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Samsung Phone Users Perturbed to Find They Can't Delete Facebook

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Re: Samsung Phone Users Perturbed to Find They Can't Delete Facebook

#361

Post by webkike »

chrismeller wrote: post #323
mancerayder wrote: post #291

This story (and from different outlets) is now all over the press, which is great. Can I add another qualm in a similar vein? It involves Samsung TV's. I'm convinced Samsung is increasingly mean. I only use streaming services (Netflix, et. al.), and for the past year I've been pretty pleased with "Smart TV" functionality, which makes life easy. That is, until the following happened. After a recent update, the TV: * N…

I have a Roku for these and many other reasons. I have never seen or touched a smart TV that didn’t suck in multiple ways, even if it was just the laggy as hell Java interface. I’m not saying the Roku is perfect, it’s far from it (and I’d love to be able to give them feedback), but at least if they piss me off I can throw their device in the trash and replace it with an Apple TV, Google Chromecast, Amazon Fire, etc.…

Unfortunately, my Roku TV displays a big fat ad on the home screen. Incredibly infuriating considering how expensive the TV is. Need to change my DNS to one of those ad blocking ones soon.

Re: Samsung Phone Users Perturbed to Find They Can't Delete Facebook

#362

Post by vatueil »

rahoulb wrote: post #344
madeofpalk wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, no, you can just hide the icon on the screen. That’s all that does, just like how you can ‘disable’ Facebook on the Samsung phones.

There are functional differences on iOS. For example if you “delete” Apple Music, Siri loses the ability to tell you what song is playing on Spotify (although I haven’t tried it since the original option to delete was added)

Functionally, isn't that much the same as disabling an Android system app?

I wonder if these articles would cease if Android simply changed the label "disable" to "delete" and removed the ability to view and re-enable disabled apps.

Re: Samsung Phone Users Perturbed to Find They Can't Delete Facebook

#363

Post by r3bl »

jessriedel wrote: post #315
Bahamut wrote: post #132

While I like using FB, this is type of behavior by Android OEMs that largely drove me to the iPhone. The main reason I rooted my phone prior was to get rid of crappy apps I don't use from being on my screen. Around 4-5 years ago, Android phone manufacturers started locking down their phones more while not letting them be rooted. They didn't solve the problem of having undeleteable apps waste my time & space with clea…

Google recognizes this issue, which is part of the drive behind bringing Android One to the high-end phone market. This is a branding designation that Google sells to OEMs that requires them to drop almost all bloatware: > Android One is a series of smartphones that run the unmodified Android operating system. It is a hardware and software technical standard created by Google intended to provide a consistent user exp…

Almost all non-Google* bloatware.

I'm using an Android One phone as well, but there's still a dozen or so of Google's apps that I would like to be able to remove.

I chose less bloatware as well, but let's not pretend that there's no bloatware in Android One.

Re: Samsung Phone Users Perturbed to Find They Can't Delete Facebook

#364

Post by knob »

simulate wrote: post #161
AlexandrB wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not just FB, my Samsung S9 came preloaded with 'undeletable' Microsoft apps too. But this is nothing new, Samsung phones have came preloaded with bloat since forever. I'm old enough to remember when this was standard. Before smartphones almost all cellphones were bought through carriers and came pre-loaded with a bunch of carrier crapware (often unremovable). One of the best things about the first iPhone was t…

Like the iPhones, phones distributed by Google, starting with the Google Phone G1 in 2008, and continuing to the Nexus phones and today's current Pixel phones (Pixel 1, 2, and 3), have never had crapware.

That's not true.

My Nexus5 had "HP Cloud Print". Undeletable.

Which was the reason I installed Cyanogenmod.

Re: Samsung Phone Users Perturbed to Find They Can't Delete Facebook

#366

Post by Havoc »

nojvek wrote: post #122

FaceBook is scammy on many levels. Their ads business always reports very inflated numbers. We spend $1000/mnth on FB ads. They show millions of impressions and 20k link clicks. However only 2k visits are shown by both google analytics and Mixpanel on the actual website. It really seems like an empire that will crumble some day.

>20k link clicks. However only 2k visits are shown by both google analytics

Worth pointing out that if you run say cloudflare and g analytics you get similar discrepancy numbers. (Also about 1:10 in my experience).

Read various theories on why - most focus on js tracking vs pure traffic.

Re: Samsung Phone Users Perturbed to Find They Can't Delete Facebook

#367

Post by saagarjha »

madeofpalk wrote: post #328
iscrewyou wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can remove most of the non-essential apps like Music, iTunes Store, Maps, News. I consider Photos and essential app to the phone. But the push to iCloud could be annoying (I haven’t experienced it because I already have it). If I remember correctly, android phones come with a Gallery App for Photos and then additionally Google Photos. This was a few years ago, I’m not sure if it has changed. Whereas iPhones come…

Well, no, you can just hide the icon on the screen. That’s all that does, just like how you can ‘disable’ Facebook on the Samsung phones.

> Well, no, you can just hide the icon on the screen. That’s all that does

This is no longer true since some version of iOS 11. Deleting apps removes them from your system, and you must redownload them from the App Store to get them back. However, while the application bundle might be removed from your device, the frameworks it relies on don't.

Re: Samsung Phone Users Perturbed to Find They Can't Delete Facebook

#368

Post by bobthepanda »

rchaud wrote: post #334
iscrewyou wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can remove most of the non-essential apps like Music, iTunes Store, Maps, News. I consider Photos and essential app to the phone. But the push to iCloud could be annoying (I haven’t experienced it because I already have it). If I remember correctly, android phones come with a Gallery App for Photos and then additionally Google Photos. This was a few years ago, I’m not sure if it has changed. Whereas iPhones come…

> I consider Photos and essential app to the phone. So do I, but OS vendors are making that experience worse by 'integrating' it to some cloud bullshit whether I want it to or not. My Galaxy S7 (with all the bloatware the article mentions) was replaced with an "Android One" device from Nokia. First thing I noticed on the Nokia was that the only gallery app was Google Photos, which I want nothing to do with. The Galax…

You can turn off iCloud sync in iOS, and you can even do it for Photos specifically. I do because I don't care to have it backed up to iCloud, which I don't pay for.

Re: Samsung Phone Users Perturbed to Find They Can't Delete Facebook

#369

Post by saagarjha »

vatueil wrote: post #362
rahoulb wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are functional differences on iOS. For example if you “delete” Apple Music, Siri loses the ability to tell you what song is playing on Spotify (although I haven’t tried it since the original option to delete was added)

Functionally, isn't that much the same as disabling an Android system app? I wonder if these articles would cease if Android simply changed the label "disable" to "delete" and removed the ability to view and re-enable disabled apps.

Android system apps can be reenabled without redownloading them, IIRC. On iOS you must download the app again to use it.

Re: Samsung Phone Users Perturbed to Find They Can't Delete Facebook

#370

Post by bobthepanda »

neya wrote: post #299
Someone1234 wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That isn't really accurate, you're just defining "crapware" is such a way so that Google's apps don't qualify. That's a double standard. Google Drive, Gmail, Google Photos, Play Music, Play Movies, Play Games, Play Books, Duo, Google+, and YouTube could all be called as crapware since they aren't required for core phone functions (and upsell for-profit services). I guess it is somewhat a discussion what we mean by "c…

> That isn't really accurate, you're just defining "crapware" is such a way so that Google's apps don't qualify. That's a double standard. I need to clarify - I'm not an Apple hater, I own an iPhone, 2 iPads, 2 Macbook Pros and a Mac Mini at the time of this comment. But, this same logic can be applied to Apple as well. For example, I don't use Apple's photos app at all. And I can't delete it. There is absolutely no…

The Photos App is pretty much the end-all, be-all of accessing photos taken by the iPhone's camera. So it makes sense that it's a default app that is uninstallable.
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