Hacker News Reader

Comment by titzer | Hacker News Reader

Looks like it is hooking up AI-powered suggestions to something that doesn't need it.

One super-annoying thing I hit often: the Contacts app on a Samsung phone suggests autocompletes of phone numbers in the edit/add contact flow. Do I now need to explain to stupid computer that I am entering a new number that it does not yet know, ffs?

I mean, seriously, something deep in the OS just sees "oh a phone number goes here? Let me supply one from Contacts...". It's trying to be smart, but in a completely oblivious and counter productive way. It's been like that for years. Does no one use these apps?

View on HN

Along those lines a friend was complaining about Samsung's contacts app search results.

I took a look and soon deduced it was searching on "sounds like" rather than the actual string, so an exact match is way down the list of partial matches that sound like the search string.

It is madness, like Google refusing to do exact matches only worse.

You touched on the reason I refuse to buy Samsung phones. In fact I'm mystified as to why Samsung devices remain so popular. When my wife and I were engaged she had one of the early Galaxy devices and it was awful.

You don't get the stock File Manager, you get the Samsung File Manager. The window manager is the Samsung Window Manager, or Launcher, or whatever. Hers even had a rebranded browser called "Internet", if I recall correctly.

All those Samsung-specific apps are (or at least were) objectively worse than the stock Android alternatives.

I've avoided using or recommending Samsung phones since this error started showing up in my developer console: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/24809580/noclassdeffound...

That their engineers and managers still to this day prefer to write their own apps instead is using stock or close to stock tells me they haven't learned from that mistake.

> That their engineers and managers still to this day prefer to write their own apps instead is using stock or close to stock tells me they haven't learned from that mistake.

What do you suggest they do when trying to sell in markets where Google apps are not available?

When was the last time you tried a Samsung device? They've continued to improve on everything. Most Samsung users tend to agree that Samsung's first party apps are now better than the stock Android ones: Samsung browser, notes, health app, etc. The One UI interface is clean and much more consistent from version to version than whatever "flavor of the month" Google is doing with stock Android.

I will agree that in the era you last saw it, it was awful.

>Samsung browser

At least as far as browsers go, I think it's best to stick to the big 3 platforms which are Safari, Firefox, and Chrome.

Who knows what security vulnerabilities have been introduced by Samsung on top of whatever engine they use?

I would never trust the Samsung browser.

I don't even think it's installed by default anymore either. It's not on my Galaxy Tab S6 Lite, Chrome was installed by default although it was pre-installed on my slightly older A51. It's basically just Chromium with a few tweaks.

They do have some very nice tweaks to Android. You can put apps in floating windows if you want or by hands, quarters whatever. You can even change the opacity of windows which is nice for using a photo as reference image while drawing for example. Dex has been handy a few times too.

Floating windows works fine on stock, I don't remember what command you need but iirc the Taskbar app has instructions for enabling them with adb.

Internet is heavily optimized, compared to Chrome or Firefox. It feels much faster in usage, and consumes much lesser battery. It has a lot of features too, so that is a plus. Oh, and they understand the advantage of a consistent, stable UI. Things don't move around for no reason from update to update. I love the reliability that provides.

I have exclusively used it for years, can't say that I've heard of any vulnerabilities that affect only Internet.

PS: funny that people are bashing Samsung on a thread with a silly Google bug. This is exactly the sort of thing that never breaks on Samsung devices. QR codes have been a solved problem for years. If Google cannot avoid breakage here, wonder what critical infra they keep breaking without us knowing.

Samsung browser is, of course, based on Chromium and it's full of additional privacy protections, support for ad blockers, a private browsing mode that's better than most other browsers (desktop or mobile) that I've tried. And you can have actual browser tabs if you want.

Firefox is my desktop browser and it was also my mobile browser until Mozilla dumbed it down to the point of being useless.

>Firefox is my desktop browser and it was also my mobile browser until Mozilla dumbed it down to the point of being useless.

I use Firefox on mobile every day. Works great for me. All I really need is ublock origin.

I have a Samsung Tablet and the Firefox experience used to be identical to my desktop experience. All the plugins worked and even synced from the desktop. It was beautiful. Now it's the same or worse than every other mobile browser.

It's fine but it's no longer interesting enough for me to use.

I think it's because Google started tightening the controls on their platform in order to make it more homogeneous like Apple. I think you can't legally say your phone is Android unless you conform to some Google terms. I suppose Samsung's own apps and store are insurance against such an eventuality.

Not that this excuses the low quality of their software. It's in all likelihood filled with spyware too. At least the hardware is good and has good support for custom software.

It's usually easy to install the stock apps instead, but the Samsung ones often do have advantages. Eg scrolling screenshots was a recent highlight of an Android update but Samsung has had it for years.

At least Samsung Gallery works behind a Firewall, vs. Google Photos.

I hate Google as much as anyone but Google Photos works for me behind a firewall just fine.

At least a time ago it did not work. No new pictures was shown in Google Photos behind a Firewall. To see the new pictures you had to turn on the Flight Mode. I never used / tryed Google Photos again since then, so I don't know about now.

> Samsung File Manager

With SFTP and SMB support built in, I would say Samsung's File Manager (called My Files now) is objectively superior.

> In fact I'm mystified as to why Samsung devices remain so popular.

What's the alternative? They're pretty much the last premium android manufacturer left. (I would've maybe switched to a Pixel if they hadn't removed the headphone jack)

> All those Samsung-specific apps are (or at least were) objectively worse than the stock Android alternatives.

That's a very strong claim. I'm not a big fan of the Samsung apps (and I'd prefer if they focused on the hardware and supplied stock android), but they often have new features ahead of mainline Android.

I go with Samsung because their flagship phones are powerful and tend to last me a few years at least. They make great screens and hardware. Their OS can be hit or miss but often they make solid updates outside of Android. One of my old favorites was samsung pay where you could pay using a simulated magnetic swipe of a credit card. They took out the feature once everyone went to chip, but it made samsung pay work literally anywhere that had a credit card swipe reader. Their phone switching migration tool was leagues better than Google's though I'm not sure if that's the case in 2021. They put out the biggest batteries of all flagship Android phones. There's a lot left to be desired in Samsung Androids including their flagrant use of ads in places where there shouldn't be ads, but they're a fantastic Android phone otherwise.

The contacts situation from everyone is abysmal, only really good for light personal use. As soon as you are trying to keep your contacts organised or light work use everything turns to shit

I love this feature in the contacts app. It helps me avoid duplicates.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com