Israeli-founded app preloaded on Samsung phones is attracting controversy | Hacker News Reader

Israeli-founded app preloaded on Samsung phones is attracting controversy

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391 pointscroes264 comments

What’s striking is how often these ‘small’ surveillance tech stories trace back to the same state-aligned ecosystem. When Israel does it, it’s treated as a complex security issue. When another ‘bad’ country does the same thing, we immediately call it espionage. And almost on cue, the discussion drifts anywhere except the uncomfortable fact that it’s the same ecosystem from the same country showing up again.

You are asking the “wrong” question!! If you are Gabriele Nunziati you will be fired immediately!!

For context: https://www.eunews.it/en/2025/11/05/italian-journalist-fired...

it’s a tough infosec situation because the tel aviv-haifa corridor in israel has an enormous amount of computer science R&D going on that gives US companies a competitive advantage.

for example, annapurna labs in haifa develops the technology behind AWS’s nitro cards, which run the hypervisor, block storage, and networking in every EC2 server.

Fair enough. I guess it's fine to be spied on to make sure US companies have that competitive advantage you mention. As its all in a good cause, I'll take the Samsung phone!

To be fair, us over in Europe have been uncomfortable for a while due to the US surveillance apparatus having total dominion over the underlying systems that run our countries.

So, its a little bit tone deaf to hear these complaints from Americans honestly.

We’re told that we’re uncompetitive (yet when rising startups happen they’re bought out before being too large)- we’re told that we shouldn’t run on anything except US SaaS and US cloud providers.

I’m not saying that you specifically make these arguments, but the zeitgeist on HN definitely centres on this notion.

So, please forgive me for not taking this as seriously as you’d like me to.

I think USA tech hegemony is perfectly analogous to this Israeli tech dilemma. As a dual American and EU (Irish) citizen, should my company strive to categorically avoid Intel and Nvidia technologies for national security reasons? I think there is a strong argument for tech nationalism but there is still a hegemonic dilemma.

The main problem, even if you would avoid Intel and NVidia, is that during the last decades we confortably let OS and programing languages driven by US companies take over.

So you might go with ARM, RISC V, but still have to make use of an OS and programming stack with strong ties to US based companies, even if open source.

And surely no way to monitor what's going on in those VMs

Also Microsoft's BlueHat security conference always takes place in Israel, and probably that is where Azure security R&D offices happen to be located.

Is it though? US and EU telecom companies pulled the plug on Huawei products, which were deeply integrated in all of their setup, as soon as someone said they may be spying or remote disabled by China. It was expensive, sure, but they pulled the plug. I don't recall any concrete evidence of backdoors etc to be found, but trust was gone.

And that's the difference I think; US and Israel have high trust, they are aligned in ideals and strategy and the like.

I don't think it's wise for us to trust a country that has a whole Wikipedia article dedicated to the ways they spy on us.

I hate that I have to say this, but I'm a Jew and I'm not anti-Semitic in any way.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_espionage_in_the_Unite...

I mean, it's literally the same thing that happens when past genocides are bad, but when they happen today from an ally of the west... "it's complicated". Except this time happens on the technological side rather than the humanitarian one

> an ally of the west

Remind me again of all the help Israel has provided the USA/the West that they are considered such a great (the greatest, in fact) ally?

Heaps of military and intelligence technology, base of operations / bastion in the middle east, etc.

Well, that same ally has also been doing a bit of genocide on the humanitarian side lately, just so we’re clear on the facts

Oh yes

When Israel does what, in this case? Write software?

Spyware*

I recently bought a cheap android device because I needed to test something on Android. The setup was about 3 hours of the device starting up, asking me questions, installing apps I explicitly told it not to, and then all sorts of other apps and OS updates trying to do their thing seemingly at once. I wasn't even transferring data, just a brand new phone, new google account.

What a horrible experience you get with some providers and phones.

It's to the point that I think there should be some sort of regulation that involves you getting a baseline experience on the OS rather than a bunch of malware out of the box.

My guess is, those auto installs is exactly how they keep the costs down, by subsidizing the cost with getting paid by companies to auto-install garbage.

It's the same with Smart TVs, they've gotten so cheap because of all the other slimy stuff the manufacturers do, like sell your watch data, or pre-install apps.

The problem is that you do not get the option to pay off the subsidy to get a clean install.

I suppose the "paying off the subsidy" is to buy a more expensive phone. Or getting a Google Pixel. I've heard those are as much stock android as possible.

I agree, and that's the exact point I would make. The problem though, is I want a small phone with a headphone jack (and a physical keyboard, but that's orthogonal to the point).

Many OEMs sell their flagship as a shiny glass slab with only BT or USB-C for audio, and ship 3.5mm jacks and other "antiquated niceties" like a uSD card reader, on their lower-end models.

It's difficult to square the circle of "I want these specific features, but on a phone that's not working against me (any more than modern phones already do)"

I must admit, I don’t get the wish for 3.5mm headphone jacks in 2025. Already six years ago, with a phone that actually still had a headphone jack, I bought myself for just a few euro a Bluetooth DAC (a FiiO) that had superior sound quality to any phone’s audio-out that I had ever used. With a Bluetooth DAC (or with any USB-C to 3.5mm converter that costs pennies) you can still use whatever wired headphones you want to use.

Physical keyboards were nice back in an era when the web welcomed longform text, and I miss my Nokia N900. Nowadays, though, the web ecosystem that one typically uses from a phone is a cesspool, and for serious things I’ll just use my real computer.

Bluetooth wastes batteries / alter soubd.

I have a similar FiiO gadget and it makes less sense for me than a direct wired connection to the phone. It's a relatively bulky device that needs to be charged way too often, also it reduces voice call quality (like any other BT Classic device).

> I bought myself for just a few euro a Bluetooth DAC (a FiiO) that had superior sound quality to any phone’s audio-out that I had ever used.

I hate the 3.5'' jack myself (see below), but I can already tell you that mentioning some unscientific definition of "superior sound quality" that likely no one amongst us is humanly able to distinguish is not going to win any minds over. Proponents of 3.5'' like it because it is ridiculously simple to use, intuitive, cheap, doesn't have a lot of things that can go wrong (e.g. no batteries) and despite that is overall effective.

The reason I dislike 3.5'' is because the _socket_ part (i.e. the part on the expensive device) wears out very quickly, becoming fragile and generating distracting artifacts even with slight cable pulls/movements, as the springs in the connector start to fail. This annoys me to no end, much more than any issues with other interfaces.

Talking about “superior sound quality” in the context of mobile phones isn’t controversial, it’s not like a home-stereo audiophile snake oil debate. It is well known that DACs are an area where mid-range and low-end phone makers have cut corners, choosing chips that are quite flawed for anyone who uses their phone to listen to music where pristine sound quality is valued.

The elephant in the room for me is "microphonics" or the noise piped to your head via the wire any time anything touches it.

You demand higher quality, yet don't care about the loud noise created with every small movement of your body? I have heard this dismissed before as "doesn't bother me" and it's hardly ever mentioned in discussions about good audio vs Bluetooth.

I'm bewildered why wireless audio isn't praised for completely eliminating this source of noise that plagues every wired headphone, earbud, and IEM.

I'm conflicted about this matter. I use a Bluetooth earpiece on my phone because it's more convenient: you can move around a room with the phone on a table, no pockets, and you can wear and unwear t-shirts and sweaters. When I can't find the x with the earpieces I plug in in a wired one.

On the other hand a wired headphone always work, had maybe better quality and almost surely a better latency. I use one of them when doing calls from my laptop.

I bought a USB-C to 3.5mm jack for around $20. It works well but does tend to get caught on things more easily than a pure jack.

As well as easily getting misplaced…

And easily internally shorted, leading to the dreadful 'wiggle around in your pocket until the headphones are detected again, and then press play again'...

The "Sony Xperia 5 V" (I have the previous "Sony Xperia 5 IV") has a headphone jack, takes a uSD card, and is somewhat compact. (And no silly camera cutout in the screen, it's in a reasonably small bezel.)

EDIT: also see the Xperia 10 VII for a phone that isn't 2 years old (I haven't been keeping up, I buy phones to use for 4+ years)

According to the specs it's 154 x 68 x 8.6 mm and 182 grams, so it's more compact than most phones of 2025 but not really compact. My Samsung A40 is smaller and lighter but it's 4 years older.

Serendipity happens. Maybe you almost want this https://liliputing.com/zinwa-q27-prototype-brings-classic-bl... Keyboard but it seems no 3.5" jack.

I actually ordered the Q20 revival by the same team back in May or so! Very excited, should ship this week

pretty much why I switched to iphone. I used pixels before for the same reason but good luck getting your pixel warranty honored outside the united states

I've heard this theory before, but is an individual data point really worth enough to make this argument?

its not just your data point its everyones data point

This is true, it’s not an individual datapoint. When smartphones, like the iPhone, originally debuted carriers had a conniption fit because they couldn’t preload a ton of garbage apps to help subsidize the cost. Apple has been able to avoid this, but for your average smartphone this is absolutely how both the manufacturer and carrier are able to sell them so cheaply.

Every experience may not be as bad as the one the OP had, but it’s surely well within reality. Both carriers and handset manufacturers are glad to sell anything and everything about someone to make a quick buck. They’ve literally been doing it for 25+ years.

You need to think about the aggregate data. Whole trends can be seen in almost real-time.

Here’s a made up example, and it’s probably not even the best one. - Show Teckno-Detectives shows a “Cameo” of Grapple’s newest mixed-reality glasses. The data shows that 3.9 million additional people watched the episode. Investment firms who pay for the data notice and buy extra Grapple shares to cash in on the expected sales bump.

Yes, but to make it worthwhile you need a lot of data and the price scales linearly.

Let's say my phone gets $10 cheaper because of all this crap ware. If you have the aggregate of 1000 people that cost someone $10000. Is that really worth it? Is 100000 people worth $1000000? Is there some point at which the aggregate data becomes so valuable it overtakes the per-user cost?

That's what I mean - the marginal value of one person needs to be quite big for this whole thing to make sense.

Nah its the corporate greed and disregard for avoiding amoral behavior at the first place, since clearly its punished much less than rewards are (just look at all the slaps on the wrist of FAANGs and similar), then followed by race to the bottom with the price.

Economies of scale do bring costs of everything much further than stealing user's data can, but good luck explaining some long term vision to C-suites who only care about short term bonuses.

I suspect the apparent reduction in price on these devices is a lot less than what they earn from the slimy stuff.

But the premium devices (especially TVs) are starting to do this too now via software updates. I had to turn off a bunch of crap in the settings on my LG CX TVs some time ago. Now they are just off the internet and can only connect to my NAS.

> they've gotten so cheap because of all the other slimy stuff

Not really, they've gotten so cheap because the individual components they are made of have become much cheaper due to economies of scale.

The same thing happened with computer monitors, and those don't ship with the bloatware.

Compare monitors to TVs of similar spec, in price and bloatware.

This is not a valid cause. They spend insane amounts of money on advertising and also make insane amounts of revenue. Don’t think “them keeping the cost down” is relevant in this context.

That would make Samsung's business model not viable. :D

Sounds like the average carrier locked Samsung device experience in the US. Oh you didn't want Clash of Clans installed? We'll reinstall that for you next OS update. Running updates through carriers was a serious mistake.

Running remote updates in general was a serious mistake. Other manufacturers are no better and give you all kinds of crap for their income streams at the expense of your convenience whilst claiming the opposite.

The last time I saw an update that just fixed security bugs and improved performance was... never.

I took this seriously and thought back to the most recent actually-useful-bugfixes-and-security-improvements release that I can remember. OSX Snow Leopard perhaps?

Wasn’t that also Apple’s last paid OS?

I was wondering why this thankfully hasn't been my experience until you said "carrier locked"... I always buy unlocked. Does that really make a difference?

Yes, the carriers load up the phones with apps that you cannot remove (at least not without rooting the phone).

You can usually disable them, but they are still there.

Well dang, that's another good reason to buy unlocked :P

This is why custom ROM support is the first question I ask when buying a new Android phone

Rather refurbished, because those are longer on market thus development of custom ROM (like LineageOS) is more likely. And of course you save a lot of money.

Totally, by "new" I mean refurbished or used, but new to me :)

Cheap devices get subsidized by shitty adware. The cheaper the device, the more likely that it's full of terrible adware.

Consumers often have a choice, at least between "filled to the brim with crap" and "a modicum of crap", by choosing between buying their phone from a store or from a carrier. Carriers have better deals but shovel their phones full of the worst apps you can imagine. Still, people will buy the crap-filled experience that makes you want to tear your hair out because they like the idea of scoring a better deal.

Nothing like unadulterated greed combined with short-sighed consumer behaviour at scale to drive a market segment into an awful race to the bottom.

The premium devices still have the bloatware.

Yeah, even the iPhone bundles/bakes in google junk

> subsidized

What's a better word here? Adverts cost the consumer, however I'm sure the consumer doesn't get equal recompense. Theoretically a SmartTV with adverts costs less money ("subsidised" due to price competition), but is the consumer actually ($,time) better off?

The costs are invisible and the consumer cannot actually measure the costs (the vendors do measure profitability but this is not legible).

I reckon most people are terrible at judging the value of their own time (especially children and retirees).

Name and shame please. I'm shopping for a cheap first phone for my 13 year old.

I'm looking at HMD or Motorola.

I kind of like Motorola in the cheap android phone space. I have a moto-g stylus in my pocket now, and it's big (which I like), has a heaphone jack, and has an sd-card port. I thought I'd like the stylus, but I rarely use it.

It pre-installs some games, but you can uninstall them. The only thing it forces on you is a weather app which you can deactivate but not uninstall.

I remember back when the iPhone came out, this was perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of it, at least to me. We were so used to phones coming with crap on them and tightly coupled to the carrier. If the carrier didn't want something on the phone, it never got there. So Apple comes along and says "Hey, AT&T, we will make you the exclusive carrier for the iPhone iff you leave the entire experience under our control."

There were lots of downsides to that deal, of course, but I appreciate that it broke the carriers' exclusive control over mobile phones.

"I was so happy to get locked into a different eco system" is all I hear.

You wouldn't get a phone in 2007 that didn't lock you in to something; the question is whose ecosystem you'd prefer to deal with.

I remember the Verizon crapware phone experience well.

I remember when Verizon got deliberately hobbled phones on top of that. Some of the Windows Mobile phones came with up to half the RAM if you dared buy it on Verizon, and they locked the GPS out to use VZ Navigator instead of being able to just throw TomTom on 'em.

I would say their comment had a lot more nuance and thought put in to it than yours did.

I mean sure, but Androids been following Apple's lead, not tother way tround.

Spinning up a competing carrier has a much higher barrier of entry, though, than creating a new mobile phone. If my only choices are carrier-controlled or manufacturer-controlled, I will choose the latter. Gives me way more options.

When you think of old phones, think of the touch interface on a printer.

I don't like Apple either, they are DEFINITELY rent seeking and violating their users' privacy at the same time. There is no excuse for that. I think what the parent post was talking about is something historical. An iPhone at that time was a large step above a Nokia or a Sony Ericsson in terms of flexibility.

Hold on a sec. Nokia and Ericsson made lots and lots of phone modeles. If you're comparing with cheap ordinary models everyone had, then sure, first iphone was great, but that's not a fair comparison. This is:

http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=iphone

I haven't bought an android device for a few years, but the last time I did, it was also a very cheap one for testing. I chose an "Android One" to avoid all these issues. Is something like that still an option?

Your best bet might be one of the Pixel "a" series, which are Google's budget-oriented models. Stock vanilla Android with as little bloat as you can hope for.

Those Pixels have options to open bootloader and after flashing custom ROM that is much cleaner (GrapheneOS) to lock it again. Which is currently most secure way to have clean and secure android device.

Sounds like a Samsung phone... no end of dark patterns and pushing Bixby AI and whatever else. And then once you have the phone set up you get to spend the next 10 minutes uninstalling a load of pre-loadded apps that you didn't want.

Fortunately Android is a pretty diverse range and Samsung is just one player. I had much more user-friendly experiences with Fairphone and Motorola.

This regulation should've happened 25 years ago, because the same thing was done with laptops.

SpyApps everywhere.

Hopefully one day we not only have open software, open hardware but also reproducibly guaranteed secure systems. Now I don't have any idea how this could be verified (and no, Microsoft's "Trusted Computing" is not what I have in mind), but I hope we'll see to this eventually.

If you don’t trust a centralized authority you need decentralized governance…

we've alreaaaay seen that decentralization is an abstract, butnot a reality.

There will always be a move towards centralization when a project gains enough converts because the bulk of concerns are exactly the same but we don't have n+1 people willing to do the necessary legwork to secure.

As such, just like REST apis and their N+1 query problem, forcing everyone to have a security conscious posture is never going to happen.

You absolutely need centralized authorities; what the real argume is about is how that authority is selected, changed and intermediated. The same way we argue about how a stable RAFT algorithm operates.

Move on from this "decentralization is all we need" argument. It's failed and failing.

"Decentralized governance" is just feudalism. What you need is a re-envigoration of democracy. Democracy works, but we have to engage with it positively, both as citizens and as politicians.

Decentralized decision making is pure democracy. What you see to want is representative democracy or a constitutional republic with representative democracy in the form of elected officials.

It will be excluded from any popular OS and will end up a niche thing that no one will use. The issue is the hegemony of big tech companies over the regulations to shape it however they like, and in return they provide the surveillance to legislators.

Has no-one bothered to reverse engineer the app and see what it's actually doing before launching into hundreds of words of breathless conjecture?

If not, this article and almost every comment on this submission is a colossal waste of time.

This is supposed to be a technical website full of inquisitive hackers, right? Then perhaps try to examine the facts instead of guessing and bullshitting.

So a Unity owned bloatware company being used by Samsung is now somehow controversial because it was founded in Israel? Am i reading this right?

That's not the controversy based on the article - it's arguing that because the app is Israeli in origin, it may run afoul of local BDS laws thus another reason for AppCloud to be removed from local device, which is notable because the AppCloud app only appears to be installed on African, Asian, and MENA Samsung phones, where the bulk of countries with BDS laws exist.

The article doesn't appear to take a side one way or the other in the conflict, it's just listing a potential compliance issue.

There is no such thing as BDS laws, only anti-BDS laws. Some muslim countries boycott Israeli-made products, But since Israel is a tech powerhouse only behind the US, almost every tech is Israeli-made at least partially, so again, trying to enforce any boycott is stupid.

BDS is a western concept, legal laws banning business with Israel in the Middle East precede it.

To HN readers, the controversy is likely this:

> the program was found to be quietly invasive as it allows the installer to install programs on the user’s device without permission. It circumvents the user validation process and successfully bypasses multiple security checks, including antivirus programs

I agree that the headline “controversy” is manufactured.

Seems reasonable. Same way "Russian" companies are shady. Doesn't matter if they do something inane . This is really basic geopolitics that only had a short respite... Like less than 30 year period as cold war slowed. This is very normal.

[flagged]

RTFA

> The presence of an Israeli-origin technology component on Samsung phones in WANA countries poses additional problems. Several nations in this region legally bar Israeli companies from operating, and in light of the ongoing Israel–Palestine conflict, the preload of an app tied to such a company becomes even more contentious.

So yes, the presence of Israeli software is a problem in many countries, and may even be illegal.

I’ll wager there is a bit more Israeli tech in those phones than some adware.

Or a heck of a lot of non-phone tech as well.

Apple's A/M-series chips are designed in Israel. My guess is no one is banning iPhones.

From Stuxnet to Pegasus to the 2024 pager attack, Israel has a history of leveraging its tech sector to advance its national security aims through clandestine means (this is not unusual: so does the US, and so does China). If you're a country with not-so-friendly relations with Israel, the company being founded in Israel is absolutely pertinent.

Which _Israeli_ companies were used for Stuxnet or the 2024 pager attack? NSO is not the same as the company from the article since it's explicitly a cyber company.

The more relevant question is, which Israeli companies are currently not involved in covert military operations?

The difficulty in comprehending an answer to this question is precisely why allowing ones military to perform such actions using covert means is so dangerous for a civilian population to support.

War is supposed to be fought in the open in order to protect the civilians.

I suppose when the distinction between soldier and civilian is not so easy to make, the profligate mindset which allows covert, indiscriminate mass murder at scale becomes a norm.

> Which _Israeli_ companies were used for Stuxnet or the 2024 pager attack?

I'll tell you as soon as you tell me exactly why ZTE devices were banned in the United States. The thing about clandestine operations is that they aren't done in the open.

Uhhhh, not sure about you, but I wouldn't want anything Israeli within 10m of my phone.

you probably need to throw away your phone. or something. because never mind of it apple/qualcomm/android/etc - one of R&D centers that all companies have in Israel developed part of it.

The controversy is Israeli remote control over all these phones. Not Israeli R&D contributing to a component.

Edit: I know what they wrote

parent said "anything israeli". phones are partially israeli. including baseband firmware and stuff.

Do you have a source?

For what? That all major companies have r&d center (or few) in Israel?

Nvidia for example tripples size of one of the offices now (out of seven i think) and builds new campus in different city

ROFL.

Best step up to your words and throw away your phone then.

All major tech companies and chip manufacturers have R&D and design centers in Israel.

Is it easy to bake vulns into chips during the design stage only?

Genuine question.

What an insane argument. iPhones are assembled in China, does that mean the iPhone belongs to China? Some companies are bound to have offices in Isn'treal, do pray tell their contributions that are publicly verifiable.

Best throw it away then

If you want to _really_ bar anything of Israeli origin, you should:

- Not use Intel processors, as many are developed in Haifa

- Not use a firewall. It was invented in the IDF.

- Not use Waze. It's Israeli.

- Not use thumb drives. Invented in Israel.

- Not eat cherry tomatoes. Israeli development.

The list goes on and on, but I must add - if you ever suffer a serious head or stomach injury, tell the medics to not use the Israeli bandage.

What does any of that have to do with GP not wanting israeli spyware on his smartphone? Maybe your mention of Waze is tangentially related but that's about it?

Exactly, I unistalled Waze once I knew it was Israeli, as well as avoided about a dozen of VPN providers acquired by ex-Mossad led Kape Technologies

Let me guess, you think shawarma and hummus are also Israeli inventions. It's insane you are trying to pass off firewall as an IDF invention on hackernews. How wildly inaccurate and tone deaf.

Considering the political context around Israel it is clear that cherry tomatoes being an Israeli development (apparently) is completely irrelevant here.

Yep.

The First thing that popped into my head, was

- is this a problem because of bloatware in general? Or…

- because its Israeli bloatware?

If the latter, I would understand your discomfort because of past security intrusions by Israeli companies.

But not if it’s just „IsRa-HeLl bAd“

Why do android phone companies load up the bloatware on their phones? Why can't they provide a plain vanilla version of android and let users to choose the stuff?

The same reason this happens/happened on Windows laptops. The hardware provider gets money to pre-install this software. They can then offer the phone at a lower price with a higher margin.

Supposedly the Pixel line of phones are pretty clean.

I think a lot of this might come down to carrier deals though.

Best bet I would imagine is to buy an Android device not through a carrier and make sure it has the necessary wireless modem bands

AppCloud is not only in India. It is on some OEM version of the phone in the US as well.

How did I know? My phone had random notifications promoting apps that I had never heard of, and I couldn't find a way to disable them. Eventually I found and removed it via adb.

These scumbags.

Any chance you can remember the package name? It's not mentioned in the article or ones it linked to, and I can't quickly find it on my phone. There is the vaguely named "application recommendations" that going by a quick search should be com.samsung.android.mapsagent

com.aura.oobe.att

Apparently only for the at&t variant.

com.samsung.android.app.spage

for t-mobile

Samsung seems to have all sorts of security issues.

I haven't spent any time investigating, because I believe that privacy is nonexistent, but my Samsung phones have always enabled by default, a backup of everything I have (including the removable uSD cards) to a server in South Korea.

Even when I've disabled this behavior, it seems to persist at some level.

I live in the US BTW.

What a trash title, literally just covering bloatware...

For a bloatware that has been owned by a US company for years.

Just originally founded in Israel.

Almost like posting it has an alterior motive.

Actually AppCloud is a software that can install apps remotely. Not bloatware. It is spyware. And the location of the developers (example, being in China) would make it a security concern. And Israel is a security concern for countries that don't recognize Israel.

Why are there so many people in this thread lying about this being bloatware? It's alarming

[flagged]

TL;DR Article claims AppCloud (software in question) has ties to ironSource, an Israeli-founded company now owned by US-based Unity, but never clarifies what those ties are. The author only states that an ironSource tech called "Aura" appears to do something similar to AppCloud. However, the author also points out that AppCloud isn't listed anywhere on ironSource's website. They also acknowledge that there's no evidence currently that AppCloud is doing anything weird. This looks an awful lot like an "Israel bad" article.

Stop buying Samsung products

Getting an Android phone from anyone but Google seems like a nightmare.

I bought an Ipad yesterday. The setup was almost the same, except all the bloat was from Apple itself. Numbers, GarageBand, iMovie, Keynote, Pages, Clips… even the Tips app felt like bloatware.

Wild how every ecosystem has its own "preloaded surprise pack."

Those are easily deleteable though, moreover they don't install third party "recommended" apps.

They are deletable, and frankly, I wouldn't call them bloatware, they are all pretty much decent applications, they don't shove you ads down your throat and a lot of people are happy to use them.

Well, apps probably won't explode.

Edited. This seems to be according worldwide despite the article saying it's in West Asia and Africa.

Why, is privacy less valuable there?

It tells readers whether they might or might not be affected.

The reporting is not accurate. The app is found in phones sold in the US as well.

Source: me who uninstalled AppCloud via adb on a phone purchased from Best Buy.

Thanks that's important data. I started looking into this and found a case in the EU as well.

Most people don't care what stuff is being installed elsewhere, just their region as it affects them directly. I don't know how I'd get through the day if I had to keep up on news from every region of the world, other than the highlights.

…and this, and similar stories, continues to be why I will never trust or own an Android phone.

Even worse is that Samsung phones, at least in my region, come with a "Samsung Global Goals" app installed by default; an app that serves to push a certain political agenda that many find unpalatable. Imagine if your new Xiaomi phone came with an app telling you how good the CCP is.

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