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Comment by 4pkjai | Hacker News Reader

I used a Samsung phone for a few months, it gave me the strong impression that they really don't know how to develop software properly.

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It gives me the impression that, even though I paid good money on it, Samsung doesn't see me as owner and will leech as much private data off me as they possibly can.

This is my impression as an unhappy Samsung smart TV owner, despite being a happy owner of an older Samsung "dumb" TV; the reason I bought their crappy smart TV.

LG does the same.

I bought good OLED and still, I had to connect pihole to block ads...

New LG's are even worse. I don't know what I do if my current TV will stop working.

I want only display, I don't want any additional features (ads, personalization etc.).

I have two new LG TVs, never connected them to the internet. I do all my media consumption via a ATV and rpi

My new Sony TV wouldn't allow me to do anything without connecting it to the internet during initial setup. I just wanted to use it as a dumb screen to show HDMI signal. But even that wouldn't work without initially connecting it to the internet. I haven't connected it to the internet since and so far it hasn't stopped working, but I wouldn't be too surprised if it does as some point and forces me to reconnect and update it.

Did you return it? All manufacturers should be punished for requiring an internet connection for basic features.

I wanted to do a firmware update over usb but LG requires NTFS for it to work so I gave up.

I find it hard to believe there wasn't a work around for your tv to be set up without Internet.

For example the Sony web site doesn't seem to support what you are saying

https://www.sony-asia.com/electronics/support/articles/00113...

I set up my grandmothers sony tv last year without Internet.

I was trying to avoid it. I am tech savvy. I could not find a workaround. There was no way, at least none I could find despite my efforts, to skip the screen requiring you to connect without connecting.

That's very strange. I'm too lazy to factory reset the Sony tv I bought this year to try it, but here's a link to a "q and a" from Best Buy saying someone set up my model without Internet during a hurricane, and Sony themself indicating it works without Internet.

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/questions/sony-77-class-bravia-...

So assuming you are software savvy enough to not have missed the correct prompt, I have to assume there was a bug with the firmware version you recieved.

Some people like my 92 year old Grandmom don't have internet, and it would make no sense for Sony to have to deal with returns from them.

That is strange. I have a different model (KD65X80J), but it seems to have all the same options and software. Yet, even though I chose Basic TV instead of Android TV, the internet connection page did not have the option to skip. It might be a bug, as you suggest.

Is there a computer monitor that would satisfy your needs? That would spare you the ads. I use a 32” monitor that I found too big for computing as a TV (with external speakers and roku).

TCL and many other manufacturers use Roku For their OS. I’m on my second tv with it, and have never connected either to the internet, without any issues.

That’s what you want.

Sencor used to offer big (as large as 58'') TVs, some of them even dumb as bricks

I'd argue this is what parent wants instead...

Happy owner of a modern Samsung vacuum cleaner, very unhappy owner of a Samsung smart TV.

Samsung makes perfectly good hardware. They just destroy it with their software.

I have never had any other impression of any smartphone.

Probably why I don't carry one.

unironically, the Huawei p30 is a great android phone. Stable software, not a lot ofbloatware, and acceptably fast security updates.

Real shame they are not allowed to make Android phones anymore. I genuinely believe Samsung is a bigger security and data leakage threat nowadays than Huawei was a few years ago

> Real shame they are not allowed to make Android phones anymore.

Harmony OS for phones is a fork of Android.

They mean Google Play certified phones, not Android.

I wouldn't buy a model that is not supported by LineageOS. There are just two from Huawei.

https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/#huawei

You’re rewriting history. Huawei was blocked from Android access due to it being deemed an asset of the Chinese government. Not because it was leaking any data.

I have been using Samsung phone/earbuds/watch for a while now and I think the software experience is quite good (coming from Oxygen OS on OnePlus 6 (great) and having used Apple devices (stifling) in the past ). Their heavy handed UI/UX are things of past - One UI 4 has plenty of customization/useful features while being reasonably light (e.g. it has a feature that lets you force dark mode on apps that don't support it which is surprisingly handy). In terms of integration (which Apple is famed for), everything works seamlessly: when I take out the earbuds, the audio automatically routes to them, the watch syncs automatically with the phone with pretty decent exercise/fitness tracking out of the box, the app selection for the watch has improved due to them using Wear OS etc. Sure, there are some Samsung apps I don't care to use but that is not getting in my way. Their privacy record is a weak point indeed and it is unfortunate that we don't have any competitor in Android space that has the same or better level of polish while keeping privacy a priority.

On the other hand, I've owned most Nexus devices and loved stock Android at the time but probably won't be leaving the Samsung ecosystem anytime soon. Until the S6 or so I'd agree it was bloated and unreliable but since then it's been a consistent and reliable experience (with great hardware) and it would take a lot to move back to a Pixel.

A friend of mine just bought a Samsung flagship after grumbling incoherently about how Apple was evil. Within three days she returned it and went and bought an iPhone 13.

That’s a fairly good reference for the experience.

Was in their ecosystem for about four years before going to Google Pixels - I find your experience to be very true. It was truly night and day.

> before going to Google Pixels

Which isn't any better IMO. Most recent Pixels have been a buggy mess from launch. Google doesn't see to give a damn about the quality of their devices which is especially bad considering they come at flagship prices.

On the other side, my mom's cheap Samsung A52 has been great so far.

My experience is that Pixel devices are far and away more competent than Samsung in many regards, but with the caveat that Samsung devices ship in a finished, stable state, but Pixel devices ship as if they’re not quite finished. The software is usually OK, but the hardware tends to be lacking in many regards. This is terrible since hardware can’t really be fixed later down the road, at BEST software workarounds can be employed.

The first Pixel was reasonably solid all around and mine lasted quite a while. The Pixel 2 XL’s terrible screen was my first hint that Google was not prepared to carry the torch of a true flagship phone.

That said: I would still often prefer the accidentally broken Pixel phones over the intentionally gimped and bloated Samsung phones. I just can’t buy one at launch, because I have no idea how Google will have fucked it up this time.

Pixel 1 and 2 were made by HTC. Pixel 2 XL however was manufactured by LG.

I have a Pixel 3a and it has been working flawlessly. Best phone I've owned so far.

I've heard a lot of complains from Pixel 4a and 6 owners though, about bugs in the OS and drivers... Not sure if these issues are widespread or not.

I used to have Samsung devices, but the quality just got worse and worse... currently quite happy with my LG V20 but it's on its last legs, and when I replace it I want something with a replaceable battery which is quite a rarity on higher-end phones these days. Am aware of the Librem5, but I still want to be inside the Android and google play ecosystem.

I'd argue that most Asian companies don't. China has really stepped up their game there I would say. From what I heard a decade or so ago, they used to hire a lot of software people from the valley to get some of the culture established in their organizations for a short period of time.

To some extent I'd say User Experience is directly correlated with how valuable software engineers are in that particular society.

Using a Samsung phone now, and you're absolutely right. It's a shitshow.

And let's not forget Tizen, who security researchers basically found to be a joke.

I liked old Samsung phones, e.g., phones with bada OS.

I don't know. Their UX team is infinitely superior to Google's. Didn't always used to be the case.

Same with their smart TVs, decent hardware, awful software.

Their entire value proposition (as marketed by themselves) is as an alternative to Apple.

For some people that is enough.

True, Samsung makes a big deal of it. But they don’t actually deserve that title imo. They’re hardly a worthy contender. I am not an apple fan boy, but Samsung is just nowhere close to the apple experience.

Well, I own a few Samsung devices. There is no Samsung experience. I don't bother signing in into a Samsung account or using their store. What for? I already have to be signed in into Google's store to get updates for the apps I must use. Samsung's one is useless and it's not the reason I bought from them. I bought an A40 because it was the smallest Android phone on the market (and yet almost one inch too tall) and a tablet (S5e?) because it had Linux in DeX.

By the way, I keep Google usage minimal. I don't need most of their services. Even YouTube works without an account and I'm using NewPipe most of the time. What I really need is Play, only to update maps, Maps mostly because of satellite images (I use OSMAnd) and Translate as a dictionary. Syncthing and KDE connect deal with backup and file transfer.

Until recent Samsung smart devices, you HAD to use their store and the experience was horrendous. Full of nonworking paid apps, no working review system that I could see, it was an absolute nightmare to use. It's actually quite sad cause the hardware itself wasn't bad and the battery life of Tizen was fantastic.

I really do hate how big phones have gotten now. If it wasn't for f-droid I would just get an iphone, at least they make phones in sane sizes

The old SE was nice. The new SE is big. The 12 mini is a little smaller.

> and a tablet (S5e?) because it had Linux in DeX.

Is that still a thing? A few years ago I was interested in that, as an alternative to a laptop, but I seem to remember that it was on the way out.

They dropped support. The update to Android 10 removes it. Probably because 16.04 is EOL and they should have paid Canonical again to make X11 and possibly other systems work on Android. The number of users of that feature was probably low.

> but Samsung is just nowhere close to the apple experience.

True... they're only the next closest. After fleeing the Google ecosystem, my only seriously choices were Samsung or Apple.

I do miss the Android OS, but not going back to the bloat and data-vacuums that are intertwined with it.

Coming from apple, right?

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