https://www.change.org/p/stop-google-from-limiting-apk-file-usage
I hope that my rooted One UI 7 doesn’t get the update through some backdoor in the Google Play Services package… Or the next time I unblock Google Play to update the very few paid apps that I use…
Google doesn’t sell any devices that run OneUI, which makes your post somewhat disingenuous… and strengthens your point. You bought the device from Samsung, so you are even more right to be news at what Google is doing since you are not Google’s customer.
The ironic thing is that Samsung is even worse than Google for users’ rights, and has been for a long time.
It’s like on my old Nvidia SHIELD, an update rolled in and all of a sudden there are ads on the homepage. Some people were ok with TV/movie ads being on a TV/movie device, but, why the hell would I want ads for content only available on services that I don’t have? If they’d at least only given me ads for the services it knew I was subscribed to, I would have at least been less pissed off since it could have been useful.
Reached out to Nvidia and they say there isn’t anything they can do, it’s built that way by Google. By no means do I just blindly accept that that was accurate, but, it’s still bullshit that with a basic update all of a sudden the nature of my device was completely changed (imo) and I’m expected to just suck it up or work around it with 3rd party launchers that weren’t as polished.
Dunno if it’s gotten better/worse in the last couple years, mine died and I elected to not replace it with another Android device.
I was frustrated by this also and decided not to put the effort into rooting the device to get rid of all that crap. Instead I decided to use Flauncher together with Button Mapper. Using that tool, I map the homepage button on the remote to point to Flauncher. It isn’t a perfect solution but it was done in a few minutes and I can now mostly avoid the bullshit ads
Just like android phones, the “launcher” in the shield is just the default. You can download a replacement launcher. I’m using Projectivy.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spocky.projengmenu&hl=en_GB
https://troypoint.com/projectivy-launcher/
I agree, I tried to shove two themes into one. Samsung’s decision to disable bootloader unlocking from OneUI 8 just kind of puts more weight on Google’s decision on disallowing unauthenticated apks. For Samsung users, that is.