Why I will never buy another Samsung device

Re:Why I will never buy another Samsung device by southerntofu on Tuesday February 22, 2022 @05:03AM (#30425991)

These applications are viruses. They eat all your resources, make connections to the network, and you can't get rid of them. I don't understand how some (most?) of humanity has accepted that it's acceptable for Apple, Microsoft, Samsung and Huawei to make it mandatory to use their spyware. If i as an individual sold phones that are tied to crappy malware i would be in prison very quickly.

They control your phone, you don't. On some older Galaxy phones, you could at least unlock the bootloader and install LineageOS (which is much faster due to not running all this malware) but apparently it's not supported on S7. Samsung is slowly becoming the new Apple where you can't remove your battery without a screwdriver and there's a "Knox" security where if you lose your password (or somebody donates a phone without donating the password) the hardware will go straight to the (non-)recycling bin.

Is buying a PinePhone the only option to get decent hardware without lock-in for under 300€?

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Re:Why I will never buy another Samsung device by vianneychevalie on Tuesday February 22, 2022 @05:27AM (#30426148)

Can you give examples of the Apple spyware you're mentioning? I'm familiar with the on-device scanning for iCloud-backups-using phones, but for me that's it. How wrong am I?

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Re:Why I will never buy another Samsung device by southerntofu on Tuesday February 22, 2022 @05:36AM (#30426219)

I don't have examples on iOS because i've never used an iPhone, but on MacOS Apple was caught red-handed asking their central server authorization to run 3rd party programs whenever you start an application. It was only discovered because their server failed and programs failed to start:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25074959

I think we can agree this perfectly fits the definition of "spyware"? There's probably countless other examples i'm unaware of, and to be fair Apple is certainly not the only actor engaging in such outrageous behavior (Microsoft is another, perhaps more famous one).

EDIT: It appears there's studies of iOS data collection and it's really scary. Previous discussion here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28741262

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Re:Why I will never buy another Samsung device by FearlessNebula on Friday February 25, 2022 @06:39PM (#30473749)

I can’t say for certain it literally spies on you, but the majority of pre installed apps on iPhone are still not removable (this has been gradually improving each year since like 2016).

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Re:Why I will never buy another Samsung device by forty on Tuesday February 22, 2022 @07:05AM (#30426854)

It turns out a good phone with good customer service and reasonable repair options is worth more than 300€ yes.

Sadly we have been made believe that it could be much cheaper, but there are hidden human, privacy and environmental costs.

Hopefully we finally start paying the actual cost for our smartphones, and our planet, the kids and our privacy will be grateful for it.

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Re:Why I will never buy another Samsung device by aaaaaaaaata on Tuesday February 22, 2022 @01:01PM (#30431131)

Buy dirt cheap used, install better OS.

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