Hold on tight, we are almost back...
Previously on Lemmy: Sony
Past Discussions:
I thought we should restart the brand discussion with something more popular to give this community relaunch a bit more oomph. So, Samsung it is.
I've never really used a Samsung phone much before, despite them being so popular in the States. Have friends who used them, they usually look nice and high quality, and the Galaxy S Active are the only high-end phones I know that doesn't shatter when you look at them wrong without a case, so, props to Samsung.
There are may reasons I don't like Samsung phones: Hardware fuse disabling Knox on bootloader unlock, Exynos vs Snapdragon models, the mandatory Bixby button, the Galaxy Note 7 that really blew up. To me, Samsung phones are trying so hard to go against what makes Android good, which is the customizability to do whatever you wanted. Android is everything; Samsung is just Samsung.
Personally, I think Samsung is only worth buying at the very high end for the Galaxy S series. I've heard that A series have gotten better, but there always seems to be better choices from Moto/Pixel/Chinese brands on Amazon that it's not worth considering their low tier offering.
What should we do next week? I'm thinking Microsoft, just to make fun of them for the very idea of making a Surface Duo 2.
FAQ:
As someone who exclusively used Samsung flagships as their daily driver (GS2 > Note 4 > Note 8 > Note 20 Ultra), I was a Samsung absolutist and fanboy. But their decisions since the N20U has been frustrating, and has had me eyeing other brands for the first time.
To start about what I love about them: fantastic hardware with solid software. I don't mind their excessive features, because they become so useful, Android/Google adds them to stock 2-3 years later. So it's like a decent beta test for some awesome utilities, like saying "smile" to take a photo with the camera when you can't reach the shutter button. I think several phones now offer this.
What has me eyeing something else for my next phone: shitting on their hardcore power users and greedily taking away options. The removal of the SD card (critical for my usage), the dilution of their features across different models (base, plus, ultra), removing the magstripe, etc. are all anti-consumer with NO benefit to their customers. Even if your typical customer doesn't use a specific feature, it strips the option away from those who do, and it's not like the savings go towards the consumer. If not for these decisions (among other, smaller infractions), I wouldn't be contemplating other brands.
I'm going to jump to Samsung's defense here as I think your anti-consumer belief is misguided:
Each to their own but these are just my views based on 11 years in the mobile phone retail business.
As for the SD cards, I've never over the 10+ years of using smartphones have had data lost on an SD card (and I've used some cheap and sketchy SD cards). The one exception is a Samsung SD card that after being retired from the phone, reformatted and sitting in a drawer for a year refused to being recognized on my PC when I checked my old cards to see what's what and who's where.
I'd rather trash my replaceable SD card with writes from the camera, downloads, streaming cache etc than the non-replaceable eMMC memory. It's cheaper and less environmentally damaging to replace a failed 30€ SD card than to replace the whole phone (or the motherboard) because of the failed eMMC.
These days I use high-endurance SD cards that are designed to be used in eg dash cams, action cameras etc under constant writes and should be really safe for storage in a phone. And all my photos/videos are synced to my NAS via Syncthing in realtime, anyway (over Tailscale VPN or Syncthing relays).
The other issues with SD card is security. Your data isn't safely tucked away, controlled by Knox if it's on a SD card which can be removed. And 'letting the user choose' just means that there needs to be configuration and extra options in firmware, which leads to backdoors and workarounds and a higher chance of comprimsed user data. (When they're not just stealing it off your device and selling it anyway...).
There's nothing preventing encryption being done to a SD card so there's no reason the SD card could encrypt files on it so it's only readable through the phone or after putting in the password. Like how Samsung lets you export encrypted a back up of your apps with appdata to a SD card connected through USB C with their Smart Switch app, which is needed now since they don't back up 3rd party apps to the cloud anymore. https://www.xda-developers.com/samsung-cloud-third-party-app-data/
Also, most people want SD card so they can just offload pictures, videos, and music as opposed to running apps off it. The cons don't seem like cons for me.
It's not people are forced to use a SD card so this stuff seems more like devil's advocate.