Samsung extends Android and security updates to 7 years
cnet.com
cnet.com
They install plenty of bloatware on google devices, but since it’s all background surveillance stuff, it doesn’t clutter the UI.
Yeah, my previous Samsung I had to spend a half hour with adb to get all their junk disabled.
A long time Android user wouldn't have mistaken my Zenfone 9 for a Pixel at any more than a cursory glance, but you can get it pretty close, particularly in terms of feel.
I never found it to be true.
I owned a Samsung S7, it was atrocious, people said it was great, the bloatware was painful, the gesture to open the apps drawer was conflicted with the gesture to open Samsung pay (which didn't worked with my bank), you can't disable Samsung pay, if you switch the launcher, it's still there. Searching the settings took literally 10 seconds. It's default behavior is to stay on while charging, the whole screen have the lock screen burned in now.
My mom own a Samsung 10e, people also said "Samsung software isn't ad now", they rewrote their own clock app. It doesn't support having multiple timers?!? Worse, asking Google assistant to add a timer, reset the previous one. This is due to Samsung bloatware, the stock android clock doesn't have this issue.
To be fair that S7 from 2016 doesn't count as being from "these days" anymore, so your opinion is not up to date, as Samsung made pretty big strides in the last few years past 2020 compared to how it was when you last remember it with the nasty Touchwiz.
I'm in love with the new drop down settings screen especially.
For browser I'm Firefox all the way though!
> even work profile was first available on Samsung devices
Work profiles are available since Android 5.
This is a stock Android feature. I just plugged in my Pixel 6 and it indicated in the lockscreen it will be fully recharged in 21 minutes.
1. Some of their features are being offloaded to unknown 3rd party vendors (e.g call spam detection). 2. They really want you to install some sort of McAfee AV on your phone to get the "secure" tick. 3. They are usually about a month behind when it comes to Android security patches. 4. Phone comes pre-installed with crap.
But they're not really behind. I already got the 1 January Android security update a few days ago on my S23.
Considering they need to do testing and possible modifications I don't think this is very slow.
I wonder if it's your provider being difficult here. The problem with branded (or sometimes even sold with contract) phones is that the carrier wants to meddle in the updates because they're afraid of issues on their network or something. And this can cause huge delays.
I always buy my phones separately, mainly because I hate contracts so I'm on prepay always but having unrestricted updates is another big benefit.
Seems like anywhere between one to three weeks. I think the auto update is a bit lazy. Had to force update on mine just now to make it get January update.
It's not perfect but I like it now (In the TouchWiz days Samsung was really bad at updates, they've improved a lot)
And I have owned several S generation phones.
At least I was not able to find a way to do that. That was the main reason I switched back to Firefox on mobile despite actually liking Samsung Internet more.
I tend to use my phone for personal research stuff mainly and Firefox on my desktop/laptop for work. I use bookmark syncing in Firefox, and that works great! But I generally don't need to synch from phone to desktop.
Having said this, I also had Firefox installed on my phone and on checking, see that ublock origin is available there!
Will give it a shot now. :-)
Tried Firefox mobile, while I love the ublock origin, it kept constantly crashing that I eventually had to let go off. But yeah I'd definitely love to have a minimal android
E: I also have a pixel 6a
It feels totally upside-down that Safari for iOS has a better extensions story than Chrome for Android. For this reason one of the first things I grab when setting up a new Android device is Firefox.
it is the other way around.
They are not trying to do the right thing, they are maintaining a data stream, and the updates will continue to update that equation to their benefit.
I think of this like vizio, which makes more collecting data from your television than selling you the hardware.
Sure, the vendor apps often suck, but that is no reason to support monopolies.
What other vendors have that?
The fundamental problem in the android world is that OEMs have no market power, and that makes it impossible for them to do longterm investments like research and security updates.
What you see here is that using these "me too" apps, Samsung managed to acquire some market power, and so is able to do some of these longterm investments now.
Samsung's built in apps are not "cruft" by any means.
The Notes app has pen support for sketching and PDF import/annotate, which lets me use a printable calendar digitally. The Browser app has dark mode and adblock; good luck with that on Google Chrome. The Music app doesn't try to upsell me to a YouTube Music plan.
I also use Bixby routines to quickly set custom timers for exercise, cooking etc.
Given I’m more Power User than average user, I’m also in favor of vanilla as possible, but it’s not like an extra icon away from home and Edge Panels is really uncomfortable for me, I don’t even feel the presence of a lot of those extra applications I don’t use.
The EU are fucking killing it these days actually. So happy to see it. We had a scare there with Chat Control 2.0 but thankfully it was shot down, besides that we've gotten GDPR, USB-C charging ports, the Digital Markets Act, eIDAS is coming which looks like it could be pretty great, digital drivers licenses, etc. A lot of good stuff.
What did I miss?
But the fact that they even proposed ChatControl and it really had to be fought to be defeated, doesn't instill a lot of confidence in continued progress and vision towards privacy. It feels like the winds could turn just like that.
The devils deal of convenience over freedom...
If you didn't have the license on you, they'd find you in the DB anyway. Possibly you get a €10 fine. The electronic driving license is just a simplification to me. You don't have to carry anything.
That said, there are things in the category of surveillance that having it in an app do enable. For this reason I would personally like to require that the implementation of these apps is open source, unfortunately I know there was some resistance on that front with regards to eIDAS...
Unlike the driving license, you still need to carry it, either in plastic or as an app in your phone. And it's becoming a bit complicated. It's not a self-contained QR code with an electronic signature. It's a whole system that allows you to share only part of the info to someone (e.g. only age in the pub). It also remembers who asked for that info.
Experience from CZ and very fresh. The electronic ID app for instance is still only a few days old.
Me too, the reason I trust it is that I understand the (really cool) cryptography behind it, and most don't.
I don't think it will fulfill that purpose in practice. The name plus date of birth is a very good tracking identifier and people will be still giving DOB to these companies.
Basically, with the right cryptography, my app can prove my license is valid without revealing any PII. Or in the case of eIDAS, binary questions like "is rekoil 18 years or older?".
Short windows made sense simply because it was a lot of work to maintain old devices. Now that there's a more solid separation of concerns, longer support windows make sense.
https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/4457705?hl=en
GrapheneOS end-of-support info (for Google Pixels):
Samsung should back their word by keeping a stock of replacement parts.
As for official batteries, California's Right to Repair law compels manufacturers to sell parts like batteries for as long as they sell battery replacement services, up to 7 years. Apple still replaces batteries for the iPhone 5S, a 10-year-old phone, so they 2022+ phones should have official batteries available for a long while (and the prices seem quite fair). Google also sells genuine batteries for the Pixel 2, a 6-year-old phone, through iFixit. Samsung only offers batteries attached to a midframe and display assembly, for the S20 and newer, through iFixit for $200+. So the former 2 brands seem like good options.
Still, my main ask is upstreamed support. Users should be able to maintain their own devices if they want to. From the start of ownership to beyond the products end of life. That means I should be able to build my own kernel and send them to the device, and I shouldn't need some vendor fork that will someday rot out to do it.
Unfortunately they didn't do that, so it's still a mess.
https://groups.google.com/g/safetynet-api-clients/c/lpDXBNeV...
You may be able to build your own OS, but as soon as you unlock that bootloader to install it, all of your banking apps will stop working and there will be no workarounds once hw-backed attestation is mandated.
Where do other HN readers go to verify these types of stories?
"The latest flagship continues Samsung’s commitment to extending the product lifecycle, offering seven generations of OS upgrades and seven years of security updates..."
Which doesnt tell me, for example, whether a reader with an arbitrary Samsung phone is in- or outside the tent. And is therefore something of a nothingburger.
Long support periods are great, with that fixed it probably brings Samsung phones to Apple levels of quality, but I've enjoyed using my phone like a real computer instead of a locked down smart device that's disposable after a few (or 5-7) years.
Maybe I'm not the target audience of these manufacturers, but man has having a phone that let's me use it like a tiny ARM desktop (pixel) been really nice.
* At least they did, no experience with recent hardware. Last time I bought a Samsung device was a tablet in 2016. It's still a great device, but I don't use it a lot given it ran out of support ages ago despite still being a great priece of hardware.
Either way, always good to be wrong about something when I'm complaining about the state of tech.
But what is with all the negative comments here? People are complaining about completely irrelevant things just so don't have to say anything positive about Samsung?
I tried to get this info a couple of years ago and it took some serious digging to find when each phone was released and how long updates are meant to last as there's no central place to find this. Maybe there's a good resource for this now?
Nokia phones are meant to be nearly stock Android I think with 3 years of updates but longer would be nice.
Pixel devices can run a number of Roms that go much longer than Google's support period (DivestOS, PostMarketOS, Lineage, etc). Older models can probably be found on sale from Google for ~$200 occasionally or even cheaper used, and with Lineage offer a really long support period on an OS that resembles AOSP with or without G Services.
The headline does not restrict this to specific models. I’ll be impressed if they actually update old models. If it’s another go forward promise - I’ll be a bit skeptical until they actually deliver for a bit.
Apple historically (with no big announcements I’m aware of) has an actual history of pushing updates - iPhone 6s from like 9 years ago still getting updates
Now a removable battery and Less "freezing" [2] please.
[1] https://www.gsmarena.com/compare.php3?idPhone1=12583&idPhone...
Not sure how much you were expecting at $170 but you might have been penny wise and pound foolish here trying to scrape the bottom of the barrel as nobody else gives you more than 2 years of updates at those rock bottom prices. Sometimes it pays to spend a bit more and get something worthwile.
Samsung's other budget phones from last year in the ~300 Euro range, like the A54 have 5 years of guaranteed support. Maybe the mid rangers of 2024 will also get 7 years of updates which would be killer value.
Say there's a model that sold 10m total. I think it's fair to say Samsung could reasonably increase the price by $1 (~0.75c minus tax) for 10 years of support instead of ~3 years.
That's $7.5m. I used to flash Cyanogenmod on my phones (motorola defy etc.), IIRC it was often a single guy making the roms, I guess part time, doing a decent job of it. $1m/year for years 4-10 should cover a team of 5.
I think difficulties arose when newer kernals wouldn't work with the older hardware drivers that were available. But there's fewer SOCs than smartphone models.. I guess maybe $0.10 to Qualcomm for every SOC sale should cover updating drivers.
Not sure I'd want to be using a 10yo (2013) phone now, but a 5yo (2018) phone with fresh software would be fine. Todays higher-end phones should still be usuable beyond 5 years.
Here's Android 12 on Samsung S4 (2013), looks okay but probably marginal once you put a few chonky apps: https://youtu.be/lySu841rNgg?si=LyONyyUP8mcCa67L&t=783
That's a problem of Samsungs own doing. They can mainline their drivers and force their subcontractors to do the same if they want to sell to them. They're definitely big enough to be able to do it if they wanted to.
Samsung doesn't see this as a problem.
Release the source code and accept patches. Nobody even cares if you provide further updates at all if you release enough code or documentation to begin with that third parties can feasibly get up to date versions of stock Android running on it.
S: flagship
A: mid range
M: mostly garbage
I can absolutely use an A as my daily driver, but M I will not touch. And you paid way too much for an M series phone, I would say they are worth $80-100.
Based on that, I can see why they can't give you 7 years of support. Besides, most M series use some unknown Chinese CPU that will never receive any kernel updates after release.
I am an adult. if I want to disable updates, I should be able to do so. give me multiple, loud warnings before doing so, fine, but dont stop people outright. otherwise its no longer an operating system, but a toy for babies.
Even better, start a company creating real phones for adults. That's what adults do when they face a problem - they solve it and maybe even make money.