I hate that. One of the reasons I dislike Samsung phones. Last phone from them was a Note 8 and unless they go back to a pure Android experience, I won’t get another. We know that isn’t happening any time soon.

Honestly I’m super over all our current choices. Im on an iPhone and while I like their privacy stuff slightly better than android, there are lots of things I don’t like.

I also hate how much metadata the big G snorts up. Even just the location data they retain is out of this world.

There just aren’t any options if you want something that doesn’t keep you boxed into a closed ecosystem or track every love you make.

Samsung has been a malicious bad actor for a while now. It's not just phones; they also pulled shit like retroactively adding ads to people's smart TVs etc.

(Also, even their "dumb" products, like appliances, are designed to fail just outside warranty. If you don't believe me, take a look at my washer's spider arm, which failed catastrophically due to corrosion even though nothing else in the machine had so much of a speck of corrosion on it. Samsung is clearly capable of specifying corrosion-resistant materials and chose not to on purpose in order to create a failure point.)

Everyone should completely boycott Samsung.

Straight up gambling apps too

I disabled my DNS block-list for 5 minutes to test something, and my Samsung TV used its newfound freedom to immediately go and automatically install the TikTok app from its app store. It no longer gets the privilege of an internet connection.

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.

If one of my relatives showed me this screen appearing on their phone I’d assume they have malware

Ah, that's where you're wrong: it's not your phone.

Stab in the dark...your on tmobile.

It does this to me too. You disable the damn thing, then you get a carrier update and it reactivates and downloads stupid games no one wants.

First time it did it to me, I thought I got a virus. Come to find out...nah it's just a thing tmobile forces on you for fun.

Assholes

It's carrier based. I've had Samsung phones almost exclusively and as long as I buy unlocked I never get unwanted apps.

The fact that one of those is some sort of a gambling app promotes that to very infuriating! 😡

guess its carrier stuff?

At this point I only buy Smartphones with Android One label (Stock Android without anything changed). Samsung especially is full of bloat.

One of the many reasons I will only ever buy Pixel phones. No bloatware.

Samsung is pretty much notorious for this, especially in developing countries where they bundle in every third-party service, PayLater app, shitty mobile game, etc alongside a new device. The only reason they are seen as preferable is that other companies are doing worse (see: Xiaomi).

Just uninstalled this after seeing this thread. If you're on AT&T like I am the package name for Mobile Services Manager is com.dti.att and it has nothing to do with your actual mobile services. All it does is push and update bloatware. I also nuked every AT&T app that I could. I recommend everyone who has Android Studio do this to their phone its easy.

Never again Samsung. Never again.

I wouldn't be able to handle this. Been running GrapheneOS since last year, and I don't think I could go back to anything else.

Actually started working on a GrapheneOS installation service called SwapMyOS that I think could be helpful to those who wanna install GrapheneOS but don't how.

I kick a percentage back to GrapheneOS itself to keep the project funded and running (which is the primary motive behind the project).

I would suggest this has absolutely nothing to do with a Samsung update and more than likely some form of malware.

Remember when Apple put a U2 song on everyone's iPhone and people went nuts about it? How dare they do that! That was just a song.

Now companies just install whatever apps they want. And people just accept it.

There are a lot of negative things that I will say about Apple and iOS, but this would NEVER EVER fly on an iPhone. The fact that we just kind of accept it on Android is infuriating.

I'm assuming you are new to Samsung? They are the kings of junk software.

The phone legislation we actually need isn’t about batteries, it’s about software.

Might be your carrier. T-Mobile had some app like that that I had to fight a few times to get rid of.

Is this a regional thing? None of my Samsung phones (Galaxy Note 3, Galaxy S10 and Galaxy S23) ever installed apps like these automatically. They did come with Microsoft apps bundled in, and I believe Facebook too, but after deactivating them they never came back. Never games though.

Never seen or installed this nonsense on my Samsung phone. This looks to be some sort of adware or malware.

I just got a Galaxy S23 about 2 weeks ago. It came with Facebook and Swiftkey as well as a bunch of Microsoft Apps. But no Tiktok, Games or other crap. Even after updating the OS nothing like that had been installed.

My guess is that a lot of people do not read anything and just rush through the initial setup process, thereby confirming things like wanting recommended apps to be installed.

Also there are some mentions of rooting here. I suggest to first give adb a try. It lets you uninstall any app without rooting (including Facebook and Swiftkey in my case).

Disable "Mobile services manager". Samsung phones are lousy with crapware these days so I would avoid them like the plague. An eldery relative asked me why he kept seeing ad popups and his device had something called "Samsung Free" that cannot be disabled or completely turned off which pushes news articles, ads and other shit at him. I just turned off as many "interests" as I could and attempted to opt out of the software but it's still there and swiping left on the home page re-enables it. Samsung phones are absolute dogshit these days. I wouldn't go near one unless they could be rooted and flashed out of the box.

This is why I don't buy devices on contract with the carriers anymore. They're always loading extra crapware that we don't need.

What smartphone brand is safe to buy nowadays? It feels like every single one is terrible and anti-user.

LOL welcome to Samsung. This is why I stopped buying them after the S6.