is complete garbage too

It's certainly a pain to support ... I get quite a few compatibility / layout issues with web sites. However I use it anyway because it has a bunch simple incredibly obvious features that for my use make it infinitely better than Chrome for simple browsing.

Could you elaborate on what these features are? Personally I'm a fan of FF mobile.

I actually liked when chrome tabs showed up in the app switcher... I don't like FF much at all, but I at least get ublock on it. So FF is my default (so launches from twitter/fb go there), but the sites I go to directly, usually done in Chrome.

The main one is simple but effective bottom navigation functions and quick access bookmarks. Stretching up to reach the navigation bar on a large phone is almost impossible one handed in chrome but easy with the Samsung browser.

Thanks, you're the first person to provide actual data.

I wouldn't be so sure that people who use it don't bother to use anything else. I use the default Samsung browser because it's simple, clean and just tends to work for my better for me than chrome, especially since I don't tend to use it very often. For other apps, I prefer google or third party apps over Samsung any day. I try to stay away and disable most of the Samsung apps that come on my phone since most of them just work poorly and tend to be very annoying.

Is there a way to test for that browser without having to own a Samsung device?

I have a Note device. I use S Planner that is a better than Google Calendar. Messages for SMS. S Health in stead of google fit (doesn'waste battery). S note works better with pen. Samsung apps all support spen, you can drag and drop content between them.

I'll echo this, I have a Samsung tablet with an S-Pen, and S Note is really good and has improved a lot over the years. S-Pen & S Note were my entire reasons for buying the device. I think I mostly avoid the other Samsung apps though.

Like in the old days, to differentiate the product.

That is the sin of being an OEM, if everyone sells the same Android image, or back in the day the same MS-DOS, there is zero value going between vendor A or B.

Well, there is value, if they cared about the quality of the hardware, but givne that most use the same factories, it is kind of debatable.

However, back then we could just throw away the tapes, floppies, CD, DVDs that were given away in the Bundle X at shop Y.

Now with ROMs we cannot any longer and those pesky apps take space, memory and CPU time.

Worse, buying a clean Android device means paying Google for something that costs more than a computer in many countries, with mere two years of OS updates.

You are overthinking it.

Samsung is like Coke, its advertised everywhere and when it comes time to get a new phone consumers subconsciously go for whats familiar.

The apps and what they offer has nothing to do with it.

Right, but the question is why they would even bother with the software. It's a lot of effort maintaining their substantial Android modifications for seemingly not a lot of payoff compared to just producing superior hardware.

Less leverage for Google, more consumer lock in.

They must have some differentiator, so that people buy a Samsung phone instead of an Android phone. If you provide the same software as everyone else you become a commodity provider in the eyes of customers. It's as if Coke had the same recipe as Pepsi.

There would still be intense brand rivalry. Not everyone can tell pepsi and coke apart by taste.

It's enough to know that they taste different, even if you don't notice it yourself. If nobody could tell Pepsi and Coke apart without the label, that would become public knowledge pretty quickly and defeat the branding.

But most know that the store brands are usually re-labelled coke or pepsi, usually without much tweaking to the recipe, if any. But they still buy the main brand.

True, but what if, although I do think the analogy kind of falls apart there, Coke was allowed to dictate any change to the recipe? That's the situation Samsung would be in if they relied on 'stock' Android. Google would have a significant advantage simply because they control both the device and the OS (the latter IMO more important), and Samsung would only be able to compete by device.

And that's even assuming that Google doesn't 'leverage' its ability to control both software and hardware.

on the other hand I'm on the fence for the new galaxy a3, but having a non standard android to be updated only when samsung says so bothers me

but I do understand I'm likely not their reference target

A differentiator explanation only works if buyers believe the differences are neutral or good. Hence the question of whether consumers actually use Samsung software.

If you want to sell something, "worse but different" often makes the sales job easier than being a me too product (reference: David Davidow)

Idk. Loyalty and marketing can only compensate for so much inferiority.

I think the reason coke is pure marketing is because sugar drinks is pretty much a solved problem. No one is ever going to make a drink that is 10x tastier than coke.

As spivak noted, the question I asked isn't why people buy Samsung phones, it's why Samsung bothers with apps.

I'm sure the apps are for leverage when negotiating with Google and/or Samsung harbors intentions to leave the Android ecosystem at some point, go Tizen-only and capture all the value up and down the vertical.

I can understand why Samsung finds the idea alluring, I'm not sure if they can successfully nurture a 3rd mobile OS in a brutally competitive field where Microsoft/Nokia and BlackBerry failed.

This is not why Coke is successful. Coke is successful because of taste lockin, each coke tastes the same as the one before, the taste it's customers have chosen to love.

Every new Samsung offers new features, it's not necessary to buy a new Samsung when your old one craps out. There is little to no lockin. That massive advertising budget is a necessity for Samsung, without it people would forget about it entirely and buy Google, HTC or iPhones.

There are a lot of redditors that love samsung's apps. https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/62dmw4/samsungs_bi...

Messenger

Cloud

Pay

Calendar

Calculator

Video

Flow

Secure folder

Health

Internet

Contacts

Camera

All are apps I think are better than thier Google alternative

According to a redditor. Also check out /r/samsung

fwiw VR on Samsung is well ahead of Google.

Background: I'm a computer-nerd, but since Treos and my first HTC G1, I have not been a phone nerd in years, just a semi-power-user. My Android phones have been G1, S2, S5, Xperia X Performance. I've frequently borrowed and used various Nexuses/Nexi though.

Verdict: I love Samsung base apps (messages, phone, etc). I've used Nexus, and now have Xperia [don't ask why], and I miss a million little things about Samsung. Changing font sizes in messages, integration between contacts & phone & logs, the design & usability. Can provide examples and details if interested - all of them are LITTLE things, but make my hourly life easier.

I do not in general use their "bigger" apps - with eventual exception of Fitness/health app, which I found pretty nifty.

I also repeatedly find that I prefer Samsung quick-bar to Google's Quick Bar, as absolutely hate Google's Wi-Fi button and selection.

Oh, and the fact I cannot have a simple button on home screen to start USB Tethering is driving me crazy (trivial on Samsung).

I bought Samsung only because of the features they offer! I really like TouchWiz and all the hate is overrated. Stock Android feels featureless and pretty boring.

It used to be like that. Lately a lot of their apps are better than Google's equivalent. For example, the browser is the fastest, smoothest browser on any android phone, just slightly beaten by safari on ios. On the other hand, chrome is a bloated mess on Android, even on pixel phones.

Samsung Web Browser is excellent compared to other alternatives. (adblocker, video in floating window...)

Agree with this one. Chrome has a much worse UI (hides commonly used stuff under menus) than Samsung's "Internet" and is just as fast. At least File Browser, Calculator are good. Samsung Smart Switch is just awesome.

The reason Samsung bothers with software of their own is that they are a little scared of Google. What if Google started charging a lot for the non-free parts of Android?

My experience with Samsung software is that it is garbage.

Likewise, and that paticular quality isn't limited to just their phones. Samsung Television UI's suck terribly too.

The point of the software isn't to be good. It's to lock people into the Samsung ecosystem and stave off becoming a commodity hardware producer - the real threat proposed by Android.

For 6 years Samsung has been desperately trying to make Touchwiz sufficiently different from stock to make it hard for people to switch to any other kind of android. It seems their focus was on switching costs, rather than making a better product, as most of these differences made touchwiz inferior.

It has worked relatively well; many consumers have Samsung brand recognition. However, every release of Android brings a bit more uniformity.

If you install linageOS, the picture quality of the camera apparently falls dramatically, so the software does something better than stock.

With that being said, I do know people who prefer Samsung to stock android.

> If you install linageOS, the picture quality of the camera apparently falls dramatically, so the software does something better than stock.

Drivers are another matter. But vendor replacement apps seem almost universally worse than the stock versions.

I can't speak about Samsung, but the Moto G4 Plus also suffers from the same limitation, that the stock camera app can't use the hardware's unique features. But there are ways to overcome that. It's pretty easy to find deodex ROMs for just the camera apps. That way, we can run the manufacturers' apps even if they have crippled their software to run on only their ROMs.

I thought it's because they don't release the blobs/binaries for the camera. So when you another ROM, you have to use generic post-processing for the camera

In terms of pre-loaded crapware, I was really infuriated by their Peel Remote Control app recently introducing a custom lockscreen overlay and ads without any warnings.

http://www.androidpolice.com/2017/03/29/peel-remote-app-upse...

Even if the software is bad, it can still add stickiness.

Switching away from a Samsung phone would introduce unfamiliarity, so the user might perceive the better vanilla apps as bad.

That said, Samsung's main reason for all of this is probably to gain some leverage against Google's fairly aggressive licensing terms. If they can threaten to release a Google free Android device, they have something to negotiate with.

The notes app on my old Galaxy S2 was good. I had to look for a replacement when that phone eventually died and I bought a new one. I'm using Private Notepad now.

Samsung's calendar was also ok. I wasn't syncing anything. I'm using Sony's one now (I got an Xperia X Compact). It's ok but I think that Samsung's was better.

I was on Samsung devices (S3, S4, S5, Note) before moving to Pixel, and at that time, I found those apps crap. The Note was a corp phone, so no rooting; I had to live with Old Android + Samsung Crap + AT&T Crap.

I recently got the S Health app to pair with my smartwatch, and it's pretty good. The apps on the watch itself are decent as well.

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