Updated my Samsung phone and it installed unwanted apps

SaltyEggs@lemmy.world to Mildly Infuriating@lemmy.world – 1543 points –
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Majorly infuriating.

It's not really your phone if it does things like this. This is Samsung's phone you pay for their permission to carry for a few years.

True ownership means fully possessing something and deciding how it operates including what software it runs, what data that software can access, and when it can access it. I would not be surprised if those apps had some very invasive default permissions.

There's a difference between not having full ownership and not bothering to use it. There's plenty of options from rooting to full custom ROMs, and as far as I know Samsung does nothing to prevent you using those, they just don't do it for you / provide support and updates.

My Canadian S10E has no way to unlock the bootloader.

Yeah, you shouldn't have to root your phone to own it though. This is just straight up asshole design, there are plenty of people out there who aren't technically savvy who don't know how to do this stuff. They shouldn't be forced to circumvent the default software just to remove an app they don't want in the first place.

Last time I bothered researching, Google pixel was the only one that didn't void the warranty when you unlock the bootloader.

I remember Samsung being especially locked down with hardware e-fuses that blew if you ran any software not signed by their key. You could never reset back to stock afterwards.