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Comment by dmitrygr | Hacker News Reader

Unfortunately comes with Samsung's crapware that cannot be removed, and even a non remappable button to trigger it. I will be patiently waiting for an exploit to be found in the bootloader so we can reflash this with a ROM without Samsung anything. At that point in time, it will probably be a good contender for second best Android phone. After the pixel

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You'll be waiting for a while; I bought an S8 with the intention of putting LineageOS on it. Sadly to this day there are things not working which are essential, like making calls or using LTE data... or wifi.. or the camera.

I thought I could deal with the Samsung crapware anyway, coming from iPhone and having used a OnePlus One with Cyanogen and later lineage... Boy, I was wrong, beautiful hardware for sure but the OS is utter garbage.

By garbage I mean: Bixby is unwanted and disabled, but it still pops up nearly constantly.. essential features of the phone require a samsung account, in an attempt not to sign up for it I get notified weekly that I must have one.. samsung programs will randomly notify me about random things that I have no interest in knowing about. Especially samsung pay- I DO NOT WANT AN OFFER ON COFFEE JUST LET ME USE YOU TO BUY THINGS. Upday has a pre-loaded list of the worst british newspapers, and insists on telling me about "breaking news" regarding a nice young american lady who is marrying one of our princes...

I miss my phone being in my control, and that's what everyone who was selling me on android was telling me was compelling about the platform.. But I had much more control of my phone when I was with Apple.

(And yes, I donated heavily to the LineageOS+S8 effort)

Luckily since this phone ships with Android Oreo, it is required to comply with project treble, which makes this a whole lot easier. By definition, a phone with project treble has to boot and pass all tests in the Android compatibility test Suite with an unmodified AOSP image.

You can already see some benefits of this on the XDA website, where some people are successfully replacing system images on no name phones with barely any audience and not even a kernel source published

>By definition, a phone with project treble has to boot and pass all tests in the Android compatibility test Suite with an unmodified AOSP image.

But it won't help if the bootloader's locked

Correct. Hence my statement that I would buy one if and only if a bootloader exploit is found

That's excellent, I'm quite sour now I don't think I'll be dropping 800eur on this, maybe the generation after once I see other people reaping these benefits.

Bixby has never popped up since I disabled it. Even a long hold on the bixby button doesn't do anything, so I'm not sure how you get it to pop up frequently.

I had to look up what Upday is. It's not installed on my S8, although I could download it from the play store. If you don't like it just uninstall it.

Samsung Pay isn't available in Norway, so I don't have it on my phone either. So I guess you could always disable it.

And the Samsung account... Well, it's the same as a Google account. The system is going to complain if you don't have one. Otherwise disable all the Samsung stuff.

> so I'm not sure how you get it to pop up frequently.

Sincerely: Accidentally swiping left on the home-screen. Happens a lot, sometimes it'll just open it without me swiping left while unlocking the screen...

This is just misinformation. Since the September update, there is a way to completely disable the assistant button functionality without using any third party apps.

No it isn't. I don't want to disable it! I want to remap it. And that cannot be done, as I said.

If you want to remap it, there are options as well. You have to install a third-party app from Play Store, but that's about it. No rooting required.

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