Samsung phone users get a shock: They can't delete Facebook | Hacker News Reader

Samsung phone users get a shock: They can't delete Facebook

smh.com.au

36 pointslaurencei13 comments

Not a shock to me at all, nor to anyway who's owned a Samsung device in the past.

I've had two Samsung phones and both are loaded with crapware. Some essential apps, such as Calendar, come with multiple versions. Games I would never play are installed by default. And yes, most of the built-in apps like Facebook simply can't be removed.

The only thing preventing me from switching to a Pixel, which I've heard takes a staunchly anti-crapware stance, is the lack of a headphone jack.

> The only thing preventing me from switching to a Pixel, which I've heard takes a staunchly anti-crapware stance, is the lack of a headphone jack.

There is less crapware, but still a fair bit of google/play crapware/spyware you may not want and can't delete. Stuff like google now, google news, google docs, hangouts, google photos, play books/music/games. At least that's the case with other stock android phones.

Yep. I have a Pixel 2, and it's pretty much one headphone jack away from being a perfect phone.

Everything else about the phone is great, and if you're not happy with the software, it's easy to install a custom ROM (as long as you bought it directly from Google, anyways...) but I regularly find myself missing the headphone jack.

> The only thing preventing me from switching to a Pixel, which I've heard takes a staunchly anti-crapware stance, is the lack of a headphone jack.

Sorry to be pessimistic but if you're complaining about the fact that a Samsung device has preloaded spyware from the world's second largest advertising company perhaps replacing it with a phone with in-built spyware from the world's largest advertising company is not the best step.

Unfortunately - in the world we currently live in - the only viable phone option for privacy sensitive users is an Apple device. Apple and its devices may have many other issues but they are unarguably the most privacy aware mobile option available.

I've come to the point where I feel powerless to take the large spyware from these companies as anything other than given. I'd have the Facebook app installed anyway since that's what my friends use, and Google's claws are so deeply embedded in my private online affairs (most emails I send are to Google-managed accounts), that I don't feel like it matters. I know iPhones exist, but I have problems with them too.

My problem with the crapware isn't related to spying, just that it eats up resources of my device which I've spent good money on. But considering the specs are already a little bit better the headphone jack means more to me.

Have you a look at some of the Android One phones (that are fairly close to stock android) some of them have headphone jacks. Such as the Nokia 7.1 and the Motorola One.

No, but thank you letting me know they exist. I'll definitely be considering some of them next time I upgrade.

if you've got adb (Android Debug Bridge) at hand you could try to uninstall with that method: adb shell pm uninstall -k --user 0 <packagename>

I didn't have FB preinstalled but I did get Non-removable MS Office "apps" which were nothing more than download links.

"A Facebook spokesperson said the disabled version of the app acts like it's been deleted, so it doesn't continue collecting data or sending information back to Facebook. But there's rarely communication with the consumer about the process."

If this is the case then why not allow it to be deleted?

To game the 'installed on X phones' metric. Facebook can still claim it is installed on the phone even if it disabled.

Baking certain apps into the system partition is typically how vendors ship an out of the box experience, since apps are generally downloaded via the Play store, which requires the end user to first log in with Google.

In that case, the only way to delete apps is to 'root' the phone, which generally isn't enabled and not something Facebook has control over.

You can always be asked to install additional stuff during the set up process, but it still doesn't make sense why you can't delete them. Deleting the apps won't necessarily remove the installer.

iPhones come baked in with a number of apps but you're able to delete the ones you don't want to use.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com