I bought -- full price, retail -- a midrange Samsung phone for a relative recently. The amount of bloatware was incredible. Various social networks and shopping apps were preinstalled. In addition to all the Samsung apps that more or less duplicate the Google stack, poorly. The entire setup process was full of dark patterns designed to extract as much data from you as possible. No way a regular person gets through that without missing something.
If, according to this thread, Samsung is so bad and I don't t want buy a Chinese phone... What are my options for an Android phone?
Is there any Android phone brand/model that is not exploiting its users?
I'm no Android expert but Pixel 7a had a price drop recently (plus good deals on contracts), and GrapheneOS supports Pixel phones. Also quite a few are now made in Vietnam I believe
On Friday, I switched to the Pixel 7a with GrapheneOS and it's costing me CAD$1 per month for the phone on a 24-month contract and I got a better deal on my monthly phone plan. So far, it seems like an awesome phone and the installation of GrapheneOS via the web installer was incredibly easy.
Nice! How's the battery on GrapheneOS? I heard on the stock OS it's pretty bad.
I'm considering buying one as I'm paying £16/mo for just a SIM but I can get a 7a on a contract for the same price!
I was worried too before buying, but with my usage patterns, battery lasts 2 days. Pixel 7a, international edition, GrapheneOS.
That's a good question. I tend to plug my phone in whenever I get in the car, so unfortunately I don't have a good feel for battery life yet. I didn't notice an issue with my Pixel 6a, though.
That sounds like a pretty sweet deal!
Let me disagree with this thread.
I've used flagship Android Samsungs since Google stopped Nexus phones, and they were great. The hardware is fantastic, you can install and change any default app, and their performance doesn't degrade in time.
I can count 4 pre-installed apps that I forgot about. It has much less bloatware than an iPhone, that comes preinstalled with a dozen useless apps that cannot be removed from your home screen.
What apps can’t be uninstalled on iOS?
Back when I used a iPhone for work, I remember having Safari, Apple Music, Apple Rock Band, Apple Podcasts, Apple News and a lot of built-in apps being un-uninstallable and unremovable from my home screen.
Safari was the most egregious, since all other browsers had to use it as a backend.
In current iOS, all apps can be deleted except seven: Settings, Phone, Messages, Camera, Photos, Safari and App Store. All apps can be removed from the home screen.
Safari was the most egregious, since all other browsers had to use it as a backend.
Doesn’t that exactly explain why Safari couldn’t be removed?
It’s poor design, but Safari is one of those special apps that is both UI and system component. Same thing behind the PWA mess.
I buy Motorola phones and they have been great in recent years. I consider them the new Android One. The OS is stock Android. Facebook and LinkedIn are preinstalled, but easily removed. The moto apps add useful gestures. The launcher is very much like the Pixel one, but also easily changed. It uses Google apps for everything, i.e. Gboard for the keyboard. The camera is great. Typing this on an edge 30.
They didn’t want a Chinese phone though.
fairphone.com
Pixel is quite good. Android, straight from the source, and the support is long. Can be made even better with GrapheneOS if you so choose.
I've never seen the bloatware a lot of people on here are talking about. My suspicion is that they bought a phone through a carrier. Carriers push tons of weird bloatware onto their users (which is probably why their models are cheaper). If you just buy a phone, I don't think there will be any obvious bloatware on Samsung phones. There are some duplicate apps, but I'm pretty sure that's limited to Chrome vs Samsung Internet and Google Play vs Samsung Store.
My tablet came with a weird Google Now replacement that I can't remove, but that's the only bloatware I really encountered. The rest was free versions of paid apps like drawing software and the standard Samsung suite. No weird shopping apps, no ads anywhere, just what I wanted for the tablet.
Xiaomi is pretty bad, though. It kind of makes sense, because they need to develop their software for China, where there is no Google cloud, so they've become their own Google. Every app prompts for agreeing with a privacy statement. Some models of phones actually include ads in the system apps (which can be disabled by a setting, but it's still a problem). Their privacy policy is also a blatant lie. I love the bang-for-the-buck nature of Xiaomi phones, but I wouldn't buy them unless there's a good custom ROM available. Other Chinese brands suffer similar problems, but not to the same extend.
Fairphone?
I've been using Google Android phones since the G1 and I'm very happy with their stock OS. Currently on Pixel 7a.
My parents both each have some Samsung and it's awful whenever I have to help them do something.
Buy a Sony Xperia, there is some bloatware, but you get a 3.5mm jack, no bezels and a microSD slot.
Why? You can disable apps from right there on the phone, what does this add over doing that? The FAQ makes some mention of further "uninstalling" them from the user profiles (and deleting cache/data, which you can also do in the settings), but it's not clear to me what that means.
Some OEM bloatware apps cannot be disabled in the Android UI but can be disabled via ADB.
Metro by T-Mobile has some strange bloatware that I was able to disable with adb. I can't imagine living with this garbage day in and day out. Makes me wonder if this is why some people in the US believe iPhone is better than android — they've only experienced carrier bloatware infested android devices.
Nope, it is just worst. Want a smart-phone? Get an iPhone. Want a mobile Linux computer you can make calls from? Android.
Android does not do the 'phone' part right. I constantly complain of a friend with his new expensive s23 or whatever that acts like a cheap phone whenever he gets in a group call and my whole group complains of the ear shattering noise and artifacts from his side immediately (nothing at all wrong with all of our iphones). It was bad enough we couldn't do higher quality facetime audio together, but the expensive phone's hardware on wasn't even good for various apps we tried to talk through.
From another thread they aren't even good at web browsing. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39729397 the entire ecosystem of Android is a mostly poorly cobbled together mobile Linux computer aiming to lower costs as much as possible to sell you ads. Notice how older iphones with worst specs are still working fine?
Still my Samsung S3 with it's forward thinking 2gb of ram in 2012 (4x the 512 in the iPhone 4s) is still sometimes being used as a Linux computer for me in 2024. Awful mic on it then as well.
I have the opposite opinion. If we want to talk about bugs, I literally left the iPhone world just because of the bugs and the poor quality of the software in general. I had error loops when installing apps and the one of my wife has keyboard freeze for 4 seconds at a time. The internet is full of threads of people with this exact problem but there's never any documented way to fix anything in an iPhone, it either fully works or good luck.
Sure the hardware might be better but the software though... Anything related to icloud, the appstore and the accounts themselves looks like it's holding up together with duck tape.
Never heard of it or seen it documented anywhere. What is an "error loop installing apps" and where did you see that documented?
The internet is full of threads of people with this exact problem but there's never any documented way to fix anything in an iPhone, it either fully works or good luck.
Is that hyperbole? There's a video of a guy putting a headphone jack in an iphone 7.
What is an "error loop installing apps" and where did you see that documented?
I can't remember the exact error text but any attempt to install or update an app said something about an error setting up payments (even a free app) and the only way to stop this modal loop was to reboot the device. It's just in a drawer now.
That kind of sums up the general experience I had with the device.
For my wife's keyboard issue it's pretty random, you are typing and then the whole screen freezes for 4 seconds, when whatever you typed while frozen unbuffers all at once. I guess it's some bug in the Vietnamese IME since the keyboard needs to buffer diacritics (I'm just guessing)
Is that hyperbole? There's a video of a guy putting a headphone jack in an iphone 7.
No it's just how it works in iPhone, full of random suggestions in case anything sticks because nobody has an idea on how it works and there's never any debug info.
Another example, I had another error setting up the dev account, nobody knew what to do, even their own support at Apple!
I've never heard of it, but it sounds like a very easy fix.
You can get debug info. I have copied my crash logs.
If your wife's using a 3rd party keyboard they are treated worst and may crash. Android has always gotten better with their interface but they are locking more and more stuff. I would use Android if i didn't always get audio issues, I would rather use a computer with a phone, but not if the phone makes me unlistenable. Hope your Android issues are nonexistent or manageable.
You can get debug info. I have copied my crash logs.
Maybe you can, it just seems harder than adb since I only have Linux machines now.
If your wife's using a 3rd party keyboard they are treated worst and may crash
No this is the standard iphone keyboard which is freezing the screen, I didn't even know you could have third party ones on iphones, I thought they were not allowed by Apple. I guess that changed.
I've never heard of it, but it sounds like a very easy fix.
Yeah sure it can be done technically, I would have to factory reset the iPhone again and it might fix it but I really didn't want to fiddle with it anymore to make it work though, I was already tired of it.
Android has always gotten better with their interface but they are locking more and more stuff. I would use Android if i didn't always get audio issues, I would rather use a computer with a phone, but not if the phone makes me unlistenable.
Personally I never encountered audio issues on Android. Except if we're talking about Bluetooth but I'm convinced it's impossible to make a Bluetooth device that works, I had Bluetooth bugs on Windows, Linux, Android and iOS.
this is why you get stock Android with a Pixel and Fi; although this shouldn't be necessary :(
Interestingly enough, it has gotten better in the sense that I used the phone for a couple of weeks before I put in the carrier sim and the bloat wasn't there (besides some OnePlus apps but those don't pollute my notifications).
Edit: bloat, not boost
Yeah, this is what I have had for my past 3 phones. No bloatware issues at all.
Not to mention FI is cheap as hell if you use internet mostly over wifi.
I can't imagine living with this garbage day in and day out.
What tangible harm is it doing that makes you think you can't live with it? If there's a Facebook binary on my phone that I've never logged into, is it doing anything? Is Candy Crush playing itself in the background if I never launch it?
Full screen ads out of nowhere in the middle of you using other apps, Click bait "news". I don't think you could imagine half of what I saw.
If there's a Facebook binary on my phone that I've never logged into, is it doing anything?
Couldn't it? Apps can start without ever being launched by the user, or continue running in the background after they are "closed", and that means that they can collect data then send it home or to third parties. There's a ton of things an app can do without any permissions or indicating to the user that anything is happening. It's been used for things like listening for audio beacons and reporting them when overheard.
I wouldn't want to trust a company like facebook to not abuse every option available to them to collect data. There's also a problem with vulnerabilities. That "unused" facebook binary might contain a flaw that could be exploited. Getting rid of installed applications you don't need/want is a good way to reduce your attack surface.
On Android TV you can not disable/uninstall the default ad filled launcher without adb.
I just did yesterday on a new chromecast Google TV thingy with the inbuilt function of Projectivy launcher. Installed the launcher, checked the box in settings and now even when restarting I don't see the default launcher.
I am also using projectivity and pressing home button on remote was taking me to default launcher until I uninstalled it via adb.
It's quicker, can be run pre-setup and as others have said, can remove things that you cannot remove through the standard package interface.
Kind of related, a few weeks ago I've been thinking to myself what happened to the open source free software operating system developments for mobile devices? Specifically, how are operating system environments such as GrapheneOS and CalyxOS, etctera, only able to be used on a single company's (Alphabet Inc) manufactured phone devices and not any other devices and where are the operating systems that work on as many to practically all of the devices that exist and the general idea of linux-style developments that represent collectively compiling all the hardware variations to have drivers and support for practically everything for everyone to get mostly the same experience regardless of which hardware they use
Is the mobile computer hardware industry that hostagedly cowardly locked down that this is no longer possible as it used to be, where people don't even own their own computer devices and instead have to use devices that are owned by other entities? Or what other explanation is there for no such multi-device operating systems? Or did I just miss something that I am blind to?
how are operating system environments such as GrapheneOS and CalyxOS, etctera
There are ZERO open source OS for mobile. ZERO. NONE.
even the ones you list doesn't have access to essential drivers. What do they do? they get the driver as binary blobs from the original image, and just ship them. So all those projects are 1) full of closed source kernel drivers. 2) stuck on a specific kernel version to be able to use those binary drivers.
So the MOST those open source versions can do, is set a different set of "system apps" everything else must be the same as the closed source OS. It's barely more than theming in practice.
compiling all the hardware variations to have drivers and support for practically everything for everyone to get mostly the same experience regardless of which hardware they use
Again, there is ZERO open source on those. All you need to support device X is a root exploit so you can get the binary blobs. Done. Now you can ship to that device.
There are ZERO open source OS for mobile. ZERO. NONE.
This is false. Sent from my Librem 5, which runs FSF-endorsed PureOS.
librem5 is a binary blob provider. and you mostly fell for a scam.
they signed the same NDA as other OEM.
your so called open source drivers are full of binary blobs, which ironically are just the chip manufacturer reference implementation code compiled, with little else.
librem5 just shouts the lie louder. it's as closed source as any other device. like raspberrypi in terms of drivers.
...and I'm not going into the illegal investment scam librem company spams every one of their customers.
Did FSF also fall for a scam? Where are the binary blobs in PureOS, show us please. Yes, firmware is proprietary, but it's the best we have. You fell for the security nihilism: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27897975
There is no scam in Purism. I received all my devices, and they're as advertised.
the scam is the illegal investment emails they keep sending to everyone who purchased from them.
about fsf. well, the least worse is still just the least worse. doesn't make it magically open source.
Any source showing the illegality of the investment?
doesn't make it magically open source
It does make the OS FLOSS, which is all they say.
There is Replicant [0] which is completely proprietary blob/firmware free but it has extremely limited hardware support with only support for Samsung devices from 2011-2012.
you're wrong. I'm a previous maintenaner (before the replicant name change).
the whole project was done by teenagers extracting blobs.
then, one, a single, Samsung model was chosen as the holygrail for no other reason other than two devs had it. they worked on reverse engineering some of the essential blobs and providing very crude drop ins (thing barely functional. absolutely no power efficiency concerns, etc).
that one device then got older and cheaper and more devs got it. continue to reverse engineering.
today, a decade latet, that model is very old. functionality is still stuck on 2g or 3g for a 4g modem.
...if modem is that far behind take a guess how bad is the rest of the components.
it's a shit show. and you are correct in that this one is indeed the best example of a fully open source driver mobile.
For example
https://androidauthority.com/grapheneos-3287030/
"Even if you stomach the Pixel-only requirement"
I have not and will not stomach that at all. Nope!
https://grapheneos.org/faq#supported-devices
Nope! I wasn't paying attention, but if I remember, Alphabet/Google was funded to deploy/release Android operating system, and they also were financed to deploy some hardware phones before disappearing to let other companies continue the things and then reappear somehow taking advantage of all the othre companies to outperform all of their manufacturings and whatnot, and then operating systems exist only for the Google phones and none of the others, and this is normal? What? I say F to that coward hijacking others efforts stuff!
I see https://calyxos.org/#Devices Devices section is showing a little bit more than I remember not too long ago http://web.archive.org/web/20230605161332/https://calyxos.or... but still not comparable to what I remember with the likes of OpenWRT, HyperWRT, DD-WRT, Tomato, etcetera. Therefore I do not and will not trust anything GrapheneOS or CalyxOS. Whatever the efforts were that led to wifi routers having lots of open source firmware developments to be supporting lots of different devices, I'd like to see similarly for mobile phones, and whatever concentration there is to finance only developments for Google made phones only, this is red flag hostage coward impression to me, and I will not submit or acquiesce or capitulate to invest in any of that at all, even if nothing else exists.
edited for grammar
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_mobile_operating...
"Base system is open source, but many devices use proprietary drivers for hardware support, and most Android operating systems include Proprietary apps (such as Google Play and other Google apps)."
Okay, so, look at history of AMD GPus and NVIDIA GPUs for proprietary linux drivers and open source/free software alternative drivers that even without the AMD/NVIDIA companies to help at all (regardless of if they did, especially NVIDIA blatantly refusing to help and intentionally making it difficult and whatnot), still there are open source drivers for practically every single AMD and NVIDIA graphics processing unit hardwares to make them work. So, why not the same possibility outcome for mobile computers running Android operating system or other Linux AArch64 or ARM64 architecture o/ses. How is it that barely any signs of strong brave developer programmer humans remain able to dedicate their attention to these efforts that decade ago such skilled programmer developer humans existed but no longer
"Google Pixel 5a... The last Google product before they went full Apple." - resource_waste https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39733518
lol
Probably relevant:
first you have wrong facts about the open source drivers for gpus timeline. They are still not 100% complete, and only were usable last couple years.
Second you forget that while not supporting full 3d performance on those gpu, you still had at least a 2d framebuffer to use your system.
On mobile, Without those blobs, the CPU doesn't initialize. The bootloader won't pass some signature safeboot check. The radio won't turn on. Wifi and bluetooth won't work. The screen won't display anything. the digitalizer won't work. no battery charging. usb into otg? nope. etc etc etc.
IMHO better to root if you can, since then you do get full control as the rightful owner.
Some banking apps detect this, or might detect it in the future, and refuse to work.
In some countries (Scandinavia...) not having the banking app is inconvenient, as it's used for authentication with many other services.
That's a bold understatement, you're pretty much fucked without BankID on your phone.
In Denmark, MitID supports non-phone authenticators. You have to request it, but a few days later they send a TOTP generator keyfob. They also have a version for blind people.
I would find it annoying if I had to carry the keyfob. I have it as a backup.
https://www.mitid.dk/en-gb/get-started-with-mitid/mitid-auth...
Why don't they just use RFC 6238 TOTP?
The system is used for authentication for banking, accessing healthcare records, tax records, filing for divorce (yes, online) and so on. And for doing similar things for ones children, depending on their age.
By using an app or various hardware keys — with a maximum of three active methods — they can reduce the chance that additional people have access, and prevent duplication of the private keys. This isn't possible with a QR code to scan for TOTP (you can scan it on multiple devices, or print it out, or have a computer with malware doing this).
Initial authentication is done using a passport, or in-person at a local government office for people without one (or without access to a phone capable of reading the passport's chip).
(This is just my general understanding of the system.)
Magisk (the main rooting method) allows you to hide root from such apps.
Most apps I use (ie. banking) are bypassed simply by adding them to a hide-list.
The only apps that require a bit more work / expertise are apps that require integrity checks (ie. google wallet).
This doesn't match my experience. Banking apps in Germany often required screwing around with additional Magisk modules, and would often break again after an update. Just not worth the effort.
The only apps that require a bit more work / expertise are apps that require integrity checks (ie. google wallet).
"A bit more work" but only for now... There is a loophole (spoofing the device fingerprint with the one of an old model where non-hardware attestation is still accepted) but Google is starting to ban those models and it's only a matter of time until they're all banned.
What to do with the root access? I did it once, but never needed it.
IMHO rooting is not worth it nowadays.
You can't easily root your phone these unless the device is popular and has some community support. Immediately after buying I tried to root my realme gt 2 device and it got bricked. Fortunately it was under warrenty, I went to to customer support and told them it isn't booting up after an update. They fixed it with an internal tool. I haven't tried since.
Why is it not possible to compile and install a complete clean Android directly from the sources on your phone? What are the things that prevent that?
In general it is possible to do that (assuming the phone has an unlockable bootloader), but you can't do that for the exact same image from the manufacturer, because they don't provide the source for a lot of it.
You might be able to install a third-party, community-maintained OS, like LineageOS, though, if your hardware is supported. The downside is that I believe apps like Google Pay won't work anymore, since they require Google's SafetyNet attestation system to pass. Sometimes there are ways around that, but they always seemed like unreliable hacks to me.
Since when play has been unusable with Lineage? It worked 3 months ago. I cant check that because i got new phone.
One and only problem i see with Lineage is that VoLTE wont work and as we dont have 3G anymore it is must have.
Google Pay, not Google Play.
Hardware support.
Lazy vendors single handedly keeping windows and android going with their lack of cross platform drivers, so frustrating....
True if you replace “lazy” with “ROI-driven”
Closed source device drivers. The mobile phone market is like the desktop market in the 90s
Didn't use to be that way. Android phones with Qualcomm SoCs used to be incredibly easy to modify with alternative versions of Android. That changed around 2014-15, can't remember why.
Now it seems only Google's own Pixel phone is the only one that's hackable enough to run LineageOS or /e/ or other de-Googled distros.
LineageOS has active support for 200 devices, and many more if you're up for some hacking, and download the ROM from the XDA forums. /e/ sells phones preinstalled with /e/OS, Pixels, Samsungs, and the Fairphone [0]. CalyxOS can also go on a bunch of phones.
That works on x86 PC platform because boot process and hardware discovery are well standardized, and Kernel is overwritable while the OS is running. Those are not guaranteed on non-PC computers.
AFAIK you can just do that with Google Pixel phones. I'm not saying its easy but the source code is all there.
I tried one of these lists on a (just factory reset) Xiaomi. Ended up breaking on reboot - immediate crash after login, and it was unusable.
Managed to fix it, but learned to be careful - what might be critical for one model might be bloat for another.
Could you share logs with uninstalled packages led to this, please?
Probably the Security center or the Mi account app. It will send the phone into a reboot loop.
Here's a writeup about packages which are safe to remove in MIUI: https://wooptoo.com/blog/safe-to-remove-packages-miui/
This is from a few years ago but it should still apply today.
Thanks. Both com.miui.securitycore and com.xiaomi.account are marked as unsafe for deletion. So it was somewhat expected to break. If we are talking about right packages, of course.
https://github.com/Universal-Debloater-Alliance/universal-an...
Probably something on https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OSw05IqGrIJSEi4xcEMiV56xw4t....
I'll try to reproduce if I get time.
Thank you, quickly checked. There is a bunch of risky to uninstall/disable packages here. No wonder it broke.
It will either make your phone unstable or do nothing significant.
Tell us you've never run this on a Samsung without telling us you've never run this on a Samsung.
Don’t mind me saying it, but I’ve always found this comeback insufferable. It is smug, especially since it is overused as an argument terminator all over Reddit.
In this case I actually agree with your “side” of the argument, but not the construct.
I don't mind, you're right.
I made the mistake of only lending the same amount of effort as the comment I was replying to: not a lot. Everyone else has said it, but these tools are essential to avoid a lot of the awful OEM software that Samsung forces on its users.
you CANNOT brick your device with this software!
Disable Knox on a Samsung device and it will brick itself. Luckily when this happened to me I was still connected over ADB, able to re-enable it and the device unbricked
if you were able to reboot the device, was it really ever bricked?
Not "reboot". Re-enable the package I had disabled. If I had disconnected the phone from ADB it probably would have been soft-bricked forever.
You can delete Knox on some Samsung phones after reflashing the stock firmware.
This project is unmaintained since a year. For an up-to-date and maintained fork see https://github.com/Universal-Debloater-Alliance/universal-an...
Thanks!
Belatedly changed from https://github.com/0x192/universal-android-debloater above. Thanks!
Where one can find an up to date list of obscure packages on an Android device with short description what it actually does and the impact if it was disabled/uninstalled? I'm especially interested in possible dependencies between such packages, when uninstalling one seemingly unrelated package might break something else.
This [1] is the list that UAD uses.
[1] - https://github.com/Universal-Debloater-Alliance/universal-an...
Thank you, that's quite a big list.
+1. ADB, either directly or indirectly is the only choice to debloat Android devices. This was the case of one of my old tablets (a cheap 10'' Mediacom crap) that resisted every rooting attempt, no matter which tool I could try. Removing unneeded services and stuff became a breeze, although the process is quite dangerous and I ended up with something that can't run Google services anymore, but does run Whatsapp for the 7-8 contacts I couldn't convince to use email, and download from F-Droid, which is enough for me.
Yes, I have been using canta with shizuku that enables wireless debugging for this.
https://shizuku.rikka.app/ https://github.com/samolego/Canta
Related Android equivalent commands used in this project:
`dpkg --get-selections`: `adb shell pm list packages | sort`
`dpkg -r <pkg>`: `adb shell pm uninstall -k --user 0 <pkg>`
1) `adb shell dumpsys activity service SystemUIService`
2) search for "icon slots: " and note down names
3) `adb shell settings put secure icon_blacklist battery,wifi,clock, ...` (blacklist is overwritten by new list upon running this command)There's lot of undocumented things you can do with those, which the developers include because of their own itches. For example, i know most of the android and pixel core team at google have toggles for wifi and data. But they shipped a single quick setting tile for both. Yet there is a hidden setting to bring the two tile mode back.
why that happens at google so often?
Why write this in rust to execute shell commands?
Ease of use I suppose, looking up package names and manually pasting them in is really slow.
Would be more willing to be a guinea pig if there is more info on what will be removed. There are bloats in my Samsung phone but there are also useful features unique to it that I wanna keep (eg DEX), or things that if removed may break the phone in some nuanced ways.
I guess, the ultimate solution is to ditch Android and just use a proper Linux on the phone, once some more devices are properly supported: https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices
I think there is room in the Android ecosystem for a producer to make and sell bloatware less phones, a bit like Apple does, and at steep markup too !
Thanks for this! I was able to uninstall Horizon Feed and Social from my Quest 3 using this tool!
Just disable the apps, no need to debloat.
https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/universal-android-debloa...
Similar GUI tool for debloating and customizing non-rooted Amazon Fire tablets via ADB:
https://xdaforums.com/t/windows-linux-tool-fire-toolbox-v33-...
+1, I've used UAD with great success on a OnePlus.
Thanks, but I'm still sticking with CalyxOS.
The first time I had a samsung phone I noticed after about two weeks that every single word I typed into any application was being collected and sent to a third party whose privacy policy said it was used to collect data about my interests, my social life, to make guesses about my intelligence level and education, and that the data would be sold for "market research" among other things.
No user would ever suspect that the keyboard that came with their cell phone would be letting third parties read all their texts and emails to do those things. I'd assumed the keyboard was just a part of the OS. I only found out after I just happened to long press a key long enough to get an "about samsung keyboard" window and clicking around to find a privacy policy that said which company they were sending keystrokes to, and then reading that company's privacy policy.
I immediately found an open source keyboard to replace samsung's with. I'll say one thing for them, collecting everything everyone types into their devices meant that the samsung keyboard had really good spellchecking/predictive text capabilities. I'd never go back to using it, but there are times I wish the keyboard I replaced it with had a better spellchecker.
Oh dear. I had disabled the Samsung keyboard for some other, but it seems it got reenabled again.
Maybe Google broke some API endpoint and the old keyboard didn't do the update grind.
No warning what so ever for their spyware taking over the keyboard functionally.
The need for some FOSS mobile is really over due by now.
Edit:
Which keyboard did you pick?
The need for stronger legislation is overdue by now.
There is already a Foss mobile OS, it's called Android, or more specifically a distribution of it like LineageOS. But installing it is so difficult that only 1% of people have the technical know how to even attempt it, and it's getting more difficult as manufacturers introduce more and more hurdles in this process.
Which is all irrelevant anyway because the vast majority of people done even realise that everything they see, do, or type on their phones is reported to hundreds of companies, processed, and te-sold to thousands of companies all over the world.
We need regulation, full stop.
It's regulation that forces people into Google and Apple ecosystems. Due to the payment security regulation I'm no longer able to use Android phone without Google services. SMS authentication is gone and I must have a bank app that must be installed from Google Play and uses Google services, also it detects root and stops working. Also, my bank used to have an app that completely bypassed Google Pay and worked even offline, like a card would - also canceled by the regulation.
Blocking root is definitely not an EU thing. BankID runs just fine on my Magisked phone, the only payment app I've had issues with was Google Pay.
The regulation says that system integrity has to be verified. Some banks don't comply, but many (every one I use) do.
BTW magisk has a way to hide from the apps, so that might be the reason - that doesn't mean there isn't a problem with the regulation. But 2 of my 3 banks see through that. And one of them doesn't want to load on LineageOS even if it's not rooted because it's compiled in some dev mode that might allow something...
Every single bank in my country uses BankID, along with several governmental services.
Cool, but not sure what is the point
That it's not one tiny renegade bank breaking the rules.
The issue here isn't that there is regulation, it's that the regulation is badly written. For essential services such as banking and government stuff, you shouldn't be forced to rely on things like the Google Play Store and Apple stuff. This kind of stuff should work even on a debloated, degoogled phone. And the regulation must be improved, not thrown away.
Politicians of course have hard time with technology, so of course the regulation will be terrible for users, especially given the Big Tech lobbying, but still. We should do better.
I'm a citizen of a small EU country that has voting power in the EU parliament near zero percent. They should do better, indeed, but what can I do. Much bigger fishes (even the banks) tried to convince the EU this is bad, it probably didn't even register on their radar. From my perspective, the regulation will always be bad, I can't do anything about it however hard I try, and so it shouldn't exist at all.
You can bring this to the attention of other EU citizens so that they too badger their representatives about this. It's not like any individuals vote in a larger EU country is worth more than yours.
But a sentence said in German or French goes much farther than in Slovenian or Croatian.
Aside: there is also /e/OS (or MurenaOS - their naming is inconsistent). It is basically LineageOS that someone else installs for you so you get everything in a package [0].
They sell many phones, but it also runs nicely on Fairphones if you want a phone that you can repair (there is of course a compromise in price / performance there - depends on what matters to you the most).
Not affiliated, just a happy customer.
[0] https://e.foundation/
From what I read, Murena has a Google Play services reimplementation that isn't compatible with Lineage. Is that still the case?
What do you mean incompatible with LineageOS? In LineageOS you have to choice to install Google services like Google Play, or use the Aurora store.
In /e/os/ they have their own app store, App Lounge, with which you can install apps from Google Play through the Google Play API, similar to how the Aurora store does it. And you can also find open-source and PWA apps in it.
More info: https://doc.e.foundation/support-topics/app_lounge
No idea about that, never heard anything similar.
I use fdroid and aurora store for installing apps, and push notifications work nicely using microg. Of course microg needs to connect to G servers (no way around it), but at least it works and there is no G app running on the phone.
Ye that is true.
As I see it the problem is with the phone manufacturers, only supporting Google.
Also, there is this problem with banks requiring signed OS:es for their silly app "security".
There should be regulation that requires bank to offer a dedicated hardware OTP solution. Mobile apps security (banking or not) is abysmal anyway.
Ye it is strange that they abandon the simple, safe, cheap and idiot proof key device and go for some convoluted 2FA app that is run on the same device anyways.
AnySoftKeyboard I've been using it ever since. It's got a lot of customization options and all the keys I need.
Thanks. It seems good.
I did the mistake of trying to find one via Google Play. It pushes so much malware to the top and wont allow you to filter the search. Discoverability there is zero.
It is like I always forgot I need to use fdroid and open Play by muscle memory.
F-Droid tends to be a much better first stop if you are searching for non-hostile apps.
Hmm, seems to not be available for my Pixel 6. The github looks very active but there hasnt been a release there (or Google Play or Fdroid) in over 2 years.
Other alternatives: OpenBoard, FlorisBoard and HeliBoard (OpenBoard fork). Excluding FlorisBoard beta and HeliBoard, these also have quite infrequent releases like ASK.
I find it mind blowing that:
1. Samsung is able to sell phones like that legally. 2. People are not in jail. 3. Governments somehow think it's ok that random companies can see everything their citizens do online. National security risks maybe? Trade secret issues?
It's almost suspicious to the point where I would start thinking those third party spy companies are possibly (US/5 eyes) government run?
“Mind blowing” is too strong a word when every thread about Apple on HN is demanding the iPhone be opened up to the same, taking away non-tech people’s choice to buy a bloat free and privacy defaulted device designed to stay that way even if people more technically savvy try to hook in.
It’s a fine line, of course, since the same non-tech people love IAP and ad-supported, as shown by the folks opting into ads on Hulu, Netflix, and Amazon Prime decades after similarly opting into ads on paid cable. So how to let users have ad-tech supported apps, without ending up like the Android ecosystem?
Apple’s approach was a curated ecosystem, and the level of hate for it tells you app makers aren’t worried they should be in jail, they’re worried iOS users have that sweet sweet “wallet share”. HN’s EU DMA threads tell you plenty voices don’t just want what they do legal, they want it illegal to slow their roll.
PS. A lot of big data and big analytics cross pollinates with the US government. Three letter agencies even do VC deals.
Meanwhile I'm over here on a rooted android phone with no pre installed anything and a custom build of chromium that let's me have ublock origin on my phone. And RCS still works cause I guess they can't detect my old version of magisk.
I run u-block origin on my iPhone with Kagi Orion. What's your point?
If it's not open source and chromium based why even bring it up?
They don't care as long they are not Chinese.
Like this: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-17/coalition-steps-up-ca...
well websites ad-tech have been very able to track mouse movement/location, characters pressed (but not submitted) for 15 years at least; people are fine with this fact too (even if its 1 or 2 monopolies that phone home - and then share data lol)
android's have done similar for a very long time; customers have known about it, and turn a blind eye cuz its a new-shiney
Yes, but this "makes sense" considering that data is being sent to US companies that are basically integral part of the NSA by now.
So it makes sense from a US-gov perspective.
My point was that the Samsung spyware is sending data about (for example) US users to non-US companies and government (South Korea). I guess they're also integral part of the NSA by now. I have no other explanation :P
capitalist democracy suverloence means getting around those pesky nonspying laws by just buying free market privacy invasion data.
How did you discover this? Has it been written about? Seems pretty scandalous.
He goes on to explain it was in the keyboards About menu
But there is no "privacy policy" on the Samsung keyboard about page.
The Samsungs privacy policy on the web states this:
Samsung Keyboard information: The words that you type when you enable “Predictive text”. This feature may be offered in connection with your Samsung account to synchronise the data for use on your other Samsung mobile devices. You can clear the data by going to the “Predictive text” settings.
Source: https://privacy.samsung.com/privacy/samsung
I wouldn't doubt if it's changed a few times. The phone was a 2016 Galaxy J3 V. I no longer remember the name of the 3rd party they were using for predictive text at the time, but I know that in the past they've used SwiftKey and Grammarly
Right you are, thanks.
When we were young, this was called a keyloggger and one running was a sign that your computer was compromised.
I guess times have changed.
Keyloggers are generally installed without consent. These keyboards are chosen, even if there terms are buried in a EULA it would take days to read.
If you buy a laptop and the OEM has pre-installed a keylogger then it is still a keylogger. Most people don't choos their Android keyboard but use whatever is the default on the device they bought.
It still is compromised, but somehow we have normalized the idea of our own systems being compromised by our OS and system app developers.
I suspect it's npt just Samsung. Both google and microsoft (SwiftKey) does the same thing.
The worst part is that the most used national ID-function now stops you from using third party "approved" keyboard due to (misguided) security reasons. Both AnySoftKeyboard and AOSP keyboard is banned.
I wouldn't mind so much of Google/Microsoft/Samsung etc collected all data in house (including subcontractor companies who won't share this information with anyone else). If they kept it to themselves and said "just trust me, bro" to advertisers and kept my data to themselves I don't think I'd mind too much. But clearly that's not what happens here. They don't have nearly enough leverage against the advertisers.
NoRoot Firewall app (I'm not affiliated). I must have brought it up in every Android security related post in HN that I've came across.
I use it on all my Android devices. I block all traffic in most apps.
Some Android phones allow you to allow/block Data and/or WiFi separately. My Samsung 4G tablet doesn't allow me to switch off Data or WiFi for some apps, especially the system ones.
This is where NoRoot Firewall does all its good work. It has Global Block list (all ads/trackers go there) and for each app I individually block or allow certain IPs.
So if "Samsung Keyboard" app wants to send your typing home, you block Data/WiFi and leave it trying :)
Can you please provide an installation link? Searching Google Play for it brings a lot of junk.
Indeed. 99% of people will never even realise this is happening. Its crazy that "reading everything typed in a person's device without that person's awareness" is not something that has been legislated into oblivion.
I was furious when I found out that the default keyboard was infested with Grammarly, sending all my keystrokes without consent. Embarrassing for a $1200 flagship device.
This is a user/psychology problem.
No one in their right mind is suggesting Samsung. Heck, similar to Apple, you have swaths of people warning you about Samsung.
Samsung lives and dies off their huge marketing budget. Buying their phone is more of a psychology thing, than 'I did lots of research and I bought a high quality phone'.
What android brand are people going with? I thought Samsung was the biggest alternative to pixels
I'm real tempted to go asus because of how good their other devices have been, will see what happens this time. Tired of my pixels constantly overheating when trying to take pictures after navigating to a place i want to take pictures with the 4a+5a. It's not just a bad phone, I've inevitably broken a screen or submerged one and had to replace it (apparently the ip68 isn't fool proof either..)
I'll be trying Asus since they have been the best when it comes to laptops. They also have lots of nice hardware like Aux ports.
Google Pixel 5a... The last Google product before they went full Apple.
I'm clearly out of the loop... What do you mean by going full Apple?
Check out the official Asus support forums before you buy.
I got a ZenFone8 when it came out and was very satisfied with it at the time. Then, a month later, posts started popping up with people reporting that their phones just randomly rebooting and bricking. I think there were a few hundred cases reported. To this day, there is no official response from Asus. I used to carry a backup phone with me every time I was away from home for longer than a day because I was afraid that my phone could die at any moment.
Also, every update seemed to introduce a new bug that only got fixed in a month or so with the next update. So we had broken face unlock for a month, broken Google Pay, broken notifications, among other things.
I haven't been following reports for the ZF9 or ZF10, but I think they had similar problems.
To top it all off, the official unlocker / root tool from ASUS has been disabled for over a year by now, and nobody knows when it will work again.
All in all, ASUS phones (at least the ZenFone line) do have great hardware, but official support is abysmal.
Yup, there's a reason I'm still rocking it. Spec wise the 7a legitimately seems like a downgrade, and that's excluding the lack of headphone jack.
Other than the palm pre, my first smartphone was the galaxy nexus. It's still probably my favorite smartphone ever -- samsung hardware and google software both going full throttle really is the ideal, but for some reason they just don't play ball like that anymore.
I just bought a Motorola Moto G73 for $180, was 50% off as precious gen phones often are once the new comes out.
I got a Samsung S21 as my daily driver, but just wanted to check out a non-Samsung one over time.
So far I've been very impressed. It comes with Google apps for almost everything, the Moto specific stuff seems to be addons you can easily ignore.
Even came with a transparent protective case and audio jack.
Performance-wise I don't notice any difference in normal use, ie surfing, pictures and such. I don't play games though, there the S21 would blow it out of the water according to benchmarks.
Screen isn't quite as good, but close enough that I'd be happy with it as a primary phone.
Only thing that's a bit of a downer is they only do 3 years of security upgrades it seems. This is a bit short I feel.
Haven't tried any of the other brands over time in recent years, just adding my 2 cents.
I like Sony personally. They let you root.
For me it's more of "I'm no longer a kid so I don't have time to do lots of research". Samsung gets my money because their flagships are reliably good.
You can't spend a couple of days researching an essential, expensive device you're going to use for at least the next 2-3 years?
What better hardware is there?
The hardware doesn't have to be better, could be equivalent but with less spyware or bloatware.
What equivalent hardware is there?
supposedly there will come a time after "no longer a kid" where due diligence is the among the top things worth doing
That's called retirement, where once again one has too much time and too little money.
"I'm no longer a kid. i just buy the one from the louder advertisement"
riiigth.
This is a ridiculous take. Samsung is the entire reason Android didn't go the way of WebOS and Windows Phone.
Samsung had pressure-sensitive pen support on Android 5 years before iOS. Samsung DEX desktop environment can turn my phone into a proper work machine with just a USB-C display cable and a lapdock.
They've also had folding phones that can turn your phone into a tablet for several years, but I suppose we'll need to wait until 2030 when Apple launches it "the right way" to recognize it as an innovative form factor.
is dex actually useful?
it sounds fantastic hence i suppose there is a catch
Yes it is. Floating window support makes a big difference for actual multitasking. In Dex you can also drag and drop files and images, which is not supported on Android. Considering that you can use Termux for web dev work, with a proper desktop environment, it becomes an actual computer instead of a locked down Google Docs type of device.
The catch with Dex is that it's only offered on the high end models: Galaxy S and Galaxy Z Fold series phones.
I've had multiple Samsung Android devices before buying the midrange phone. The hardware, I found, was universally pretty good. They were one of the few manufacturers with a moderately sized flagship device (the new Pixel 8 also qualifies, which is great). I bought the midrange device because it was one of a few phones priced around 300 EUR with more than two or three years of updates.
"No one in their right mind is suggesting Samsung. Heck, similar to Apple, you have swaths of people warning you about Samsung."
Apple and Samsung are the two most popular phone brands in the world, so it's not like "everybody knows not to use them" as you suggest. Actually, it's the complete opposite.
I have a Samsung tablet (Galaxy Tab S9+) and I not only suggest but downright recommend it. Sure, right away I switched away from their default apps (launcher, notes, keyboard, etc) but it wasn't difficult.
Maybe they got me with their clever marketing but there doesn't seem to be competitive hardware in this class (fast, oled screen, 5g, overall build quality) available from another manufacturer.
Isn’t it more that Samsung, almost like apple, has great cameras? At least that’s what I often heard, I don’t go near flagship devices and root everything, so no personal experience.
On my S21 it's an option. I can't recall turning it off, but it (and the other 3rd parties) are off. Perhaps I did so indirectly during initial setup.
Could it be that it's a US-specific thing? My last three phones have been EU-sold Samsung S series, and the only things I'd consider "third party bloat" were pre-installed versions of Facebook and MS Office, both easily removable.
The Samsung replacement apps is down to personal preference, I find them easier to use than Google "originals".
Having casually interacted with phones from other brands, I consider Samsung among the best Android options as far as software and UX goes.
It is not an US thing. You got a "Bixby" button right? You can't remap it to something usefull. There should be a gesture to swipe up "Samsung Pay", etc.
I was able to remap my Bixby button on my previous Samsung Phones. I usually put it to Google search and double click to the camera.
The newer phones (since ~2019) don't have Bixby, and Google Pay launches automatically when touching an NFC posnet.
You can if you accept the Samsung Bixby ToS. Or did you find a way around that?
I think it's sales channel dependent. Most carrier locked phones run carrier tailored OS that often include bloatware. Unlocked phones and/or phones sold in rights conscious regions would contain less.
I've used couple carrier branded phones, that `pm list` commands I posted in a different comment returns literally more than dozen of com.carrier.carriertrademark packages.
This was a retail (unlocked, non-carrier) phone in Europe. The sales channel was Amazon.
This was in Germany, so no. It's probably a midrange vs flagship thing, or it has gotten worse over time. I had an S10 and I don't remember it being so bad.
Enterprise edition, maybe? The keyboard itself does not seem to have a privacy policy ("about" shows intellectual properties and open source licenses), but the voice-input has. Third-party options are disabled by default.
But even with everything disabled (predictive text, spell checker (as may be obvious reading this), ...), it does cause network traffic.
Any login-data ever used can now be considered leaked. Great.
I don't think it's US specific. Have faced a similar situation with the last two budget phones I bought in India.
Bloatware, dark patterns, opted-in privacy invasions, and unavoidable privacy infringement.. I feel that Samsung is somewhere in the top of that spectrum. Which commodity Android device vendor has the least of that out-of-the-box?
Motorola
Don't know how it compares to other manufacturers, but I've been pretty happy with the minimal BS that comes on my last two Sony phones.
Unihertz
Asus? Though I'm not sure what's it sending in the background, but there was no legal jargon that I had to agree to, to use any of the apps. There were barely any custom apps, it pretty much relies on the stock Android apps.
Welcome to the future. It will be A cyberpunk dystopia just like in Cyberpunk 2077, but much sooner than 2077 IMHO.
We've been in the cyberpunk dystopia timeline for at least 10 years, maybe since the 90s.
My grandparents assured me we’ve been heading to dystopia since the invention of the television. Pretty sure their parents said the same thing about radio.
Presumably if you go far enough back you’d find warnings of dystopia applied to coming down from the trees.
I am a grandparent myself I just don't have any grand children nor children just yet.
What are the reasons someone would want to buy any Android device beside a new or used Google Pixel?
Don't want to give money to Google. And the hardware is sad compared to any recent Samsung flagship.
Combination of price and length of software support.
The bloat depends on the manufacturer. I've used a bunch of Android phones over the course of the last 15 years.
Sony Ericsson, Motorola - Pretty much stock Android. Though this was almost a decade ago, so not sure what's their state now.
Xiaomi - Absolutely filled with bloat, but really cheap + flagship specs. Easily fixed by flashing LineageOS.
Pixel 1st gen - No bloat, stock
Asus - My current phone. No bloat, though it has a lightweight skin + QoL stuff that I don't mind. I use it non-rooted + stock OS
I'm amazed people buy Samsung anything.
I only had 1 poor quality phone that cost $400, 10 years ago, and I was traumatized.
Occasionally I get a work Samsung phone and they really are the Apple of Android.
"the Apple of Android" doesn't communicate anything to me other than that you dislike both Samsung and Apple; there are any number of things someone might dislike about Apple and so far as I know there isn't the sort of general consensus that would make such a phrase meaningful.
(I get the impression from your comments in this thread that maybe you're trying to create such a consensus or the illusion thereof, to get people used to seeing Apple casually referred to as an exemplar of some unstated kind of badness, or something like that. That sort of thing never works.)
imho the galaxy s4 mini was peak smartphone and thou the specs got better, the devices became increasingly bigger, heavier and less useful
It's insane how prevalent this is. The other day, I opened my calculator app and was met with a cookie banner (https://imgur.com/a/njJEiqY) - I uninstalled it on the spot out of sheer incredulity. The irony was that I originally installed Simple Calculator because it was simple and open source, so I presumed it would escape being a trojan horse for data collection. I guess not.
All the "Simple" apps were recently sold to a company that's apparently filling them with ads.
There's a group that forked the original open source apps:
https://github.com/orgs/FossifyOrg/repositories
Wow, terrible news aboue the sale. I trust the copies I installed from f-droid won't be updated then.
My phone is Sony, and came pre installed with the Microsoft SwiftKey keyboard.
I use it since it seamlessly swaps between enabled languages. I can write something like "meet me at Østerport Station" smoothly.
Thanks, I was searching a keyboard that supports this properly for a while. Sadly no Foss option out there I know about :/
In Canada, Samsung phones sometimes have the Facebook app pre-installed, but that can be disabled, and won't show up again. Besides that, there's no bloatware on my phone other than the default Google apps (Google Meet, Google Pay etc).
I had a similarly appalling experience with a Samsung smartphone in, I think, 2012? Since then, I swore to never but anything Samsung again.
Same experience with Samsung, only several years behind. The build quality is excellent, but the bundleware level is unbelievable. And the Samsung software seemed like a cheap bolted-on thing, on top of the perfectly good Android base.
Samsung's SMS and Phone apps also upload user data to some shady data broker. Never buy Samsung. If by any stroke of misfortune you're forced to use it, debloat it as much as possible and use a firewall with internet connection disabled by default.
Weird, I've had Samsungs flagship phones since 10 years back and never had any app on them that would be considered bloatware. There are a bunch of low-key note-taking apps etc that you can just ignore. Like another poster wrote, maybe it's a US-thing?
I actually use the Samsung web browser, because it allows ad-blocking out of the box, which Chrome on Android won't allow...
I've always used gboard as a keyboard (googles keyboard) and disabled the options to get really predictive and smart as I'm sure that makes it learn more closely and potentially send back data to google etc.
For me i've felt Samsung flagships have the best hardware, OneUI is very good compared those TouchWiz days. Then you have these bloatwares, first thing i do after getting any Samsung phone is doing `pm uninstall –k ––user 0 <bloatware.apps>` the linked tool does the same in a more user friendly way. One thing which that still blocks is i see you can't still remove some things like samsung account stuff, knox related stuff..etc, unless you flash a custom rom.