I have impossible to uninstall Facebook and Amazon on my LG phone. I deleted my Facebook account years ago. And Amazon? Well I live in Canada but the app is for the USA (phone was purchased in Canada though), so whenever I search for something online and click a link to Amazon it gets hijacked and tries to open the app, but wait! I'm not in the USA! And the app doesn't support Canada so it re-opens the link in chrome! And all attempts to remove the app or change the link behaviour are stymied. I am forever stuck with the slow and annoying chrome->app->error->chrome cycle for all Amazon links.
Not exactly to contradict you, but Apple also has a lot of bullshit preinstalled... and no way to gain control of the system to remove it or use a free OS.
I would personally recommend, if that's your thing, to look into "clean" Android devices such as Fairphones. Once the bootloader is unlocked, it's really trivial to install a decent Android distro without spyware, like /e/OS. I used to recommend LineageOS but it seems like it phones home by default these days: /e/OS is a Lineage fork without the spyware/telemetry.
Of course the best solution if you're not afraid to get your hands dirty is to compile Replicant Android from sources, but from what i heard it can be troublesome, and it's quite possible that blobfree Android does not fit your feature/usability expectations (eg. no GPS/camera/wifi), in which case a blobbed Android without OS-level spyware may be a good compromise.
Can you disable telemetry entirely? Can you use an iPhone without an iCloud account? Without connecting to Apple servers? I believe not, but would be happy to be proven wrong!
I personally never had much faith in Apple (although i was a big fan of older MacOS UX), but these latest developments have completely broken any expectations i had from them:
> We find that even when minimally configured and the handset is idle both iOS and Google Android share data with Apple/Google on average every 4.5 mins. The phone IMEI, hardware serial number, SIM serial number and IMSI, handset phone number etc are shared with Apple and Google. Both iOS and Google Android transmit telemetry, despite the user explicitly opting out of this. When a SIM is inserted both iOS and Google Android send details to Apple/Google. iOS sends
the MAC addresses of nearby devices, e.g. other handsets and the home gateway, to Apple together with their GPS location. Currently there are few, if any, realistic options for preventing this data sharing.
One of several reasons why I'm never going back to Android. I know it's probably a controversial opinion here but iOS has a better user experience - I'm not forced to have malicious apps by default.
Both Android and iOS have malicious apps by default, if only geolocation service providers.
Most Android phones nowadays are bootlocked and will make your life miserable if you try to gain root, but there's still a few models that you can easily unlock to install a libre system of your choice (/e/OS, PostMarketOS, etc). That's undoubtedly the best approach if you don't want to be "forced" into anything malicious.
Apple is a notorious enemy of free software, and especially on the iPhone products getting to boot alternative systems requires crazy hacks which is why we still don't have mainline Linux and mainstream distro support over a decade after the first hardware release. I'm not saying that Google's Android lines (Pixel etc) are much more libre-friendly (mainline support on Pixel was achieved by outsiders, not Google), but it's still possible to find new or refurbished Android phones without a locked bootloader and with good mainline support.
I honestly don’t care about running Linux on my phone. We’ve all seen what a mess Linux on desktop is. iOS definitely does not come with malicious non-removable apps like tick tock or Facebook.
I'm not sure exactly what you're referring to. I remember in older Slackware that not everything was very user-friendly, but ever since the GNOME2 era under Ubuntu i've had no complaints... and i'm providing user support for many inexperienced or outright tech-illiterate users.
I can't say the same for Windows with cryptic boot messages leading to full reinstall every now and then, and since Windows 10 users getting their account randomly & remotely locked for unobvious reasons... don't even get me started on the "i clicked the ad that said i had viruses and now everything's broken".
> iOS definitely does not come with malicious non-removable apps like tick tock or Facebook.
I don't exactly disagree with your point, but just because an app is not 3rd party doesn't mean it can't be malicious. See this comment for a (short) overview of evil software things Apple is doing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32354388
I swore that this phone I am writing on will be my last Samsung of anything. Not only the bloat apps, but the spyware "Bixby" button you can't remap to anything else.
I have a Samsung TV too and they are just adding more and more bloat to it.
Despicable practices for something a thought of as a quality brand.
> Not only the bloat apps, but the spyware "Bixby" button you can't remap to anything else.
bxActions allow you to remap the button if you have a S9 or S10. It's a game changer having a user re-mappable hardware button, and I'll miss it when I upgrade from my S9.
For me - Play/pause is a single press; skip to next track is a double press; long press activates multitasking and double press and hold toggles the torch.
Ye I think I looked at those but I think they require me to accept Bixby ToS.
The best thing with those cripplewares is that it show Samsung that they are missing out on money which makes it easier internally to override some scheming PM that is hunting Bixby metrics.
Like the start menu program that were sold for Windows 8 for like 20 USD. Eventually MS readded it (in a still worse than Win7 form though).
I agree with your spirit, just mentioning that on S18 you were able to remap it, and on S20 there's no special Bixby button just the power button whose bixbyfication can be disabled (together with the entire Bixby). But could your problem be a country- or operator-specific "feature"?
> I swore that this phone I am writing on will be my last Samsung of anything.
I have a nokia 7.1. Quite happy with it, as it came with stock android. Altough, the charger port getting loose is somewhat of a problem. Allegedly fixed in newer models.
I recently (in the last month) got an update from T-mobile for my 2 year old LG and they forced me to go through an app "optimization" process. What it was in reality: a ploy to foist more unnecessary and unwanted apps upon me. Among the handful preselected for install was Tik Tok. There were others, but thankfully non required. After unchecking everything I was able to proceed. Annoying.
One time, when my current phone at the time, I bought an flagship android device. It came with a fortnight installer I couldn't remove. I returned it the same day...
Ok, not just because of fortnight, also because disabling all google crap basically bricked it & their icons where still everywhere and when you accidentally clicked it, it take you deep into the settings to enable it. Sure, you can install a custom rom etc, but I dont' want to. I just want a phone with a few apps and no spyware. Or fortnight installersftm ;)
Side note for those who hate these pre installed apps: It's very easy to delete apps connecting your device to a computer and using ADB to bypass the artificial software lock.
It is and that's how I removed Facebook. But I'm not even going to even entertain the prospect of using a device that once had TikTok installed on it. I've been using Samsung phones for over a decade now, I think it's time for a change.
