Chinese smartphone makers are often criticized for showing ads in various system applications. Not only these ads can be irritating but at times can be vulgar and even steal money in ways that you can’t imagine.
In their defense, these smartphone OEMs claim that ads help them subsidise phones and users can get premium hardware at a fraction of cost. While their argument is acceptable to an extent, the fact that the South Korean smartphone maker Samsung has not only been showing ads on affordable and budget phones but also on flagship devices that costs a bomb.
After drawing criticism from all quarters including – end-users, media and experts, Samsung has finally accepted the mistake and has revealed that it will stop showing ads in its stock application.
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The company has now said that it cares about the “feedback from our users” and says that it aims to, “deliver innovative mobile experiences for our consumers based on their needs and wants.” The South Korean company in a statement to The Verge stated that “Samsung has made a decision to cease the advertisement on proprietary apps including Samsung Weather, Samsung Pay, and Samsung Theme.”
Though there is no confirmation as to when these ads will be removed from these applications, it can be safely assumed that in one of the upcoming major updates of One UI users will get rid of these pesky advertisements.
That said, while the decision to remove the advertisements is a welcome change, only these three applications are not the root cause of the poor user experience. There are more elements in Samsung’s fork of Android that users are unhappy about. One such is the installation of third-party apps that Samsung forces on users during the setting up of a new phone.
A persistent reminder to install apps with a confusing UI that doesn’t give users an option to exit the installation wizard forces users to install some apps from the preselected list. Now that Roh Tae-moon, the Chief of Samsung’s mobile division has confirmed that the company plans to improve the user experience, hopefully, it will include removing ads from all the possible places and make it easier for the users to decide the apps that they want to install.
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