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hadrien01

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.)

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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...

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