Hacker News Reader

Comment by hadrien01 | Hacker News Reader

Most of the bloatware comes from Google itself: on my Samsung Phone I have Google Chrome, multiple Google Play stores, Google Keep, Google Photos (sends your photos to the Google cloud), Google Drive, Google office apps, etc.

I've never wanted all those apps, I don't even have a Google account...

View on HN

I think calling Chrome bloatware is a bit much. Is Safari bloateare on an iPhone? Is the Play store bloatware?

How would you even get anything on your phone the first time without the Play store or Chrome being installed?

Chrome is bloatware when Samsung Internet is a much better browser included with my phone.

The Play Store is not bloatware. The Play _stores_ are bloatware (books, games, movies, etc.)

I think Samsung Internet is bloatware... And all samsung apps. I can't get rid of Bixby, internet, the calendar, etc...

Both of you make the point that we should be able to uninstall - not just disable - anything that is not OS.

(for the record I've disabled a lot of stuff on my Galaxy)

YES. But with samsung is worse. I can't disable the calendar app, or not add my google accounts there. Your account is added, and the only thing you can do is de-select the calendar to not sync/display notifications...

That's why I never use my real google account with my phone. Android phones offer too little control over what is perhaps one of the most important digital asset I own: my google account.

Is Samsung Internet better than Chrome? I've always assumed it was bloatware since it's preinstalled and I haven't heard of people using it. I personally use the Firefox mobile browser, which I think works great.

I tested about a bunch of browsers on my Samsung phone (including Chrome, Firefox, Maxthon, Dolphin, Cheetah, Brave, Puffin, Opera, and Yandex), and eventually decided that the "Samsung Internet Browser Beta" was the best of them for me: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sec.androi...

My main demands were a browser that had a reliable "reader mode", a black background "night mode", allowed reasonable ad blocking, and had a full screen mode with minimal clutter. The Samsung browser isn't perfect, still occasionally makes me mad, but definitely is worth trying if aren't fully satisfied with what you are using.

Dolphin! Man, I haven't heard someone talk about that browser in YEARS.

I used that ten years ago back when the play store was called Android Market because it had addons and I thought it was the bee's knees. I still rotate through chrome, chrome canary, Firefox, Firefox focus, opera, and sometimes nightly builds of Firefox just to see what's getting tinkered with lately. Firefox still my daily driver though.

thanks for the recommendation. I really appreciate the boost in performance or the samsung browser (even if it is based on chrome, it is much faster)

samsung internet is an outdated chrome so most browser stats reports don't break it out seperately - it just shows up as an oddly large number of people using chrome 71. but it has a few extra usability features that people like and definitely a big userbase.

I just tried Samsung Internet Beta on my old One Plus 3+ based on this thread. In terms of performance, it's much zippier than either FF or Chrome. Give it a go.

Other apps use the chrome webview, which is why it can't be uninstalled.

A/K/A Chrome is (illegally) tied to system functionality.

Microsoft was sued for antitrust violations for much the same thing:

https://www.justice.gov/atr/chapter-5-antitrust-issues-tying...

Android isn't intrinsically tied to Google, unlike iOS is to Apple. Once upon a time, Android had its own, neutral Browser app. It was then replaced with Google Chrome, just like Email was replaced with Gmail. A pointless branding exercise in my opinion.

> Android isn't intrinsically tied to Google

Except Google spends billions in both engineering and infrastructure to develop, test and maintain it. Including those apps is part of how they fund said development.

But these days, people expect everything to be completely free and tech companies to do things out of the goodness of their heart for no financial benefit.

This response says everything it needed to say in the first sentence without the gratuitous snark of the second.

>Is Safari bloateare on an iPhone?

It is when you only use Firefox..

If you could theoretically uninstall something without bricking the phone but you're blocked from uninstalling it, then it's bloatware.

What's worse is I have an Android phone still that has Google+ and guess what, it's not going anywhere.

Demand an update that points to the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine links!

(Only ... slighly ... joking.)

Isn't it even the case that google forces other OEMs to bundle all their apps if they want to include the play store?

That's how they fund Android development. The other alternative is having OEMs pay a small fee per device, which is what they ended up doing in Europe.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/16/17984074/google-eu-andro...

Yup, it's an all-or-nothing package. The device maker wants Google Play (only way to sell devices)? They need to include Google Keep and Google Sheets. As far as I know, the only exceptions are Google Chrome and Google Search, both of which you can unbundle in the EU and Russia.

Is it even possible to use Android without a Google account?

Yes you can, it doesn't force you to log in at installation. You can't use the Play Store to install new applications, but you can update existing apps. Google Play services continue to work too (Location and common APIs)

I personally use Aurora Store, a FOSS reimplementation of Google Play Store, to install new apps without a Google account

You basically don't login to your Gmail. There's tricks to not do it during setup such as hitting the home key.

Last I checked, I only had to select "skip" during setup to use the device without signing in to an account.

I feel like I've seen this on some devices, but other devices you just hit the home button and it works fine.

Hmm. I use literally all of those.

What if you had to install them first?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com