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Why I will never buy another Samsung device

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Re: Why I will never buy another Samsung device

#641

Post by ajyotirmay »

ricardobeat wrote: post #461
ValentineC wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The story of getting it fixed is really why people love Apple and even Amazon. > I've had the Wifi go unreliable on an iPad. I got a Genius appointment for later that day. They confirmed the Wifi module was shot and just gave me a new device on the spot. They even offered to do the transfer for me. This sort of convenience is what gives people confidence in buying Apple products. I'm still using Apple hardware myse…

I've heard this before and am still puzzled by it. I've been using Apple devices for over a decade, and only ever had one or two phone charger cables fray, but they were really heavily used and looked like they were used in a farm for months. The vast majority still looks perfectly fine. I guess there must be small habits that have a great effect on degradation. Like stowing away the charger after every use vs keepin…

that might be a thing, but chargers are supposed to be portable unless I'm buying a power supply for a computer. Apple's cables aren't good design, and planned obsolescence

Re: Why I will never buy another Samsung device

#642

Post by ajyotirmay »

Hello71 wrote: post #533
jmyeet wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple cables really are terrible. I've had teh cladding come off multiple Lightning cables to the point I never use the Apple cable anymore. I just buy Anker cables without thinking about it. I honestly don't know how Apple cables can be this bad. More to the point, I don't understand how Apple leadership can tolerate this from a PR perspective.

Allegedly, one major reason is that Apple has been successfully pressured by Greenpeace to remove PVC from their cables, causing them to be more brittle and fail sooner. https://fee.org/articles/this-is-the-real-reason-your-iphone... is one source, but Apple and Greenpeace themselves tout this "achievement". It seems to me to be just like replacing nuclear power with coal and natural gas power: another casualty of id…

braided cables? Apple PR is just BS at best

Re: Why I will never buy another Samsung device

#643

Post by ddingus »

kajaktum wrote: post #446
southerntofu wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To me, the issue is not the data collection. It is the lack of transparency. I don't exactly disagree, but it's hardly comparable. As a human being, i can grasp the notion of giving you 30 minutes of my time to try different cookie flavors and tell you what i think. I could likewise understand the notion/consequences of filling a one-page questionnaire for Facebook's advertisement engine in exchange for free servic…

I think that free services are a mistake. But for whatever reason people _really_ like it. Take Youtube. It offers a way to avoid all ads and yet people who spent hours upon hours every day either watching videos or listening to music with it refuses to spend a dime on it. And yet, they also complain that ads are ruining Youtube and so they installed adblocker specifically for it. Since everyone refuses to _directly_…

I am one of those people who really likes it.

And I hate it too, and for all the reasons given here. (Did not check them all, but it is a pretty safe bet.)

Hating it all means I am on board with activism, advocacy, law, whatever we need to do in order to establish / extend the Bill Of Rights into digital spaces.

Society, tech and the law have collided and that mess is ongoing and expanding. Imagine one of those cars smashing into a train with the dummy in it.

It crumples, folds, then pieces fly off, the dummy takes damage, and just down the track is a truck, and a bus with kids in it, and so on...

That train is heavy, well powered with spiffy tech, and it is powering right through the public!

Hate it, but I am quite sure I can't do much, even resisting, doing all the work to anonymize, is a total PITA. Drains the value right out of it all, out of me, my life, and I just do not have time for it, unless a lot of us have time together somehow.

And I think dollars are the only language our oppressors, abusers, and the like will both hear and act on because they must!

Lessig wrote about things that regulate our behavior:

Norms. They do not prevent anything, but do reward or punish.

Law. Like norms, but with real teeth well beyond praise and shunning.

Physics. The rules of the world will prevent actions. The more we understand, the more this world permits.

Money / markets. These also can prevent things. If we cannot afford an action...

It will take a lot of us setting norms, doing things that cost, and all of that rolling up into law more relevant than this current "wild west" is.

I really like it because I get to do things, have access to information that was the stuff of dreams not so long ago.

It is all as empowering as it is exploitative.

Re: Why I will never buy another Samsung device

#644

Post by ddingus »

NoboruWataya wrote: post #596
lordnacho wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you find the smartphone keeps working? I stopped buying Samsung after two phones. About 18 months or so after I got them, some update would make things so slow I needed a new phone. Second time I figured it wasn't the phone being old, it was the update slowing it on purpose. Other phones I've had don't seem to have this problem, updates seem to not change the speed of the UI at all. But I also don't appreciate the…

I haven't experienced updates making the phone unusably slow, but I do find that they don't hold up as well as you might expect a high-end phone to. The main problem is that the battery goes to shit; not sure if that's a hardware or a software problem. I also find I tend to have trouble with the charging port after a while.

I have had good luck with batteries by following the charge at 15 percent guideline Samsung moved to.

My Note 8 is going on a lot of cycles. Have had it for too long probably. Battery still holds up solid.

Older device, Note 5 had a 5 percent warning. Battery went to crap quickly.

Avoiding the fast charge helps too. I use it when I need to and just go normal otherwise when I am not time constrained.

No charging port trouble. Wireless charging just works.

Recently, I got a battery back. Doing it now before I really need it. So far, a year in and a lot more plug in charging and I cannot recommend one more highly.

I find I can often run the phone off the back and pretty much never have to allow a deeper discharge.

Battery time leveled off and is in a very, very slow decline.

YMMV, of course.

Re: Why I will never buy another Samsung device

#645

Post by mod »

syntheticcorp wrote: post #614
carleton wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a source on this?

There is none. This has been asserted for years on HN but I’ve never seen a modicum of evidence for it.

I posted it in this thread (I'm GP).

I admit, I think my source was probably HN comments. I tend to trust them more than they deserve.

I did a Google, and it seems a very sketchy claim.

Re: Why I will never buy another Samsung device

#646

Post by southerntofu »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #618
southerntofu wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm placing a much higher bar yes, but don't you believe it's a very low bar that should be a legal requirement? It's not like i'm asking for the phone to have 10y warranty and available spare parts for 20 years... although wait i'm actually asking for that it sounds plenty reasonable to tackle the electronics waste problem which is uncomfortably related to climate change. So yes relative to the current market, my ex…

>I'm placing a much higher bar yes, but don't you believe it's a very low bar that should be a legal requirement? I don't. I want my phone to be reliable and receive updates for a long time. I have no intention of taking it apart and I think that is the case for most people. If more glue makes the phone more resistant to water damage or breakage when I drop it then that is better for me.

> I want my phone to be reliable and receive updates for a long time.

The only way to ensure that if to publish the complete datasheets so that operating systems can maintain drivers. You cannot rely on a hardware manufacturer to provide updates, as it could go out of business any day.

> If more glue makes the phone more resistant to water damage or breakage when I drop it then that is better for me.

There's plenty of hardware design techniques (disclaimer: not my field) you can use for structural integrity and you don't need glue. Even if you don't have intention to take it apart, if it's glued it probably means that it will be really hard to replace the battery when it dies after 2-5 years.

If you want durable hardware, you need hardware that you (or a skilled shopperson) can take apart and where you can replace individual parts. That's why cars can 100% be taken down and why electronics in cars (over 100 microprocessors in an average car?!) are a worrying development for maintainability/durability.

Re: Why I will never buy another Samsung device

#647

Post by oikawa_tooru »

lordnacho wrote: post #456
NoboruWataya wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're not their customer, you're the product. What is really annoying though is that you are their customer. It's sort of understandable when Google or Facebook spy on you and monetise your data to profit from the services that they provide you free of monetary charge to you. With Samsung, you've already handed over a few hundred dollars at least for the product. Spying on you as well is like having their customer…

Do you find the smartphone keeps working? I stopped buying Samsung after two phones. About 18 months or so after I got them, some update would make things so slow I needed a new phone. Second time I figured it wasn't the phone being old, it was the update slowing it on purpose. Other phones I've had don't seem to have this problem, updates seem to not change the speed of the UI at all. But I also don't appreciate the…

What other phones have you used?

Re: Why I will never buy another Samsung device

#648

Post by lordnacho »

oikawa_tooru wrote: post #647
lordnacho wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you find the smartphone keeps working? I stopped buying Samsung after two phones. About 18 months or so after I got them, some update would make things so slow I needed a new phone. Second time I figured it wasn't the phone being old, it was the update slowing it on purpose. Other phones I've had don't seem to have this problem, updates seem to not change the speed of the UI at all. But I also don't appreciate the…

What other phones have you used?

Had a Huawei and now a Google. Neither has died of updates, but I didn't like Huawei making their own Android skin.

Re: Why I will never buy another Samsung device

#649

Post by southerntofu »

kajaktum wrote: post #446
southerntofu wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To me, the issue is not the data collection. It is the lack of transparency. I don't exactly disagree, but it's hardly comparable. As a human being, i can grasp the notion of giving you 30 minutes of my time to try different cookie flavors and tell you what i think. I could likewise understand the notion/consequences of filling a one-page questionnaire for Facebook's advertisement engine in exchange for free servic…

I think that free services are a mistake. But for whatever reason people _really_ like it. Take Youtube. It offers a way to avoid all ads and yet people who spent hours upon hours every day either watching videos or listening to music with it refuses to spend a dime on it. And yet, they also complain that ads are ruining Youtube and so they installed adblocker specifically for it. Since everyone refuses to _directly_…

> Since everyone refuses to _directly_ spend money

Most of us don't. But we would like it to be:

- easy and anonymous: if i have cash i should be able to find a local reseller taking cash for a token of X€ (a token that's not specific to your platform would be even better)

- easy to decide where the money goes: i certainly don't want to give Google any money at all (and they don't need it), and i certainly don't want my money to be used against my will to finance a reptilian-aware neonazi whose video i clicked by accident (or because i had to debunk it)

But, to be fair, i would much rather prefer a system based on cooperation and free sharing. Is there a reason why we have to pay to live? The reason artists need money is the same reason bakers or FLOSS devs need money: because everyone else does and we're trapped in this nightmarish system. I feel that as a species we can do better.

Re: Why I will never buy another Samsung device

#650

Post by southerntofu »

tim333 wrote: post #544
southerntofu wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's sort of understandable when Google or Facebook spy on you and monetise your data to profit from the services that they provide you free of monetary charge to you. I personally don't like that line of reasoning. If you start to justify abusive behavior in the name of making money you're not giving someone for a "service", it's a small leap to reach the conclusion that abusive behavior (and profiting from it) is…

>If you start to justify abusive behavior... I use both and am yet to find the "monetise your data" stuff abusive. It's mostly things like trying to show an ad for mortgages if they figure you need a mortgage. Honestly with the various forms of death and hunger and real bad stuff in the world I'd feel a bit of a snowflake freaking out over someone trying to show me an ad for something they figure I may need.

> Honestly with the various forms of death and hunger and real bad stuff in the world I'd feel a bit of a snowflake freaking out over someone trying to show me an ad

Fair point, but it's all related. The global wealth we have as a planet could provide everyone with decent housing, food and healthcare. Instead it's being owned by a minority who dedicated resources to making things worse for everyone else.

The IT industry in particular largely benefits from human rights abuses in mining operations and in the factories on the hardware side, and from big contracts with tyrannical regimes on the software side (Amazon + ICE? Google + China?).

The problem is we largely live in a globalized culture in which "exploit others before they exploit you" (the paradigm we're taught in schools/media) is the norm. We are enough technologically-advanced to have a world without war and hunger, but not as long as psychopaths are socially rewarded.

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