https://www.change.org/p/stop-google-from-limiting-apk-file-usage
I hope that my rooted One UI 7 doesn’t get the update through some backdoor in the Google Play Services package… Or the next time I unblock Google Play to update the very few paid apps that I use…
Google doesn’t sell any devices that run OneUI, which makes your post somewhat disingenuous… and strengthens your point. You bought the device from Samsung, so you are even more right to be news at what Google is doing since you are not Google’s customer.
The ironic thing is that Samsung is even worse than Google for users’ rights, and has been for a long time.
That’s crazy. I don’t doubt it… but all I have to go on is, last year or the year before, my wife’s Galaxy S22 said they were changing the terms of the health app. They were going to market the user data to be sold, and you had to opt in by a certain date. If you did not, they deleted all your past data and froze the app until you agreed, at which point it would start anew. She did not agree, so her health data was wiped and she doesn’t get the health features anymore. Any of them. If she tries to open the app, it offers the choice of agreeing to the terms or exiting the app.
Google just collects your data and sells it regardless, and they do it on phones they don’t sell. The reason they give Apple billions of dollars yearly is so they can do in on iPhones to an extent, too. They can only get so much, but they take what they can get.
The main difference I had in mind is that Google devices let you root and erase them to run stuff like Lineage OS or Graphene OS, and Samsung devices don’t.
(Samsung also puts ads on their TVs and deliberately and blatantly designes their appliances to fail just outside warranty. I will never buy anything from that company again, with the possible exception of components like RAM ICs that get incorporated into some other brand’s product. But even then I’ll try to check for and avoid it because that’s the level of petty revenge Samsung deserves!)
I’m not saying Samsung TVs aren’t trash, but all Android-based TVs kind of are. I have one, by Hisense. The best thing to do with any smart TV, even if you’re not an Apple guy, is plug an Apple TV up to it. Swallow your pride and just fucking buy one. Okay, so you have to sign up for an Apple account (totally free) to use the App Store, but when you’re done setting the thing up… It’s just rows of apps. Shove all the shit Apple apps in a folder and stick it at the end. Some of them don’t even work. I make no excuses for them. But stuff like YouTube, Netflix, Plex, whatever you stream off of, you put on the top shelf (the dock, but it’s on top rather than on bottom like on iPhone, iPad, and Mac). The only real benefit I get as an Apple guy is, I have a remote built into my iPhone, and my Watch. Other than that… the remote is serviceable, and if you enable HDMI-CEC, you can use your TV’s remote with it as well. It’s like $100, maybe $130 for the top model with double the storage (really not needed) and I think it has Ethernet? I dunno, WiFi works for me. Anyway… No ads! It’s just a stupidly simple box. It’s what smart TVs really should be.
It’s like on my old Nvidia SHIELD, an update rolled in and all of a sudden there are ads on the homepage. Some people were ok with TV/movie ads being on a TV/movie device, but, why the hell would I want ads for content only available on services that I don’t have? If they’d at least only given me ads for the services it knew I was subscribed to, I would have at least been less pissed off since it could have been useful.
Reached out to Nvidia and they say there isn’t anything they can do, it’s built that way by Google. By no means do I just blindly accept that that was accurate, but, it’s still bullshit that with a basic update all of a sudden the nature of my device was completely changed (imo) and I’m expected to just suck it up or work around it with 3rd party launchers that weren’t as polished.
Dunno if it’s gotten better/worse in the last couple years, mine died and I elected to not replace it with another Android device.
I was frustrated by this also and decided not to put the effort into rooting the device to get rid of all that crap. Instead I decided to use Flauncher together with Button Mapper. Using that tool, I map the homepage button on the remote to point to Flauncher. It isn’t a perfect solution but it was done in a few minutes and I can now mostly avoid the bullshit ads
Just like android phones, the “launcher” in the shield is just the default. You can download a replacement launcher. I’m using Projectivy.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spocky.projengmenu&hl=en_GB
https://troypoint.com/projectivy-launcher/
I agree, I tried to shove two themes into one. Samsung’s decision to disable bootloader unlocking from OneUI 8 just kind of puts more weight on Google’s decision on disallowing unauthenticated apks. For Samsung users, that is.