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Ask HN: Stock Android phone free of bloatware?

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Re: Ask HN: Stock Android phone free of bloatware?

#131

Post by The_Colonel »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #19

The short answer is no. There is the Google Pixel. But it has limited updates and proprietary software for things like the camera. That camera is really nice though and it's as close as the Android experience Google intended to ship because this basically is Google's version of Android. I have the Pixel 6 and it's fine. Nokia stays close to that but ships their own camera app. It too has limited updates that run out…

> That camera is really nice though

I disagree. It overprocesses a lot and it's the worst on people's faces (very unnatural colors).

Other phone makers do that as well with various trade-offs. Samsung is better for portraits, but struggles in other places.

I miss my Huawei Mate 20 Pro, somehow it seems to me that today's flagships are still taking worse SOOC pictures than it.

Re: Ask HN: Stock Android phone free of bloatware?

#133

Post by tourmalinetaco »

wiseowise wrote: post #64
Zambyte wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What service do they provide you?

Cloud sync that works across all of my devices in a centralized manner. Zero bloatware, adware OS that works out of the box and doesn’t change every year. Consistent experience across devices. iOS, specifically, all of what I listed there and really nice, fluent system compared to Androids that have frame drops even on top end devices.

> Zero bloatware, adware OS that works out of the box and doesn’t change every year.

Now that’s just blatantly bullshit. The OS takes up at least 9GB. There are many Linux distros that take half of that. Not to mention the OS is preloaded with a lot of Apple’s proprietary apps, most of which are designed to pull you into some kind of sales pitch. Fitness+, Apple Music, iCloud, the entire OS is an ad designed to sell you on their ecosystem.

The most egregious statement, however, is that the OS “doesn’t change every year”. You say this right after the iOS 16 update completely changed a large portion of the OS, and in some very user unintuitive ways.

Not to mention iOS is a glitchy mess even on the latest hardware. Frequently the OS stalls on wakeup, stalls when trying to swap apps, randomly drops wifi when my laptop doesn’t, the keyboard will get stuck on screen, it’ll even skip inputs entirely and freeze for a few seconds.

Re: Ask HN: Stock Android phone free of bloatware?

#134

Post by tourmalinetaco »

oofnik wrote: post #127
hospitalJail wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>walled garden This is a marketing phrase that twists a negative into a positive. Its better to use more objective terms. Gardens give you a perceptions of flowers and fruits.

Closed ecosystem? Sealed environment? Prison? What do you suggest to use instead? The last term would seem apt given the term "jailbreaking"

Personally I do like that. Perhaps we should opt to calling it “proprietary prison”.

Re: Ask HN: Stock Android phone free of bloatware?

#135

Post by taubek »

everybodyknows wrote: post #8

Google started a program back in 2014 to encourage other hardware vendors to build just such things. It is alas, now on hospice care, with death imminent: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_One

Android One was one of the best things that has happened to Android ecosystem. To bad it is gone :(

Re: Ask HN: Stock Android phone free of bloatware?

#136

Post by eppp »

hospitalJail wrote: post #125
Daegalus wrote: post #10

The Pixel is the closest. The reason you don't see long term support on Android is because of Qualcomm. Qualcomm wants manufacturers to build on new chips, so they deprecate older chips and stop support. Most manufacturers don't want to hire kernel and hardware devs. Samsung can pull off longer support because of Exynos and they have a lot of inhouse expertise to extend support on old Qualcomm chips. It's all money.…

Samsung is terrible, do not buy ever. They are the Apple of Android, big marketing budget, little care about performance or security. I would recommend against Google phones, while 'they just work', they have been forcing users via dark patterns to use their services more and more. Its quite easy to get stuck with a google drive monthly fee or use their Maps app which is full of ads.

Which leaves what exactly?

Re: Ask HN: Stock Android phone free of bloatware?

#137

Post by jjice »

pyrelight wrote: post #88

Motorola does a pretty good job. Their "bloatware" is mostly the Moto app, which provides really handy and reliable gestures like a double "chop" to toggle flashlight, twisting the phone a few times to enable the camera, three-finger screenshot trigger, etc. Their phones are really solid but they do lag on OS updates, and their cameras are never good.

Tangential but I really miss the gestures. I'm much happier with my Pixel 6a, but I had a run of Motorola phones beforehand. God the shake for flashlight and rotate for camera were godsends. Everyone got a kick out of it too, it was always funny to see people react to how great shake for flashlight was.

I wonder if there's an app that can do this now on any phone, but I hadn't thought to look until now.

Re: Ask HN: Stock Android phone free of bloatware?

#138

Post by a-dub »

Daegalus wrote: post #10

The Pixel is the closest. The reason you don't see long term support on Android is because of Qualcomm. Qualcomm wants manufacturers to build on new chips, so they deprecate older chips and stop support. Most manufacturers don't want to hire kernel and hardware devs. Samsung can pull off longer support because of Exynos and they have a lot of inhouse expertise to extend support on old Qualcomm chips. It's all money.…

notably the pixel has moved off qualcomm to google silicon and now has 5+ years of support.

if you want the _pure_ android experience, aosp support for pixel hardware has traditionally been very good. (google posts signed binary blobs for google hardware and with the move to google silicon those blobs have been getting smaller or may be completely eliminated now)

Re: Ask HN: Stock Android phone free of bloatware?

#139

Post by tourmalinetaco »

troupo wrote: post #33
cwalv wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm optimistic that "what it could have been" is what it will eventually be. Originally there was just Apple, and their lock-in driven business model. Competitors could emulate them and still get away with it for a while, but it will get commoditized to the same level PCs are at some point.

Funnily enough, originally people thought it was Apple who commoditized mobile computing and software development by getting it from the clutches of telecom providers

I will say, at least after Apple introduced the smartphone to the masses we did eventually get some amount of commoditization and control as consumers. Not from them, mind you, but they successfully killed the old giants in their bid to take their place, allowing Android to rise and give some amount of control to the people.

Re: Ask HN: Stock Android phone free of bloatware?

#140

Post by tourmalinetaco »

wiseowise wrote: post #57
spondylosaurus wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may just be the Stockholm Syndrome talking as a longtime Samsung Galaxy user, but I've found it relatively easy to disable most of Samsung's bloatware (and to simply ignore whatever I can't disable). Nova Launcher + Gboard + re-mapping the Bixby button makes a huge difference right off the bat.

Imagine how much more bloatware and spyware is there that’s not user facing feature.

I know, it’s almost as bad as Apple’s bloat and spyware.
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