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Comment by pekalicious | Hacker News Reader

What makes Samsung phones consumer hostile? Their ridiculous prices? Because I wouldn't call that hostile, rather simply overpriced. And I would agree that they are.

However, I still have every galaxy note I have ever owned, working, and in great condition (Note 2, 5, and now 8). My dad is actually using the 5. All of them got upgraded at least once to a newer Android OS and they are still solid devices.

Granted, other than Note, I've only owned a Startosphere for the hw keyboard, so I can't compare it to others, but even after I realized that the Note 8 was crazy expensive and made me double think what my next phone will be, I worry if the longevity can be matched.

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Samsung phones ship with ROMs that try to remove as much of the native Android experience as possible, and tend to eat battery life for no good reason. Swapping ROMs to AOSP-like experiences vastly improves battery life and performance on many Samsung phones.

Several Galaxy and Note devices also cannot ROM swap at all due to locked bootloaders, which makes that the most consumer hostile thing of all. I'm not sure which models this effects, but it is enough to put Samsung on my forever shitlist.

Well, in that case, I agree. I've only unlocked my Note 2 for a specific reason, and never had to do it again in any device since. Battery life on Notes are nothing to rave about, but neither a huge issue. But yeah, it does have many issue with bloatware, locking, non-native UI, etc. Even if they don't personally bother me, I will acknowledge that.

Under your definition, Samsung is by far not the only "consumer hostile" company–your definition is par for the course for most large OEMs.

Does the whole Huawei story not show that it is an extremely smart decision to "remove as much of the native Android experience as possible"?

The bootloader, knox, e-fuse thing I agree is consumer hostile. They are free to ship them locked but should include an override option for supposed owner of the device.

> What makes Samsung phones consumer hostile?

The upgrades that make the phone slower and slower and remove pre-existing functionality. The removal of Android native features, with replacements that stop working after some time. The severe locking of the phone.

But then, Samsung is far from the only ones doing this. I've personally stopped buying their phones because it's better to buy cheaper stuff and just switch after the manufacturer starts with the shenanigans.

How about physical buttons that can't be remapped to anything other than their proprietary Bixby service? If you don't like it you can turn it off and have a useless button.

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