How does it deal with banking apps? What about camera apps? How is the camera workings with other camera apps?

If it works in non-google hardware I'll switch, I'm not giving alphabet my money willingly

How about intune?

Samsung has been accused of shipping budget Galaxy A and M series smartphones with pre-installed spyware that users can’t easily remove.

The software in question, AppCloud, developed by the mobile analytics firm IronSource, has been embedded in devices sold primarily in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

So these are cheap phones mostly being sold in the Middle East.

But what options are there for non tech savvy people. Apple isn't any better.

This is me. As I write to you from my Graphene Pixel 9. My first non Samsung phone since the S3. The S22 unwanted ads were just too much. (and apparently it's all worse now) You could disable them, but you had to re disable after every update. The second I found a good deal on a pixel I jumped.

I used to only buy Samsung phones.

Now they're the only phone I've ever returned. Never touching their shit again.

This happened to me with my Xiaomi, I get notification ads from Xiaomi GetApp, their own app store. They even force open overriding google play when I press update on a third party app. I tried to block and force stop but they still pop up. I got so fed up I blocked them from using data and wifi; that did the trick.

You can mostly disable them. Delete your Samsung account, don't agree to their terms of service besides the most basic one or two that is required. No defense of Samsung, just what I did to deny them as much as I could of my information until I replace this phone and never buy Samsung again.

I will never buy another Samsung phone or tablet.

Same

Again?

Huh, Unity owns IronSource.

Of course. It's a zionist company.

Great quote. It's laughable how this bullshit article dances around this.

I hope that one day we fix our bullshit and stop relying on corporations to save us. This should should be regulated to hell and back by representatives and their teams who are at worst just mediocre at their jobs.

While we’re dreaming and all that I’m gunna high ball it.

I'd absolutely move to a steam machine in my pocket.

Let's not wait. Let's collectively ask Valve to make that next

Gaben deserves a 14th yacht if he makes this ;)

I can't imagine the pixel is much better. I think the question you have should be inverted. What doesn't have spyware...

Problem is that Samsung is like Apple- a shitton of people just blindly buy the latest Samsung whatever with zero research.
So you have a bunch of other companies trying to stand out in one way or another- Motorola for example just released a phone that brings back the 3.5mm headphone jack. And you have a ton of cheap Chinese companies that may or may not offer any software support after purchase but have interesting form factors.

That makes it hard for the little guys to get the kind of sales volume needed to justify the development and tooling for a really cool flagship phone.

Personally while phones today are far more capable, I think phone designs peaked in the mid 2000s. Mainly because you had actual innovation in design-- wildly different form factors. There were a few phones that flipped open like a laptop with a physical keyboard, a handful that slid open to reveal a blackberry-style keyboard, many had SDIO ports or other ability to clip on expansion modules, etc. Phones had fun features- there was one that could do an early 'google pay' type thing by pulsing a magnetic field to pretend to be a magnetic credit card stripe for a swipe reader. A lot of the early Samsung phones had IR blasters so you could turn TVs on and off. There were a couple designed for gaming that were laid out like a game pad. Manufacturers weren't afraid to experiment and the result was some really cool stuff.

Sadly that's all gone today. HTC (which made many of those cool phones) was driven out of the market by Apple and Samsung, so now virtually all phones are identical flat bricks.
I see a glimmer of hope with flip phones and foldables, but not much. They're all just excuses to

Its always the Zionists they see land, life, freedom, and people as something to be bought and sold.

TIL Unity owns ironsource.

A new type of Android spyware that requires a password for uninstallation has been identified, making it increasingly difficult for victims to remove the malicious software from their devices.

The first sentence in the link that you linked.

So... you're technically right. It can be removed.

But not by the customer, unless they have an uncle who works at Samsung.

also from the article:

Even more concerning, attempts to uninstall it often fail due to its deep integration into Samsung’s One UI operating system.

Reports indicate the app reactivates automatically following software updates or factory resets, making it virtually unremovable for average users.

but i do agree that “virtually unremovable” and “unremovable” are two very different things. and im not even sure i would classify this as “virtually unremovable”