new carrier phones and feature and samsung phones in 2023-24

[snow755]

hi


hello do you all recall back in the old days that AT&T verizon and t-mobile when ever a new samsung phone comes out that they all ways like to remove features that came with the phone like example AT&T likes to remove the software update screen that shows the list of improvements and replace it with a plain blue update bar so i wounder have carriers gotten better now days and leave all the features be or do they still remove something in 2024 i all so like to no what features did your samsung S24 came with or remove if you got it from AT&T verizon or T-mobile

 

[xiaohopong]

I think US carriers still mess around with things because updates are often held back from sim-free phones.

 

[Technerd108]

All carriers have network optimizations that they add to updates. They also add carrier specific apps. Otherwise everything else is the same and most of the time you can delete most of the carrier apps. If you buy a financed phone or through a carrier incentive it will be locked to the carrier until the contract is up and often times it can be difficult to remove the lock even when paid off.

Generally speaking if you look at the cost of the plan needed to get incentives, often times the phone will get paid off just in extra charges if you do the math. If you buy an unlocked phone and use a pre-paid service you will essentially save so much that you can buy any phone you want in 2-3 years just saving the difference. You can use ATT or T mobile or Visable and get pretty much the same service priority that is better than MVNO's and save a lot of money.

Then you can either trade or private sale your old device and use that toward buying a new phone and if you saved your money over the months you can usually upgrade yearly instead of 3 years locked in an expensive contract this gives you much more control and freedom.

The simple answer to your question is yes there is some carrier bloat but generally it isn't as bad as it was in the past.