Comment by designtofly | Hacker News Reader

Comment by designtofly | Hacker News Reader

I'm glad this story has gone viral recently. Hopefully there will be more pressure to stop this practice.

I've been using Android for a number of years now and between the handset manufacturers and the wireless providers, there has been undeletable crapware since the beginning. I've been slowly modifying my behavior in response. I stopped buying phones directly from the wireless providers (e.g. Verizon). This has noticeably improved my experience. Every time I upgrade my phone, I look into the Google flagship Android phones, but they always have some critical flaws that drive me to buy the Samsung Galaxy phones. The same thing happened a few months ago when I chose the Galaxy S9+ over the Pixel 3's. I also always think about switching to Apple iPhone, since I do think they take user experience and privacy more seriously than Google Android.

While I'm on the subject. Samsung, please get rid of Bixby and all of your crappy Samsung apps. I hate the feeling that there's two OS's loaded on my phone... the Android layer and the Samsung layer (which I never use but always get prompted for unless I figure out how to disable it).

I don't think all Samsung apps are "crappy". I quite enjoy using some of them like Samsung Health and Secure Folder. What needs to end is preloading so many duplicate apps and then preventing the user from removing them easily.

Personally, I can live with this situation since I can always remove what I don't like with adb, and I quite enjoy a lot of the features and changes that Samsung added on top of stock Android.

> What needs to end is preloading so many duplicate apps

That is not possible. They can either have only the google apps (great, just like ancient IE monopoly times) or "duplicate apps", but they can not omit the google apps if they want google play.

Also, preinstalls matter very much as can be clearly seen in the market share of IE, edge, chrome and safari.

You only quoted the first half of their sentence. They said duplicate apps are only an issue when you aren't allowed to remove the one (or both) that you don't use.

> Samsung, please get rid of Bixby and all of your crappy Samsung apps.

Samsung, please don't. Even if they are not great, having some counter to google's monopoly position is sorely needed.

... but then couldn't they just ship their internet browser or chrome and not both? No, they can't due to google's oppressive contract, which is what the EU fine was about.

How about shipping with Firefox pre-installed? I mean, there are lots of androids that come with two or three different versions of Webkit, so why not bring a Browser that is a real alternative.

AFAIK, mobile Chrome still has the better dev-tools, but from an end-user perspective, being able to install plugins for your mobile browser (like ublock origin) without having to root the phone is a real competitive edge.

I keep going back to Motorola. Their phones can be bought retail, no relationship to a carrier, and almost everything can be removed or disabled. No crappy skin either.

They aren't the best with updates, sadly.

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