This is the sorta shit that will likely be in the EUs sights soon. Installing applications nobody asked for because of the carrier? That sounds fucking insanely invasive. It’s like Adidas installing a camera in your apartment because you bought a pair of sneakers.
This is the sorta shit that will likely be in the EUs sights soon.
You mean the same regulator that unconditionally approved the buyout of Activision-Blizzard by convicted monopolist Microsoft? Yeah, no. Nothing is to be expected by EU regulators.
That’s kind of an extreme example lol unless the game is asking for insane permissions. Still I get your point and hopefully the EU acts on it. Especially since they appear to be humanity’s only hope against shit like this
That’s probably because the EU generally isn’t run by a two party system, where both parties are actually just center-right neoliberals. If you want EU style protections, you have to actually fight for it, like pretty much every European country did.
The two party system isn’t the only problem though, there’s also:
Money being a form of speech – EU MEPs aren’t soliciting billionaires for money to spend on TV ads
The 10th amendment – prevents any national effort where the federal govt uses a power not explicitly granted to it in the constitution. Obamacare tripped up here for instance, and Obamacare is far from national socialized healthcare. It was a feature when people identified more with their local culture, but in an era when every American identifies as American-first, and engages the political system accordingly by only knowing or caring about national candidates and parties, it becomes a bug.
States that should have never been states – the US Senate took a heavy rural turn in the 19th century as vast, sparsely populated territories were given statehood. Nowadays this means to buy two US Senators you only need to gaslight ~600k people with advertising (the population of Wyoming). The founding fathers never really developed a solid plan for how the west would be settled, and it shows.
Powerful and unaccountable Court – the Supreme Court is given authority over both other branches, serving life terms, with few guidelines or restrictions. A party with the Presidency and Senate at the right time can gain a majority of the court and undo (or manufacture) precedent at the snap of a finger. The resulting system makes it far easier to capture the court than to pass a constitutional amendment. Think abortion should be legal? Here’s a roundabout legal justification for that. Oh the new majority thinks it shouldn’t be? Okay now it’s gone. It’s a chaotic way to handle bedrock rights like access to healthcare and privacy (neither of which are mentioned anywhere in the US constitution). The constitution should be malleable enough that the court is strictly tasked with interpreting the letter of the law. The US shouldn’t be relying on legal gymnastics to legalize abortion and gay marriage. It’s unstable and undemocratic.
Electoral College – the leader of the country, not just the Executive but the Head of State, is elected in a way that respects statehood more than personhood. It is more concerned with making sure Wyoming gets a fair vote than making sure John Doe in Queens does.
First past the post voting – this is another oversight by the founding fathers that many European republics were able to avoid, and it’s the root cause of the two party system. But it also makes gerrymandering possible, which completely breaks both state-level politics and the US House. It makes so many seats into “safe seats” that the “money is speech” briberies become much easier to allocate.
Racism – almost every dumb thing about American politics can be traced back in some form to slavery, segregation, or racism. Why is every state given 2 senators? Slavery. Why were some of those rural states admitted? Also slavery. Why did White Americans support progressive policies in the 30s, 40s, and 50s? Segregation. Why did the entire Deep South flip from Democrat to Republican in the late 60s? Also segregation. It’s America’s original sin and it’s still playing a role.
Every one of those things plays a role in the US not adopting stricter privacy standards, or leading the way in anything except military might. It’s why American politics is so broken that even a majority of voters wanting to fix it isn’t enough.
Yeah, I would like clarification if this came from the carrier or Samsung.
I keep my Galaxy S21 up to date, and these have not been installed for me. But I haven’t had an update in the last few days, so it’s possible it’s an upcoming update I haven’t seen yet.
But I bought my phone off Amazon; they’re usually cheaper that way, and it’s unlocked already. I don’t get them via my carrier (AT&T for what it’s worth).
Verizon does stuff like this too. It downloaded TikTok and other garbage every update. Once I couldn’t take it anymore I got rid of the app downloading it using ADB
I hate that. One of the reasons I dislike Samsung phones. Last phone from them was a Note 8 and unless they go back to a pure Android experience, I won’t get another. We know that isn’t happening any time soon.
Honestly I’m super over all our current choices. Im on an iPhone and while I like their privacy stuff slightly better than android, there are lots of things I don’t like.
I also hate how much metadata the big G snorts up. Even just the location data they retain is out of this world.
There just aren’t any options if you want something that doesn’t keep you boxed into a closed ecosystem or track every love you make.
What about the fairphones? I was reading up on them and might get one. I like that they come with an android fork and open-source apps so you don’t have to deal with Google. Plus being fully repairable and sustainably-made. Does anyone have any experience with them?
wtf do you go with for a quality hardware android reasonably priced? LG got out of the phone game which sucks ass. Pixel can be great but they are all flagship prices. Samsung, while having horrible shit like this, is quality hardware and has lots of models under $200.
You can get a Google pixel and sideload an operating system such as Grapheneos, and you won’t have to deal with any of Google’s bs spying. Highly recommend looking into it.
At that point why not just using Samsung phone and sideload the OS? Seems weird to do that on Pixel which has inferior hardware and good software (like its camera apps), and then remove the software
Simple reason being that there’s no notoriously good OS for Samsung phones.
Graphene is highly focused on not being annoying while keeping privacy intact. You can, for example, have Google Play Services, within a sandbox. Everything can be denied network access, or any access really, on a per app basis.
It also relies on Google’s security chip to keep the chain of trust intact. The boot sequence and your private keys are kept intact that way. Not everyone documents and opens their hardware as well as Google. Samsung is notoriously terrible and full of it when it comes to allowing you to do your own thing.
You can run Google Play services on GrapheneOS it’s called Sanboxed Google Play. It allows you to run Play services as a normal app without any special privileges so you can install it without sacrificing all of your phones data to google. Should allow you to use pretty much all Google apps.
This isn’t enough for work apps that require Android Device Policy unfortunately. When I researched it in November I found that it would require too many permissions so GrapheneOS isn’t planning on supporting it.
You can, but it’d be like blaming Dell for ‘allowing’ Microsoft to annoy you with untimely updates. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to blame the manufacturer for that.
There is still a lot of stuff preinstalled which could be considered unwanted by a lot of people (TikTok, Netflix, Spofify, multiple MS apps, Disney+, Facebook, Meta Services, …)
Pre-installed, yes mine had pre-installed. I don’t know anything that doesn’t have pre-installed bloatware. What the OP was complaining about was their phone randomly installing unwanted apps after they bought it. Mine has never installed an app without me telling it to. For the bloatware I just disabled it until I’m comfortable using ABD on a new phone.
I have a S21 FE unlocked on AT&T in the USA by the way.
Personally I wouldn’t mind a few preinstalled apps, if they can actually be uninstalled, not just disabled which seems to be the case for some.
But the “Meta Services” thing seems shady af, its not showing up in the app drawer because its just a background service most people don’t even know it exists. Its also not needed, because all of the Meta apps work just fine without it. So realistically Meta just pays Samsung a lot of money for something that only has the purpose to collect a lot of user data (it can also access more data than regular apps because it’s installed as an system app)
I don’t live in the US so I don’t know. Phones in my country can’t be carrier locked anyway due to laws. But they can preinstall crap if you buy one from them - except for the iPhone; those always come in factory condition.
It’s not free, the cost is built into your monthly payment. This is how all carrier supplied phones are funded. If they allowed you to bring your own unlocked device they could charge you less. They wouldn’t, but they could because they wouldn’t need to recoup the hardware expense.
Then that means the cost of the devices has already been factored into the base price of your contract. Nothing is free, companies don’t make money by giving away phones that they paid for. You’re just paying a higher base fee regardless of whether or not you get the hardware from them. By not taking the phone from them you’re increasing the profit margin they make on your monthly contract.
These particular apps may be provider added, but Samsung has a hardcore reputation for bloatware on their Android devices. I can’t think of another manufacturer that includes more junk ware than Samsung.
Just uninstalled this after seeing this thread. If you’re on AT&T like I am the package name for Mobile Services Manager is com.dti.att and it has nothing to do with your actual mobile services. All it does is push and update bloatware. I also nuked every AT&T app that I could. I recommend everyone who has Android Studio do this to their phone its easy.
Genuine question here, where are people buying phones that have all of this crap installed on them?
I have only ever bought unlocked phones directly from the manufacturer (pixel, nexus) or from a retailer like best buy and I have never had any carrier crap like this and I started with the nexus one.
I just get the phone and either transfered the physical sim or transferred the sim digitally, at no point has a carrier ever had the ability or permission to install apps on my phone.
I guess maybe because I never saw the point in buying carrier locked phones and always viewed that as a weird arbitrary lockdown(like buying a car that you can only drive on certain highways), I just avoided this? Is that where the bloat ware comes in?
I bought an unlocked phone directly from the manufacturer and still didn’t get the choice.
Inserting a SIM card wiped the phone and provisioned it, installing all sorts of carrier-provided apps with system-level permissions.
As far as I’ve found, there’s a few possible solutions:
Unlock the bootloader and install a custom ROM that doesn’t automatically install carrier-provided apps. (Warning: This will blow the E-fuse on Samsung devices, disabling biometrics and other features provided by their proprietary HSM).
Manually disable the apps after they’re forcibly installed for you. Install adb on a computer and use pm disable-user --user 0 the.app.package on every app you don’t want. If your OEM ROM is particularly scummy, it might go out of its way to periodically re-enable some of them, though.
Find a SIM card for a carrier that doesn’t install any apps, then insert that into a fresh phone and hope that the phone doesn’t adopt the new carrier’s apps (or wipe the phone) when you insert your actual SIM.
For me inserting a SIM of a particular carrier did not wipe the phone but did install their bloatware on reboot.
Though, using adb to manually remove (actually remove not disable) all that bloatware plus DT Ignite did the trick. I have even rebooted my device and the bloatware did not return.
When you buy them from mobile phone companies(T-Mobile, at&t,etc .)you get their bloat ware. This why I also get mine from the manufacturer. Fuck all that bloat ware and it’s unlocked as well.
I highly recommend lineageOS, or better yet lineageOS with microg.
Running a completely degoogled android phone right now, and it feels smooth as butter. Microg has gotten so good, the vast majority of playstore apps work completely fine even without Google services, including things like my banking apps.
Feels liberating as fuck, not gonna lie.
Only apps that don’t work for me are ones that require IaP’s. About 30% of those I can crack with LuckyPatcher. I can also crack other paid apps with license protection.
Mostly I havent needed to do any of that though, because I’ve found that there are so many great open source apps that do the things I need.
LOS heavily hinders feature set, though. I wouldn’t recommend to anyone that’s not a techie, especially with MicroG.
Samsung features that’ll get removed are:
• Camera. It’ll work in LOS but quality will be much lower without Samsung’s processing.
• Standby time. It’ll last a lot less as LOS doesn’t kill background apps like OneUI does.
• Any sort of audio video enhancement. Dolby Atmos will be completely gone. HDR enchantments won’t be there either.
• Samsung DeX.
• HBM won’t work automatically. On OneUI, if system detects you’re under direct sunlight and auto brightness on; it’ll boost the brightness above regular maximum. You can have this on LOS via LiveDisplay but it isn’t automatic afaik.
• Phone will get hotter when it’s used while charging. OneUI both lowers charging speed and lowers performance (unless you’re in a game) while charging. LOS doesn’t. It might get uncomfortably hot compared to OneUI.
• Noise reduction in voice calls barely work under LOS. This is especially true when calling on speaker, LOS is borderline unusable when there’s even a little bit background noise.
Switching to LOS for a techie is fine, but recommending it to someone who you don’t know how they use their device isn’t great. If OP watches a ton of movies, OneUI will have much better experience. If all OP does is social media, LOS is completely fine.
Well, I wouldn’t recommend anyone who doesn’t have basic computer knowhow try and install a custom rom on their expensive new phone.
But outside of hurdle of getting the custom rom loaded, I don’t think you need to be techie to appreciate or use LineageOs (even with microg).
It’s true that you make some sacrifices when changing to a custom rom. But you are already making significant sacrifices by NOT using one.
Consider the sacrifice of having to create and sign in to multiple accounts when you set up your phone. The sacrifice of not being able to uninstall preloaded bloatware/spyware/adware. The sacrifice of your privacy as Google, Samsung, and a dozen other proprietary apps harvest and sell all your personal information. The sacrifice of your sanity and freewill, as you are bombarded with manipulative targetted advertisements. The sacrifice of not being able to modify, control, or even inspect many aspects of the behavior of your own device. The sacrifice of not actually owning the device that you paid for.
So yeah, my custom rom doesn’t (quite) have the polish of a flagship OS (then again, can you really call an OS that comes preloaded with a bunch of unremovable bloatware polished?). But all those features you listed are basically just fluff, and most people who aren’t hardcore consoomers probably wouldn’t even notice the difference.
I’m not willing to sacrifice my privacy, be exposed to advertising, and have multiple big tech companies control and monitor the use of my device, just to have a camera thats 10% clearer and some ‘HDR enhancements’ etc.
I think that there are many, many non-techie people who would agree with this. But simply buy the latest Samsung or whatever because they don’t think they have a choice, or are scared because they think it will be too different and they will get stuck if they try something else.
LOS by itself is perfectly good and usable by anyone, in fact its probably more suitable to non techies than Samsung is, thanks to the clean UX, and lack of bloat.
LOS with MicroG is also completely usable by most non techies. It just comes with the caveat that certain apps just won’t work, no matter what. That’s obviously an actual sacrifice and people should know in advance before they try it. But most stuff works great, and people who are willing to do a little digging can often find an alternative or a workaround.
At any rate, I don’t think I was really trying to recommend to non-techies in my original post. I figure most people on Lemmy right now are probably somewhat technically inclined, interested in moving away from big corporate tech platforms, and willing to try new things even if they might lack a little polish.
I also run LineageOS, but some apps installed using Aurora will not work since the phone can not prove to be part of the Google bootnet. I think it’s called SafetyNet. How do I get around that problem?
There is an option in the microg settings to enable SafetyNet. I can’t confirm whether it works, since I don’t have any apps that require it. I’ve heard it’s a bit of a cat and mouse game.
I don’t know much about this, since I haven’t needed it myself. But personally, if safetynet uses Google servers or code for authentication, then I’d rather just leave it turned off. Even if it breaks a few apps.
Not being beholden to Google in any way just feels too damn good.
The problem is when those apps are required for banking, identification with government websites and money transfer and no free software alternative exists. Somwhow the government dont see it as a problem to force people to be Google or Apple customers. At the moment I am forced to have two phones. One relatively secure and free with LineageOS and one insecure and nonfree used for banking ++ which I only turn on when I need.
Yeah for sure, it’s pretty fucked. Hopefully I can do my banking through a web browser if my bank ever decides to pull some dumb shit like that.
One thing that really fucks me off, are schools requiring students to use proprietary nonfree software. Windows, adobe, MS office, etc
IMO all schools should be using desktop Linux, and teaching students on free and open source software.
It respects student freedom and privacy, and doesn’t unfairly punish the less financially fortunate. On top of that, it teaches students important lessons about sharing and collaboration. Imagine what the FOSS movement might look like if free and open source became the standard in education.
Paid apps are harder to get working, but I’ve had some success patching them with luckypatcher.
Honestly though, the biggest surprise to me was how little I needed those proprietary apps. Usually with a bit of digging I was able to find great open source alternatives.
This is incorrect. You do not need to log into an account and MicroG works perfectly fine without one. MicroG doesn’t use Google Play Services, it replaces it.
Same here. Running F-Droid and Aurora Store on CalyxOS. Every app like banking, authenticators and all the others work like a charm. True freedom. You can do everything with your phone what you want. Can even imagine to go back to Google restrictions and horrible bloatware.
You don’t get any of this crap with the Pixel Android phones… I believe Motorola used to be good about not loading up junkware also, but that was years ago and I dunno if they’re still like that.
I’ve stuck with the Pixel since they came out and won’t go back until they really screw it up. Every couple of years Verizon will run a special where you get the previous model for free, which works for me.
Ive had a couple Nokias now (Nokia is Finnish) and find them pretty robust and both have been Android One phones so there is basically nothing on them which isn’t just stock android. Plenty fast enough for me. Note: I only buy low end phones (~$300) so YMMV
So I don’t know about Samsung specifically but most commonly this whole “installing random apps by developers you’ve never heard of” is most commonly not from the manufacturer but caused by purchasing a carrier variant of the device. Traditionally Verizon did that a lot, but they’ve shaped up some in recent years.
Make sure to buy direct from the manufacturer or otherwise ensure you purchase the manufacturer unlocked variant to avoid this (there’s also an unrelated “carrier unlock” which is a carrier variant that has had the modem unlocked to allow you to use it on other carriers than the one it’s branded to, but your still stuck with the carrier’s variant of the software and hardware.)
Also worth noting carrier models will in some cases actually have differing hardware from the unlocked model too. Traditionally this was usually related to the modem for carriers using uncommon cellular network technologies but some large carriers will even cut down the memory or storage just to squeeze a buck or two off the price!
TLDR don’t buy direct from the carrier and make sure to buy manufacturer unlocked phone!
This happens on mine with facebook book being installed by samsung themselves, i dont think i get the mobile services manager thing. And mine isnt from a carrier or locked to one
Actually, Pixel is the go-to choice for privacy-concious folks as well. That’s because the two most secure and private mobile operating systems, Calyx and Graphene, support only the Pixel lineup.
My previous phone was the Motorola RAZR 5g. No bloat as far as I could tell. Definitely a refreshing experience after the shovel of crap Samsung provided!
This isn’t from Samsung. There phones don’t come with this. It’s preloaded from the carrier OP has phone service from. Quit spreading FUD and get your facts straight.
Not OP, but you tend to see these kinds of shenanigans from phones that are locked to carriers, the carriers are the ones who end up pushing the apps onto the phone during an update.
Sprint was pretty bad with their bloat ware back in the day, when I made the switch from my Sprint-locked S6 to my unlocked Pixel 1, I never had that problem again.
My mom and dad have unlocked S22’s and they don’t have these issues as far as I’m aware. I know if my dad did he would have complained about it.
The carrier is not in charge of updates. Updates are pushed by the OEM. If there’s bloatware being loaded onto the phone, it’s because the OEM is allowing it to be.
I had been using Samsung for the longest time before my current device and lemme tell ya, even with their flagships they pull this shit, I’m always having to go in and delete whatever shit they download, like, no, I have no desire to play fucking ROYAL MATCH please stop asking me
Verizon does this all the time with my family members no matter who the manufacturer is. If you get the phone from a Verizon store instead of carrier-unlocked they pull this crap all the time.
I remember on some of my older phones Verizon would not only install apps I didn’t want, but they’d flag them as system apps so they couldn’t be disabled.
That’s like saying Samsung shouldn’t allow you to install any apps. If Verizon bought the phone they can put whatever they want on it before they sell it to you. And then when you buy it, you delete or put whatever you want on it.
No, it’s nothing like that at all. Apple doesn’t let carriers install bloat onto their phones. I’m pretty sure Pixels don’t get this sort of bloat. But Samsung clearly does.
This happens on unlocked phones too. My Galaxy S21 has apps installed on it whenever I have a different provider (Trafcone, AT&T, etc.). It’s not just when it’s a phone resold from the provider.
Under What to expect on this support page, it says:
The phone branding, network configuration, carrier features, and system apps will be different based on the SIM card you insert or the carrier linked to the eSIM.
The new carrier’s settings menus will be applied.
The previous carrier’s apps will be disabled.
The correct approach from a UX perspective would have been to display an out-of-box experience wizard that gives the user an option to either use the recommended defaults, or customize what gets installed.
Unfortunately, many manufacturers don’t do that, and just install the apps unconditionally and with system-level permissions. And even if they did, it’s likely that many of the carrier apps will either have a manifest value that requires them to be installed, be unlabeled (e.g. com.example.carrier.msm.mdm.MDM), or misleadingly named to appear essential (e.g. “Mobile Services Manager”).
Anecdotally, I can confirm otherwise. I bought an unlocked Galaxy phone directly from Samsung, and putting in a SIM card provisioned it for my cell provider and installed their apps.
Thankfully, I’m not on a provider that pushes adware.
It’s possible that Google doesn’t, although that would be weird since the ability to push apps is probably standardized and baked into the stock Android OS source code.
Or maybe you just used MVNOs that don’t purposefully install anything that isn’t strictly necessary.
Android OS developers or software devs working for cell providers would probably know the answer, though.
Switched to fairphone and could root it without installing twrp, there was only one extra app and I could just disable the google apps and switch to foss ones.
When people ask why I switched to and stuck with an iphone, I always go back to “Google doesn’t know how to do text messages”, but I forgot about this lovely issue. You can’t truly own an Android that isn’t a Pixel and expect software OS updates on a regular basis without bloatware. Additionally, the update does not need to go through your carrier, something that is the largest red flag for me to stop buying non-unlocked Android phones (at least the last time I looked this was a thing).
Imagine if you went to a dealership, and go to buy a brand new car, but the dealer says they have to do some “improvements” to it before you can drive it off the lot. Only, you don’t know what they did or why, and the car manufacturer doesn’t know either. It’s fucked up.
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