As a Galaxy phone owner, Samsung may allow "certain third parties (such as advertising partners)" to "collect your personal information" in unspecified venues and ways.We've seen this in the form of a tucked-away setting within the system-level Samsung Pay app that, unless dug up and disabled, allows your financial information to be shared with "Samsung Pay partners." That discovery last year shocked me enough that I decided to comb through Samsung's various privacy policies, where I found even more unsettling fine print. Here's where the really disconcerting part comes into play: In addition to baking those over-the-top advertising systems into its smartphone experience, Samsung also has mechanisms in place to share your data with external agencies - to double-dip, as I've put it before, and directly profit off the info you assume is protected. As I wrote in my newsletter on Friday, it's tacky, it's abusive, and it's obnoxious - and it makes for an unpleasant and frankly unacceptable user experience, whether we're talking about a $2,000 phone or even a $200 one.Īnd that, unfortunately, is only the start. Galaxy devices with the apparent sole purpose of monitoring phone-owners' location, sensing when they're in a store that sells Samsung products, and then using their notifications to push them ads for those items. Just last week, Samsung reportedly started to send automated background updates to its U.S. It's something we've talked about before - from the ads prominently built into Samsung's system-level Phone app to the endless in-your-face notification nudges pushing everything from new Samsung devices to fee-requiring Samsung apps and services - and it's an issue that only continues to expand and grow ever more troubling over time.Īds built into Samsung's Phone app, at left, and pushed out via system-level notifications, at right. And it does so in a way that's over the top and unacceptably invasive.
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But while Google implements ads into otherwise free online services - an arrangement that's well publicized and that allows those services to remain free for general use - Samsung goes a step further and actually puts ads into the heart of its high-cost mobile products. The out-of-place advertisingĪds are a mostly unavoidable part of contemporary life, especially when technology is involved.
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Here, specifically, are four reasons I'd encourage anyone to think twice before committing to a Samsung Android phone. And while I'm all too aware that I'm likely to get a fair amount of pushback for focusing on these typically underemphasized areas - hey, brand loyalty is a powerful thing these days! - now in particular, this stuff desperately needs to be brought to the forefront. They're issues that not only impact what it's like to use Samsung's phones over the entire time that you own 'em but also impact the all-important areas of privacy and security as it pertains to your personal and/or company-connected data. And it's not because of any manner of subjective assessment it's because of some glaring, foundational flaws with the real-world experience Samsung provides on its Android-based Galaxy devices. And that's to say nothing of the equally or perhaps even more important no-holds-barred marketing strategy that's helped Samsung gain and maintain its dominant position within the Android ranks.Īnd yet, as someone who closely studies the Android ecosystem and aims to offer advice about the most advisable experiences available within it, I find myself struggling to wholeheartedly recommend Samsung's Android products - especially for serious business users - more so with every passing year. When it comes to high-end Android phones, Samsung does a lot of things right - from its sleek, eye-catching hardware designs to its exceptional build quality and frequently top-of-the-line components. The phones will almost certainly be the de facto standard bearers of the high-end Android experience for the months ahead, and they're all but certain to be among the top-selling premium Android devices of 2021. The biggest story in the Android universe this week is the pending arrival of Samsung's latest and greatest Galaxy flagships - the Galaxy S21 and its various cousins, expected to be unveiled at a virtual event later this morning.
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