No user would ever suspect that the keyboard that came with their cell phone would be letting third parties read all their texts and emails to do those things. I'd assumed the keyboard was just a part of the OS. I only found out after I just happened to long press a key long enough to get an "about samsung keyboard" window and clicking around to find a privacy policy that said which company they were sending keystrokes to, and then reading that company's privacy policy.
I immediately found an open source keyboard to replace samsung's with. I'll say one thing for them, collecting everything everyone types into their devices meant that the samsung keyboard had really good spellchecking/predictive text capabilities. I'd never go back to using it, but there are times I wish the keyboard I replaced it with had a better spellchecker.
1. Samsung is able to sell phones like that legally. 2. People are not in jail. 3. Governments somehow think it's ok that random companies can see everything their citizens do online. National security risks maybe? Trade secret issues?
It's almost suspicious to the point where I would start thinking those third party spy companies are possibly (US/5 eyes) government run?
The worst part is that the most used national ID-function now stops you from using third party "approved" keyboard due to (misguided) security reasons. Both AnySoftKeyboard and AOSP keyboard is banned.
Maybe Google broke some API endpoint and the old keyboard didn't do the update grind.
No warning what so ever for their spyware taking over the keyboard functionally.
The need for some FOSS mobile is really over due by now.
Edit:
> I immediately found an open source keyboard to replace samsung's with
Which keyboard did you pick?
When we were young, this was called a keyloggger and one running was a sign that your computer was compromised.
I guess times have changed.
I use it on all my Android devices. I block all traffic in most apps.
Some Android phones allow you to allow/block Data and/or WiFi separately. My Samsung 4G tablet doesn't allow me to switch off Data or WiFi for some apps, especially the system ones.
This is where NoRoot Firewall does all its good work. It has Global Block list (all ads/trackers go there) and for each app I individually block or allow certain IPs.
So if "Samsung Keyboard" app wants to send your typing home, you block Data/WiFi and leave it trying :)
How did you discover this? Has it been written about? Seems pretty scandalous.
The Samsung replacement apps is down to personal preference, I find them easier to use than Google "originals".
Having casually interacted with phones from other brands, I consider Samsung among the best Android options as far as software and UX goes.
I've used couple carrier branded phones, that `pm list` commands I posted in a different comment returns literally more than dozen of com.carrier.carriertrademark packages.
No one in their right mind is suggesting Samsung. Heck, similar to Apple, you have swaths of people warning you about Samsung.
Samsung lives and dies off their huge marketing budget. Buying their phone is more of a psychology thing, than 'I did lots of research and I bought a high quality phone'.
> First, please note that unless you have opted in to use a Microsoft SwiftKey Account on your Android device, all personal and language data generated by Microsoft SwiftKey is stored locally on your device and is never transferred.
I use it since it seamlessly swaps between enabled languages. I can write something like "meet me at Østerport Station" smoothly.
I actually use the Samsung web browser, because it allows ad-blocking out of the box, which Chrome on Android won't allow...
I've always used gboard as a keyboard (googles keyboard) and disabled the options to get really predictive and smart as I'm sure that makes it learn more closely and potentially send back data to google etc.
It's insane how prevalent this is. The other day, I opened my calculator app and was met with a cookie banner (https://imgur.com/a/njJEiqY) - I uninstalled it on the spot out of sheer incredulity. The irony was that I originally installed Simple Calculator because it was simple and open source, so I presumed it would escape being a trojan horse for data collection. I guess not.
There's a group that forked the original open source apps:
I only had 1 poor quality phone that cost $400, 10 years ago, and I was traumatized.
Occasionally I get a work Samsung phone and they really are the Apple of Android.
(I get the impression from your comments in this thread that maybe you're trying to create such a consensus or the illusion thereof, to get people used to seeing Apple casually referred to as an exemplar of some unstated kind of badness, or something like that. That sort of thing never works.)
Sony Ericsson, Motorola - Pretty much stock Android. Though this was almost a decade ago, so not sure what's their state now.
Xiaomi - Absolutely filled with bloat, but really cheap + flagship specs. Easily fixed by flashing LineageOS.
Pixel 1st gen - No bloat, stock
Asus - My current phone. No bloat, though it has a lightweight skin + QoL stuff that I don't mind. I use it non-rooted + stock OS
`dpkg --get-selections`: `adb shell pm list packages | sort`
`dpkg -r <pkg>`: `adb shell pm uninstall -k --user 0 <pkg>`
1) `adb shell dumpsys activity service SystemUIService`
2) search for "icon slots: " and note down names
3) `adb shell settings put secure icon_blacklist battery,wifi,clock, ...` (blacklist is overwritten by new list upon running this command)why that happens at google so often?
Is the mobile computer hardware industry that hostagedly cowardly locked down that this is no longer possible as it used to be, where people don't even own their own computer devices and instead have to use devices that are owned by other entities? Or what other explanation is there for no such multi-device operating systems? Or did I just miss something that I am blind to?
There are ZERO open source OS for mobile. ZERO. NONE.
even the ones you list doesn't have access to essential drivers. What do they do? they get the driver as binary blobs from the original image, and just ship them. So all those projects are 1) full of closed source kernel drivers. 2) stuck on a specific kernel version to be able to use those binary drivers.
So the MOST those open source versions can do, is set a different set of "system apps" everything else must be the same as the closed source OS. It's barely more than theming in practice.
> compiling all the hardware variations to have drivers and support for practically everything for everyone to get mostly the same experience regardless of which hardware they use
Again, there is ZERO open source on those. All you need to support device X is a root exploit so you can get the binary blobs. Done. Now you can ship to that device.
This is false. Sent from my Librem 5, which runs FSF-endorsed PureOS.
https://androidauthority.com/grapheneos-3287030/
> "Even if you stomach the Pixel-only requirement"
I have not and will not stomach that at all. Nope!
https://grapheneos.org/faq#supported-devices
Nope! I wasn't paying attention, but if I remember, Alphabet/Google was funded to deploy/release Android operating system, and they also were financed to deploy some hardware phones before disappearing to let other companies continue the things and then reappear somehow taking advantage of all the othre companies to outperform all of their manufacturings and whatnot, and then operating systems exist only for the Google phones and none of the others, and this is normal? What? I say F to that coward hijacking others efforts stuff!
I see https://calyxos.org/#Devices Devices section is showing a little bit more than I remember not too long ago http://web.archive.org/web/20230605161332/https://calyxos.or... but still not comparable to what I remember with the likes of OpenWRT, HyperWRT, DD-WRT, Tomato, etcetera. Therefore I do not and will not trust anything GrapheneOS or CalyxOS. Whatever the efforts were that led to wifi routers having lots of open source firmware developments to be supporting lots of different devices, I'd like to see similarly for mobile phones, and whatever concentration there is to finance only developments for Google made phones only, this is red flag hostage coward impression to me, and I will not submit or acquiesce or capitulate to invest in any of that at all, even if nothing else exists.
edited for grammar
> "Base system is open source, but many devices use proprietary drivers for hardware support, and most Android operating systems include Proprietary apps (such as Google Play and other Google apps)."
Okay, so, look at history of AMD GPus and NVIDIA GPUs for proprietary linux drivers and open source/free software alternative drivers that even without the AMD/NVIDIA companies to help at all (regardless of if they did, especially NVIDIA blatantly refusing to help and intentionally making it difficult and whatnot), still there are open source drivers for practically every single AMD and NVIDIA graphics processing unit hardwares to make them work. So, why not the same possibility outcome for mobile computers running Android operating system or other Linux AArch64 or ARM64 architecture o/ses. How is it that barely any signs of strong brave developer programmer humans remain able to dedicate their attention to these efforts that decade ago such skilled programmer developer humans existed but no longer
> "Google Pixel 5a... The last Google product before they went full Apple." - resource_waste https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39733518
lol
Managed to fix it, but learned to be careful - what might be critical for one model might be bloat for another.
Here's a writeup about packages which are safe to remove in MIUI: https://wooptoo.com/blog/safe-to-remove-packages-miui/
This is from a few years ago but it should still apply today.
I'll try to reproduce if I get time.
https://xdaforums.com/t/windows-linux-tool-fire-toolbox-v33-...
You might be able to install a third-party, community-maintained OS, like LineageOS, though, if your hardware is supported. The downside is that I believe apps like Google Pay won't work anymore, since they require Google's SafetyNet attestation system to pass. Sometimes there are ways around that, but they always seemed like unreliable hacks to me.
One and only problem i see with Lineage is that VoLTE wont work and as we dont have 3G anymore it is must have.
Now it seems only Google's own Pixel phone is the only one that's hackable enough to run LineageOS or /e/ or other de-Googled distros.
https://shizuku.rikka.app/ https://github.com/samolego/Canta
[1] - https://github.com/Universal-Debloater-Alliance/universal-an...
In some countries (Scandinavia...) not having the banking app is inconvenient, as it's used for authentication with many other services.
Most apps I use (ie. banking) are bypassed simply by adding them to a hide-list.
The only apps that require a bit more work / expertise are apps that require integrity checks (ie. google wallet).
Disable Knox on a Samsung device and it will brick itself. Luckily when this happened to me I was still connected over ADB, able to re-enable it and the device unbricked
Is there any Android phone brand/model that is not exploiting its users?
I've used flagship Android Samsungs since Google stopped Nexus phones, and they were great. The hardware is fantastic, you can install and change any default app, and their performance doesn't degrade in time.
I can count 4 pre-installed apps that I forgot about. It has much less bloatware than an iPhone, that comes preinstalled with a dozen useless apps that cannot be removed from your home screen.
My tablet came with a weird Google Now replacement that I can't remove, but that's the only bloatware I really encountered. The rest was free versions of paid apps like drawing software and the standard Samsung suite. No weird shopping apps, no ads anywhere, just what I wanted for the tablet.
Xiaomi is pretty bad, though. It kind of makes sense, because they need to develop their software for China, where there is no Google cloud, so they've become their own Google. Every app prompts for agreeing with a privacy statement. Some models of phones actually include ads in the system apps (which can be disabled by a setting, but it's still a problem). Their privacy policy is also a blatant lie. I love the bang-for-the-buck nature of Xiaomi phones, but I wouldn't buy them unless there's a good custom ROM available. Other Chinese brands suffer similar problems, but not to the same extend.
My parents both each have some Samsung and it's awful whenever I have to help them do something.
In this case I actually agree with your “side” of the argument, but not the construct.
https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/universal-android-debloa...