A while ago my HTC phone started showing full screen ads whenever I unlocked the phone. It was a bundled app called Peel Remote which changed its behaviour during an update.
I took some detective work to figure out which app was causing the issue since there's no visible clue on the ad itself, and since I have never used Peel Remote. I eventually figured it out somehow and disabled the app. I imagine that lots of other HTC users are still dealing with this.
HTC should really protect their users from this abusive behaviour by their partners.
EDIT: Mention that I've never even used Peel Remote, which makes the ads even more annoying!
For some context: Peel Remote is an app for using the IR blaster to control your TV/DVR. HTC used to have their own app for it, but it got discontinued so they put up Peel Remote as the replacement.
I was about to consider this a shame, as HTC's own app was pretty good, but not sure if I would trust them not to put ads in it anyway now.
Samsung pulled the same thing years ago with the S4. They bundled "Beaming Service" to handle the IR blaster made by a third party company called MoBeam. MoBeam decided to start doing push ad notifications for their crappy coupon clipping app. After I was woken up after midnight by one, I decided I'd never buy a Samsung phone again. It couldn't be uninstalled or disabled. And this was before you could turn off notifications from a single app in Android.
I highly doubt this is unintentional like they claim. They were testing the waters for backlash. I can count all the times I accidentally put ads in my software on one hand, using zero fingers.
Highly doubt should be changed to don't believe. There's no way you add an advertisement "unintentionally" into something as integral to a phone as the keyboard and not realize it when doing basic sanity testing. I can believe that it was unintentional that the ad was shown by default (it may have been an option to display ads which was enabled by default) but the fact it is present is absolutely intentional.
> I can count all the times I accidentally put ads in my software on one hand, using zero fingers.
It's kind of interesting that below binary numbers, there are unary numbers, where there is no way to represent zero apart from complete lack of any symbols. You could almost say that unary is the native number system of the eyeball.
We can only hope that they remove this and fire all the product managers involved. There is no way you can justify adding Bitmoji to a default keyboard used by people who want to get work done.
I am starting to think that in spite of being more expensive than a desktop gaming computer, going iPhone is starting to be the only viable alternative.
Either that or back into feature phones, because I don't see any other mobile OS alternative winning over Android, regarding general public.
There is no need of nor no sense in going to Apple to be rid of corporate control, Android can be tamed to serve the device owner instead of its manufacturer and distributor. Make sure to get a device which is supported by one of the AOSP-derived distributions, install said distribution and use one of the alternative repositories (FDroid being a good choice). Don't install any Google-specific apps, don't install - or remove - Google Play Services, in short don't play along with Google's game plan. This way you can have a device which serves you and your needs instead of those of Google or Apple. You might need to forego on the latest app craze because those are not available on FDroid but that just gives you so much more time to do other things instead of search for virtual fame and fortune by herding virtual sheep or finding virtual friends.
The general public part of the problem can be solved by offering an alternative Android-based distribution which can be installed by 'the general public' in a way similar to that which they install updates to the stock OS. For some devices this process is already available, for others there is more work to be done.
Project Treble[0] only enforces a certain level of hardware requirements.
There are zero requirements for OEMs or carriers to actually push updates to their devices, and they are still allowed to customize their forks. [1]
Also it requires consumers to buy a new device running Android O, hoping that the OEM will actually push updates, because even those getting an update from Android N to O won't have any guarantees of further updates.
I don't count on OEMs in any way. However, if my understanding is correct, Treble should make it far easier to install an aftermarket ROM on a Treble-compatible device.
When I shop for my next phone, "Treble-compatible" will be the top requirement.
There are alternatives to unlocking the bootloader. My current device (a 2011 Motorola Defy) can not be unlocked yet still I'm running it with Android 4.4.4 on a custom kernel. The trick here was to subvert the update process, other ways exist to do the same.
A few years back I got fed up with everything, and tossed my smartphone in the sea - spent 3 years with a feature phone, and frankly, it was awesome. I had to get a smartphone again due to changes with my business, and it doesn't make me happy.
This is somewhat frustrating since I have a Moto-E from Republic Wireless running Android 4.4.4. I only use this phone for texting and calls since it is like 12 bucks a month. For browsing and watching movies I use a iPhone 6 my sister gave me that doesn't have cell or data service. No other software besides what came with the phone has been installed on the Mote-E. I use the default phone and texting applications.
I actually never learned how to screenshot with Android so I just snapped a pic with my iPhones camera.
I recently learned that, on Samsung, you need to swipe from right to left with the entire hand. (Since Samsung is world champion in needlessly changing Android UI.)
The explanation they gave is that TouchPal ads are disabled in HTC phones since the app comes bundled by default, but erroneously, an update installed the generic version with ads instead.
Since they reversed it very quickly, I find it believable.
Reminds me of the feature phones in the early 2000s that all had an 'online' button that would bring up the mobile operator's WAP portals.
The only reason why you'd ever press that button is by accident (these WAP pages had no useful content at all) and each accidental button press would cost the equivalent to $2 due to outrageous mobile charges.
The placement of these buttons was always such that you'd likely hit them accidentally.
Ah, I remember these. You could not disable them, but on my phone, I could adjust the hostname it would connect to. I chose the much cheaper 127.0.0.1. :)
Pixel owner here, since the Oreo upgrade I've had a red dot on my Google keyboard (on the emoji button) and when you tap on it you get what is basically an add for some thing that lets you make your own emojis or something. Haven't looked at it in much detail but it doesn't seem to be a Google owned app.
Lets face it though, Google is an ad company which tells you two things about them;
1. To them, you're a wallet with opposable thumbs.
2. Everything they do is done with the goal of propagating their advertising network into more places.
That absolutely reminded me of the "Didn't you have ads in the 20th century?" Futurama scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPGgTy5YJ-g