Galaxy reality examine: 4 big reasons to avoid Samsung’s Android phones

The greatest story within the Android universe this week is the pending arrival of Samsung’s newest and best Galaxy flagships — the Galaxy S21 and its varied cousins, anticipated to be unveiled at a digital occasion later this morning. The phones will nearly definitely be the de facto commonplace bearers of the high-end Android expertise for the months forward, and so they’re all however sure to be among the many top-selling premium Android units of 2021.

In some ways, it is not shocking. When it comes to high-end Android phones, Samsung does a variety of issues proper — from its glossy, eye-catching {hardware} designs to its distinctive construct high quality and steadily top-of-the-line elements. And that is to say nothing of the equally or maybe even extra significant no-holds-barred advertising technique that is helped Samsung acquire and keep its dominant place inside the Android ranks.

And but, as somebody who intently research the Android ecosystem and goals to provide recommendation about essentially the most advisable experiences accessible inside it, I discover myself struggling to wholeheartedly suggest Samsung’s Android merchandise — particularly for critical enterprise customers — extra so with each passing 12 months. And it is not due to any method of subjective evaluation; it is due to some obvious, foundational flaws with the real-world expertise Samsung supplies on its Android-based Galaxy units.

They’re points that not solely influence what it is like to use Samsung’s phones over the complete time that you simply personal ’em but additionally influence the all-important areas of privateness and safety because it pertains to your private and/or company-connected facts. And whereas I’m all too conscious that I’m doubtless to get a good quantity of pushback for specializing in these usually underemphasized areas — hey, model loyalty is a robust factor nowadays! — now particularly, these items desperately wants to be introduced to the forefront.

Here, particularly, are 4 reasons I’d encourage anybody to assume twice earlier than committing to a Samsung Android smartphone.

1. The out-of-place promoting

Ads are a largely unavoidable a part of modern life, particularly when know-how is concerned. But whereas Google implements advertisements into in any other case free on-line providers — an association that is nicely publicized and that enables these providers to stay free for common use — Samsung goes a step additional and truly places advertisements into the guts of its high-cost cellular merchandise. And it does so in a manner that is excessive and unacceptably invasive.

It’s one thing we have talked about earlier than — from the advertisements prominently developed into Samsung’s system-level Phone app to the countless in-your-face notification nudges pushing every little thing from new Samsung units to fee-requiring Samsung apps and providers — and it is a problem that solely continues to broaden and develop ever extra troubling over time.

Just final week, Samsung reportedly began to ship automated background updates to its U.S. Galaxy units with the obvious sole objective of monitoring phone-owners’ location, sensing after they’re in a retailer that sells Samsung merchandise, after which utilizing their notifications to push them advertisements for these objects. As I wrote in my publication on Friday, it is cheesy, it is abusive, and it is obnoxious — and it makes for an disagreeable and albeit unacceptable person expertise, whether or not we’re speaking a few $2,000 smartphone or perhaps a $200 one.

And that, sadly, is barely the beginning.

2. The shady-seeming facts promoting

Here’s the place the actually disconcerting half comes into play: In addition to baking these over-the-top promoting methods into its smartphone expertise, Samsung additionally has mechanisms in place to share your facts with exterior businesses — to double-dip, as I’ve put it earlier than, and straight revenue off the data you assume is protected.

We’ve seen this within the type of a tucked-away setting inside the system-level Samsung Pay app that, except dug up and disabled, permits your monetary data to be shared with “Samsung Pay companions.” That discovery final 12 months shocked me sufficient that I made a decision to comb by way of Samsung’s varied privateness insurance policies, the place I discovered much more unsettling nice print. For occasion:

• As a Galaxy smartphone proprietor, Samsung could enable “sure third events (corresponding to promoting companions)” to “gather your private data” in unspecified venues and methods.
• Samsung “could have” beforehand bought a bunch of delicate data to undisclosed third events — every little thing starting from “distinctive private identifiers” related together with your gadget to “information of services or products bought, obtained, or thought of”; “different buying or consuming histories or tendencies”; “web and different digital community exercise data, together with, however not restricted to, searching historical past, search historical past, and knowledge relating to your interplay with web sites, purposes, or commercials”; and “inferences drawn from any of the data recognized above to create a profile about you reflecting your preferences, traits, psychological traits, predispositions, habits, attitudes, intelligence, talents, and aptitudes” (!).
• Samsung could have additionally “disclosed” much more private data to “distributors” for “a enterprise objective.” Uh, no biggie — simply data like, y’know, your identify, handle, smartphone quantity, signature, checking account quantity, bank card quantity, buy historical past, searching historical past, search historical past, geolocation facts, and as soon as once more that lovely-sounding assortment of “inferences drawn” from all of that. Right.

And the listing simply retains going. Another layer developed into Samsung’s core smartphone software program collects the identical kinds of delicate data, as a separate privateness coverage discloses, bringing in Samsung-made apps like the corporate’s customized Calendar and Internet (browser) utilities to analyze your facts from these domains as nicely — after which reserves the best to “gather, analyze, and share” all of that data so as to give you “promoting and direct advertising communications about services and products supplied by Samsung and third events which can be tailor-made to your pursuits.” Just what each IT supervisor desires of!

Oh, and talking of advertisements, that service developed into the Phone app that we talked a few minute in the past additionally has its personal privateness coverage — and that one notes that the corporate behind the trouble is in a position to “gather search, location, and name log data routinely” from customers’ units after which share such facts with its “associates or subsidiaries” in addition to with “third-party distributors, service suppliers, contractors, or brokers who carry out capabilities” on its behalf.

And even that remains to be simply the beginning.

Critically, as I’ve identified beforehand, none of that is even shut to what Google does with the promoting related to its varied free providers. First and most importantly, Google by no means sells person facts or shares it with any third events, even when mentioned data is used to assist decide what advertisements you see across the net by way of Google’s advert networks. And past that, Google’s use of information for advert personalization is a well known, core a part of its enterprise — one which exists to offset the free nature of providers corresponding to Search, Maps, and the non-Workspace variations of Gmail, Docs, and Drive.

A smartphone, suffice it to say, is just not a free service. You’re paying good cash for the privilege to personal such a product, with the expectation of an expert setting that is free from spammy distractions and questionable built-in connections.

And but, right here we’re.

3. The subpar software program assist

If you’ve got adopted my musings for lengthy, you realize I’m adamant about the truth that Android upgrades completely matter — and for extra than simply the surface-level options and interface refinements. Operating system upgrades constantly present consequential under-the-hood enhancements in areas like efficiency, privateness, and safety, as we have seen with the present Android 11 launch in addition to with different latest releases earlier than it.

And Samsung has made it painfully clear, 12 months after 12 months, that offering these updates to its prospects in a well timed and dependable method merely is not a precedence. My data-driven Android Upgrade Report Cards — corresponding to the latest one, during which Samsung acquired an embarrassing D+ rating for its lackluster Android 10 improve efforts — let you know every little thing you want to know.

To Samsung’s credit score, the corporate has been getting higher at improve deliveries over the previous couple years — however if you truly have a look at the big-picture facts, you notice its enhancements aren’t all that spectacular. In the grand scheme of issues, the corporate remains to be working shut to 100 days not on time, in a best-case situation, and usually taking even longer when it comes to supporting its previous-gen, simply one-year-old top-tier units.

As an organization of its measurement and with its huge array of assets, Samsung definitely may do higher. It may get present software program into the palms of its highest-paying prospects inside a matter of days of its launch, if it actually wished to. It merely would not select to deal with that non-revenue-generating type of assist as a precedence. And for enterprise customers particularly, that is an more and more powerful asterisk to justify, particularly when commendable near-instant-upgrade choices are available elsewhere on the platform.

4. The not-so-optimal general person expertise

Last however not least is essentially the most summary motive for my Samsung suggestion hesitation, nevertheless it’s an impossibly significant a part of the image. It’s the general person expertise — or what it is truly like to use a tool in day-to-day life.

As somebody who owns each a latest Google Pixel smartphone and a latest Samsung Galaxy smartphone, let me let you know: The distinction in person expertise between these branches of Android is astounding. It’s a distinction I’ve heard strengthened by quite a few individuals who have reached out to me after taking the Galaxy-to-Pixel plunge over time.

One of my favourite analogies, supplied up by my pal and fellow tech thinker Jared Newman, is that utilizing a Samsung smartphone is form of like visiting Vegas: You’ve acquired numerous flashy lights, eye-catching bells and whistles, and issues that lure folks in off the road and make ’em need to come examine all of it out. After you’ve got been in that setting for some time, although, you simply begin to really feel simply form of…soiled. It’s sensory overload and an terrible lot of muddle that actively will get in the way in which of consolation and effectivity. Going to a Pixel-like setup, in distinction, appears like going again dwelling — to a spot that may be much less thrilling, on the surface, however that has all of the stuff you really want and an setting that is higher suited to long-term habitation.

Interface points apart, Samsung phones are simply overflowing with confusingly competing parts and built-in bloatware. You’ve acquired issues just like the prominently featured Galaxy Store, which pings you endlessly and tries to get you to consider it as your major app market even supposing the Play Store is immeasurably extra stocked and up to date with present, fascinating titles. You’ve acquired Samsung’s personal Contacts app, which syncs with Samsung solely by default and thus makes it troublesome to entry your data on different units or switch it to future phones not made by Samsung (a pointy distinction to Google’s superior setup, which you’d have to find out about and actively search when you wished to embrace it — one thing most common phone-owners would not assume to do). And do not even get me began on Bixby.

In addition to all of the bloat, Samsung concurrently omits beneficial parts of the core Android working system for no obvious motive. Galaxy smartphone proprietors will not get the extremely helpful (and impressively expandable) new connected-device command middle that is developed into the Android 11 energy menu, as an illustration, nor can they make the most of Android’s privacy-enhancing Guest Mode or possibility-packed multiuser assist system for phones. They cannot even benefit from the seamless, interruption-free replace course of Google has supplied inside Android since 2016, since Samsung in some way nonetheless sticks with the antiquated, time-wasting system that preceded it.

Now, look: If you end up enamored with Samsung’s strategy and see all of this as a lot ado about nothing, that is completely nice! Android is all about alternative, in any case, and there is definitely nothing flawed with selecting no matter path and method of product you favor. But it is time we begin speaking about these items brazenly and as a distinguished a part of the Samsung gadget dialogue. That manner, anybody dealing with a buying alternative can no less than arm themselves with all the details and make a totally educated resolution about what kind of setup makes essentially the most sense for them.

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[Android Intelligence videos at Computerworld]