Samsung phones come with an absolute shit tonne of bloat
this post was submitted on 28 Mar 2024
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Yeah, I agree. I came from a Pixel 6 Pro and had a Pixel phone ever since the original. I was tired of subpar battery life and noticed a massive upgrade moving to Samsung. Hardware is amazing, software can be meh at best from my experience.
That's my take on phones in general. It's a "pick one" situation. You can either have fancy hardware features or you can have freedom in software, not both.
Hopefully my current phone holds out long enough for there to be a compelling choice that somehow has both.
As things are right now, it'll either be a Fairphone 5 for the freedom it brings, Pixel as a compromise, or Samsung Galaxy for the features.
That's a good way to think about it, yeah. I'm really hoping the fairphone will become more popular in the coming years as I absolutely love the direction they seem to be taking.
There is valid criticism as well though. Mostly on the topic of software support duration and scope vs. consumer expectations. But there are also some realiability and hardware failure rate concerns.
It's important to view those critiques in the context of Fairphone being an underdog company with a relatively small production volume onto which we project the same expectations we have of Apple and Samsung.
Ultimately it is viability of the business case determines how good of a value proposition the Fairphones will be long term. Which is a shame, because Fairphone's vision is almost exactly what I want in a mobile device. It all leads to this catch-22 situation where the Fairphone is not quite the undisputed best choice it should be, and the only way for them to get there is that everyone pretends it is. It should be a self-fulfilling prophecy, but consumers don't want to make concessions.
While I can't tell if it actually helps with performance, but I still do it because:
- it reduces clutter in various menus and lists, which helps me find the apps I'm looking more easily
- privacy implications with leaving an app installed / enabled
I used UAD on my S21 and it's been fine. You can't actually uninstall the unwanted packages but at least you can disable them. Can't say I've noticed any particular improvement in performance, but it's nice to know that my phone isn't running a bunch of unnecessary services.
Be careful disabling Bixby if you intend to use features like Samsung Routines, though. I seem to recall doing that and breaking functionality, so I just went back and re-enabled it.
Oh okay, I'll keep that in mind!
I always debloat my phone, the difference is too massive to ignore.
My last 2 phones were a Galaxy S9 and a Galaxy S10, and I really found the samsungs to be insufferable at first, but with a strong debloat removing a bunch of 'features' nobody asked for and redundant apps, as well as changing the launcher (I use novalauncher, but rootless is also great and also FOSS) had a notable effect on the feel of the phone. I recall that some of the "features" specifically slow down responsiveness to button pushes because for example it ends up waiting on a home button press to see if you're going to do a double or triple press.
If you mess it up too much, a factory restore will undo everything you did anyway, so don't worry too much about it.
I've used the same technique on a number of different phones as well. My dad loves his LG phones, but it comes with a bunch of stuff he didn't want, so we were able to disable it. His latest phones are rugged china phones, and he swears by them, especially once we were able to get rid of a bunch of stuff they added that you really don't need.
It's placebo, but there's nothing wrong with appreciating a phone that doesn't have a heap of junk you don't want. It's not going to improve performance at all, in the majority of cases, but it might put a spring in your step knowing that it's nice and tidy.
I can't tell a difference, I just uninstall all unnecessary apps when I buy a phone. The same way I selected all recommended apps from all lists and I got to about 5 apps on homescreen without a problem.
I take out Google Play Movies/YouTube/YouTube Music etc on every phone I buy these days especially since YT is a website and should not, be a system app and replaced by Newpipe.
Other than that I also like to delete my DCIM folder every now and then since it gets backed up to "my cloud" and seems to keep things, cleaner?
Shout out to SD Maid if you're keen on cleaning things up?
It can help, but the bloat usually isn't that bad and you don't really gain significant improvements especially on modern phones. Samsung in particular has very aggressive battery management. But also don't be afraid, you can't really turn off absolutely critical apps in a way that would break your phone without rooting it and that debloater won't root it. Anything it does can easily be undone.
It's kinda nice on Samsung phones in particular because it gets rid of dozens of apps that send you notifications to encourage you to use them. No I don't want to sign in to the Galaxy Store and register my phone and receive updates on new Samsung products, I just want to use the damn phone. The performance increase is a bit secondary.
The ultimate debloat is flashing LineageOS, but you have a Samsung so you're basically SoL when it comes to custom roms, especially Verizon ones.
Buy a phone that didn't have to much bloat to start with.
One Plus was fairly clean, until watsit left to set up Nothing. Pixel is clean ish but you need a new launcher (hat tip Niagara) and wander through the menus disabling as much as you can of the unneeded Google stuff (actually I disable stuff when it updates through Google Play, I find that easier).
For Christ sake don't buy a Samsung. I thought that everyone knew that about Samsung. Smh.