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Comment by nine_k | Hacker News Reader

Which apps are the bloatware I keep hearing about? I use an S20 for several years, and the only custom (non-vanilla Android) apps I seem to be using are the camera, and the photo gallery in connection to it. Both are fine, do not require a Samsung account, etc.

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The last Samsung phone I owned had a hardware button for launching Bixby. I've never wanted to use Bixby in my life. To this day I have no interest in learning what it actually does. You could not change the function of this button. It was just a button that I would press accidentally that would begin the apparently laborious process of starting up Bixby.

I'll probably never buy another Samsung.

Edit: Just thought of another one. I remember reading the news about how Android SMS was getting upgraded to have emojis or reactions or something. I don't remember the details. But it didn't work on my phone. A year later, I realized it was because I was using the Samsung messages app, instead of the Google one. I didn't even realize it.

I had a phone with a Bixby button too. I remapped it to other apps, and never used Bixby. I wish phones had more hardware buttons again.

The one I had didn't have any obvious way to remap the button. Across several years of ownership, I probably spent a total of an hour looking for such a capability. Certainly more than I did investigating what "Bixby" is.

Now I have a ulefone, a budget brand with no particular name recognition. It has a button in the same place, with an easy way to map it. And it cost a quarter of the Samsung. shrug

It's so bad that phones come with a "Samsung Global Goals" app to push the UN ideology.

>The Samsung Global Goals app is a, CSR initiative partnering with the UNDP to promote 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, fight inequality, and fix climate change by 2030.

>to push the UN ideology

I think you fell into the wrong rabbithole somewhere

Such virtue signaling by app is lame and hypocritical, but the UN is far too divided to be pushing anything.

The wrong rabbit hole of finding a pre installed app pushing politics to be icky.

I honestly don’t know what is political about saving resources and our planet. The details on how to do it are potentially politics, but that’s not what the SDGs are about.

It's a 42 day old account that complains about "UN ideology". Just flag and move on.

I don't know why you rightoids have fixated on the UN 2030 thing. I had to do endless projects about it (SDGs and similar) in college and it was just the most milquetoast, unrealistically hopeful thing ever.

I don't really know what the big deal is.

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