Pixel 8 Pro - Hackdot

Re:Pixel 8 Pro by rcarr on Wednesday October 04, 2023 @11:37AM (#37766730)

I was a long time iPhone user for about 15 years - never had an Android. My iPhone 8 Plus finally reached end of support for OS updates and I'd heard great things about Samsung Dex so I ordered a Samsung Ultra S22 last week and I absolutely love it. Once you get it set up and used to it, I've found the experience to be superior to the iPhone. I just find it quicker to do the things I want to do because of the way it's set up. Things like editing the settings is just way better thought out - the search works really well in the main settings app and if you want to change the settings for a particular app (e.g get rid of the notification badge) you simply have to long press on the app, hit the "i" button on the pop up, and you're taken straight to the settings for the app.). And Samsung Dex is fucking awesome, especially if you've got a pair of AR glasses. My entire computing setup now fits in a small reporter bag. I'm now going to sell my Macbook and use the Ultra as my sole device which means I will have completely exited the Apple ecosystem. In the early smartphone days, I think iOS was superior to Android but I really don't think that's the case anymore.

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Re:Pixel 8 Pro by ThePowerOfFuet on Wednesday October 04, 2023 @01:12PM (#37768333)

I hope you had a look at Samsung's privacy policy.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/xtq9pq/samsungs_pr...

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Re:Pixel 8 Pro by rcarr on Wednesday October 04, 2023 @01:41PM (#37768831)

Yeah, Samsung collects data and sells it. So does every other company. Not going to stop me using the phone. At least Android actually asks me every time if I want to opt into a service or not. If Apple want me back, they can:

- Build a Dex competitor

- Allow apps to communicate outside their sandboxes if I allow them to

- Make it quicker and easier to edit settings

- Stop doing ridiculous things like borking USB-C ports on non-pro models

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Re:Pixel 8 Pro by rcarr on Wednesday October 04, 2023 @08:09PM (#37773379)

I'm adding another comment and eating humble pie because I found out this evening that the Samsung keyboard application saves up to 100 items in the Samsung Keyboard clipboard in plain text, with no way to set any kind of auto clear and it does this no matter what other keyboards you install and use. For example, you can install gBoard (Google Keyboard) and set it as the default keyboard, copy something to the clipboard, and it will be there in your Samsung keyboard regardless of whether you set gBoard to auto clear the clipboard every hour. The only way to completely clear the clipboard is via manually pressing five buttons: first the clipboard button followed by the trash can icon, followed by select all, followed by delete, then confirm. This is obviously a massive security risk if you are using a 3rd party password manager and, despite lots of requests for many years, Samsung have declined to do anything about it.

Thankfully, it does look like you can uninstall these packages and most of the other Samsung bloatware using adb or the Universal Android Debloater[1] but it is still some of the most exceptionally disgusting behaviour I've ever seen from a major tech company and I hope that either the EU or some other governing body forces them to fix it or Google bakes something into Android that makes it impossible for them to do. Either way, I will be jumping ship to a more trustworthy brand as soon there is one that has an adequate desktop mode with Quadlock case support.

https://github.com/0x192/universal-android-debloater

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