Google is “concerned” that Samsung is losing customers to Apple | Hacker News Reader

Google is “concerned” that Samsung is losing customers to Apple

9to5google.com

30 pointsretskrad46 comments

I think this is, to some extent, Google’s allowing of deep vendor-carrier customizations coming back to bite them in the ass.

It helped get things off the ground early on, but now that the product category is well defined the fact that “Android” can vary wildly between manufacturers and even devices has become a liability because that represents a form of unnecessary instability. Imagine if Windows differed significantly between Dell, HP, and Lenovo… people wouldn’t accept that, because the last thing anybody wants is to grapple with a bunch of technical differences because the laptop they have to use today is a different brand than they usually use.

Android needs to become the “Windows” of the mobile world — standardized, boring, and predictable, but the biggest Android manufacturers won’t stand for that at this point, so that may not be possible.

You might have a point.

I never had an android device before, but I have a tablet recently (Samsung). Its confusing there seems to be samsung stuff (bixby voice recognition, samsung login and store, some tv watching app) and the Google uite of apps. There is some overlap and since its a Samsung, they push that stuff.

By enlarge I've ignored a lot of it, and it works great (even the pen with Krita!), but I can see the issue.

Though for windows there was "crapware" that tends to be pre-installed with windows machines from various makers.

This works wonders on all that Samsung bloat...

https://github.com/0x192/Universal-Android-Debloater

This is absolutely right, the worst part of windows installs of the past? The weird crappy OEM software bundled onto new devices, Norton anti-virus trials etc. Now you've got the same thing with Android, but instead of a couple of difficult to shake trials, the entire operating system is dreck, crap from a hardware company that has put the worlds worst software engineers to the task of pimping out adware. Oh and because of the "value added" customization you're going to stop receiving critical security updates in 18 months.

It's a weird sort of alternative universe where Google acts like Microsoft did, but Google isn't actulaly hegemonic in the OS space, so they actually suffer for their screw ups where Microsoft didn't.

I used to be a hardcore PC enthusiast, all windows/linux, all machines overclocked, and rooted android phones with newest ROM.

I still own an overclocked pc that is too much for my needs. However, I now use an iphone and I am recommending apple products for family. Might get a macbook myself.

I remember spending few hours on linux trying to fix my printing issues. It was fun when I was bored, today I don't have the time to deal with that shit.

Apple hardware is relatively good. I have now replaced the battery in my moms dell laptop 2 times. My wife's 5 year old macbook runs like new and battery seems good. All my android phones always had weird issues. I used pure google, samsung and custom roms, with custom roms I "get it" why it was unstable.

Apple products have much higher resale value.

I'm halfway with you. Asus computers running linux mint (or your favorite flavour) stand up very well without having to deal with the multi-armed octopus that is Apple. Phone wise though, I've always been a pixel guy but my next phone will be an iphone, just because I don't trust Google any more not to be selling my soul to their advertisers and cutting off security updates after three years. That's like buying a car at the dealership but they refuse do any repairs after three years.

Considered CalyxOS?

I’m the same. I get paid to fix Linux issues at work. When I get home I enjoy using my devices to do non-IT things.

The software in the Android ecosystem is getting so shit that even die hards for open source like myself are considering switching. And I'm not talking about switching to a PinePhone or something like that; I'm a firm believer in open source, but can handle Open Core, and Android used to sit at the perfect intersection of "Corporate support" and "Hackable", but I'm considering an Apple phone. My Pixel 5 crashes multiple times a day and I just use it for slack and e-mail. Certainly, part of that is the half-baked "Work Profiles" feature, which was fundamentally broken from the beginning of implementation.

Edit: Pixel, not Nexus.

>Nexus 5

Maybe use something more recent?

Pixel! Pixel 5. Geez. Their poor naming schemes might be part of the problem.

I am fairly open source die hard, at least for my personal stuff.

I used exclusively Android stuff for a long time for the reasons you cited: it was a good compromise between corporate support and hackable.

I bought an iPhone for the first time about six months back. I am not happy about having to do it. There's plenty of stuff I don't like about the phone. But I think it has been a net positive.

I used to really be rooting for Google. They have fallen a long way.

I'd recommend checking out GrapheneOS, I'm using a pixel 5a (so worse specs than the 5) with none of the issues you're describing.

Google concerned that people are ditching anything associated with Google due to lack of support, embrace extend extinguish philosophy, and customer abuse.

> embrace extend extinguish

I'm not saying that you're lying about this, but could you provide examples? I'm genuinely curious.

Edit: I was able to think of OpenID and Play Services but that's about it.

The entire Android ecosystem purely exists to support Googles business as an advertiser, any support they claim for open source or user control of devices is the thinnest possible smokescreen.

I get that they want to extinguish competitors on their devices. But where are the embrace and extend bits? They made Android from scratch and shaped it to their advertising needs.

embrace/extend usenet with google groups, get eyeballs, shut it down

embrace/extend the web with search, get eyeballs, turn it into an ad turnstyle

They were originally only allowed buy in from Samsung , other phone makers, and users because of their fictitious claim that it would be open source.

RSS is probably the most often cited example.

I'm still disappointed they ruined dejanews and killed usenet search in Google.

I recently switched to Samsung Galaxy A10 and the experience is jerkier and slower compared to iPhone 6s.

Something's gone wrong.

The problem is all the bullshit that Samsung put on their phones. Shit that nobody asked for (Bixby), shit that consumes resources for no good (Bixby), shit with no ecosystem (Bixby), shit that is a half-effort (messages, gallery, calendar, the lot), and shit that sets itself as the default with each update (everything).

Google needs to reinvigorate Android One, and paint it in an extremely prestigious light. Near-stock phones are such a pleasure.

Installing /e/ on my galaxy made me appreciate the phone much more, can realy reccomend this OS.

I'm up to 43 separate preinstalled apps disabled on my Samsung tablet and the experience has never been better. Samsung duplicates everything included in a standard google account and then loads up on the partner crapware and poorly functioning clone apps.

How does Samsung continue to sell so many phones every year? It is baffling to me.

In a very simple way: it's basically single remaining option if someone doesn't want to live in Apple dreamland for some reason (there can be multiple from economical to ideological) AND do not want to own "chineese" phone

I'm aware that there are some other brands but they all have issues which not necessarily place them in competitive place vs Samsung, some examples: Motorola (horrible updates policy, even worse than Samsung) Sony (small selection of models, pricey, no idea about updates), Pixel (not available in some countries, bad battery life, quality issues, price)

There are decent brands, but they aren't as well known. OnePlus (although they are currently forgetting what made them great), nothing (if you can actually purchase one), ASUS (they were doing some really neat stuff with the front camera).

If you seek out near-stock phones they really do exist.

The other android devices are even worse, Apple is eating their lunch

They're well built, they don't have the bizarro quality issues that every google device seems to, they aren't built in China if that's important to someone, and for the most part all of their software works without much fuss (even if much of it is crappy compared to Google's implementation.) They're the sort of predictably usable and well built device you'd buy for a parent or non-technical relative.

They were also basically the only game in town for high end android tablets with OLED displays for years. I'm really happy with the hardware and build quality of my Samsung tablet, it's the software that's a pain in the ass, and I'd have no problem recommending their devices to people if LineageOS support were more reliably available.

Tl;dr- they're basically the go-to consumer Android mfgr, people are used to buying from them and their devices are generally a safe choice.

It's been that way since day one. The first gen iPhone had perfect smooth scrolling, even if it took multiple seconds to load the actual content.

Android was horrendous garbage at the beginning, and eventually became somewhat less garbage, but there's still no comparison with iOS.

Samsung A10 is like 100 dollars phone, you can use it for basic smartphone needs, nothing more imho.

I couldn't edit it, but it's Samsung A13. More battery, more RAM, more CPU (2 times or more in every category). It feels very sluggish from a fresh factory reset.

I had a BLU R2Plus in 2017 and liked it. It was my first smartphone. I only used it as a phone, didn't have WIFI configured, had cellular data disabled. It worked great for a couple of years until Google somehow managed to force an update on me. I don't know how they did that, but they did. After the update, speech to text did not function very well, Google kept asking for all kinds of new permissions, and if I didn't give them, things that used to work stopped working. I got stuck in a cycle of having to do updates to try to fix brokenness. In the last update, I couldn't zoom in on pictures: it caused the Photo app to crash.

I'm guessing that Android updates were not tested on older phones, so they just broke everything. I bought an Apple iPhone XR on eBay a couple of years ago and don't miss Android one bit.

If Google's market share in anything goes down, they need to blame themselves first.

Some interesting tidbits:

The inspiration for this shift in Google’s mindset apparently comes through two factors, starting with Samsung’s performance in the market.

Apparently, Google is “concerned” that Samsung is losing customers to Apple. iPhone shipments overtook that of Android phones in the US for the first time ever in 2022.

Comments from a senior Google Search executive, Sissie Hsiao, reveal that CEO Sundar Pichai believes that Google’s efforts in making its own hardware “best positions [Google] to be protected” from shifts in the mobile market.

The Information cites Kirk McMaster, the previous head of Cyanogen, who said that Google “can’t afford to back off” with Pixel phones and its own hardware as Apple continues to grow in the smartphone market. He added that Google pulling away from efforts to develop its own hardware would be “really ceding power to Apple.”

"Comments from a senior Google Search executive, Sissie Hsiao, reveal that CEO Sundar Pichai believes that Google’s efforts in making its own hardware “best positions [Google] to be protected” from shifts in the mobile market."

i cant help thinking the opposite; i think google is having a hemmorage due to the not_google option provided by apple.

google has to hold on to samsung even with google hardware, or there will be another not_google phone

Maybe it’s because the android team shows utter contempt for their users. I’ve got an old android phone I need to use to fix some other broken google product (they just “forgot” to add two different critical features to their web and iOS apps). I can’t though because android non-consensually activated factory reset protection. I of course don’t have access to the old email address anymore so I can’t auth with the old address. (I still own the domain so I suppose I could re-enable a google account) but without expert level intervention the phone is useless.

Way to delight your users. Sorry did I misspell “display utter contempt for”?

Pretty sure you can't factory reset iPhones without the password either.

The three worst things about the Android experience are Samsung, Android, and Google.

I'm far from an Apple fan. But my alignment's gone anti-Google on virtually all points.

As for Samsung: repeated bad experiences from electronics to home appliances. They're on my never buy ever list.

I want a dumb phone and a smarter e-ink tablet than I've got (Onyx BOOX, Android-based, though e-ink and partial independence from Google help). Unlike Samsung, which never issued an update for my bought-brand-new tablet, Onyx have offered three or four system updates within about a year and a half, as well as responsive tech support.

Other than that, Linux desktop and laptop.

The hardware side of the Android market is very poor. I can get a Samsung which is (at least) as pricy as Apple but not as good. Or I can get one plus for half the price, but the OnePlus I am using for this is dying (battery lasts 6h, screen is starting to burn, USBC port failed) and it's only 9m old.

I am thinking of switching in the next few months and I much prefer Google, open platforms etc.

Gold standard for buying samsung phones is wait for few months. Samsung usually drop prices and even bundles with a watch or earphones.

Samsung is concerned Google is losing customers to Apple.

They say this but almost all the Nexus/Pixel phones that they have released are of an appalling quality and have a very short support timespan. How do they plan to compete against Apple with such a flawed product line?

^^ is the correct answer.

I used to buy google pixel smart phones, i had the galaxy pixel, the pixel one, the htc incredible as well.

There's zero chance id ever purchase a google/android product again, they don't support their products, there's a good chance a phone I buy will never get updates and all the interesting features they announced at IO would never come to the existing hardware.

the last time i bought a samsung it was full of bloat/apps i could not remove like facebook and i'd get alerts and shit saying it was running in the background doing stuff even though i had no account. yeah. fuck samsung. apple offers great privacy compared to samsung/google. i might be making the switch to apple soon since google does not give a single fuck about what their users want.

Apple has an entire ecosystem it can charge commissions for: Apps, Wallet, Arcade, iTunes, Music, iCloud, etc.

Samsung has none of that - AND doesn't control the operating system.

Apple has a long-term incentive to support devices through software updates and hardware upgrades. This is reflected in used prices: an iPhone 12 still sells at about 50% of original launch price, whereas a Samsung Galaxy S20 (both released in 2020) sells for 25%.

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