Given that the name of this news site is RCS Boys, you could probably guess that we’re fans of the RCS messaging protocol, and by association, probably Android as well. And you’d be correct; our writers, including myself, currently all daily drive Android devices. I’m currently using a Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra. Despite how much I think Android is a great operating system and mobile platform, for one reason or another, this phone has let me down time and time again.

I’m not exactly sure why, but as time went on, this phone suffered more and more from dwindling battery life and terrible performance for seemingly no reason at all. My best guess is just the sheer amount of apps I have installed at any given time. But even that theory doesn’t make sense, because most of them were deep sleeping. Deep sleeping, if you aren’t aware, is a Samsung exclusive feature that puts apps you haven’t used in a while into a “deep sleep,” where they aren’t allowed to run in the background. There are also sleeping apps that only get periodic opportunities to run in the background. These features are a part of Samsung’s failing effort to do anything they can in their power to improve the battery life of their devices.

A common theme you will see throughout this article is Google and Samsung services clashing because Samsung attempts to awkwardly inject their ecosystem on top of the existing fully fledged Android ecosystem. Samsung tries their best to give you their One UI experience while trying to ignore that Android is even there.

The performance and battery were truly abysmal until recently. It was so bad that I’d be doing nothing else but texting someone and going to switch apps just for it to lock up for a good ten seconds. Scrolling was laggy, load times were bad, and taking pictures really did a number to the performance and especially battery life. I’d be listening to music and going to take a picture just for my music to stutter out until Samsung killed Spotify altogether (we’ll get to background killing later as well). These performance problems are really odd especially considering that most people don’t have these issues with their Samsung devices. I’ve seen reports online of it, but it’s hard to say if they’re suffering from the exact same issues as me. With the performance and battery life being this bad, I decided my phone needed a fresh start.

The Reset

I decided that whatever the reason my phone may be acting weird could probably be solved with a factory reset, but even this was made harder than it realistically should’ve been. Luckily with most of the stuff I cared about already backed up on the cloud or elsewhere, there wasn’t much to backup. Samsung and Google both also have cloud backup solutions that aim to backup everything on your phone to create an exact replica when you restore, but that really defeats the point of a fresh start in my mind. What if the reason my phone is acting terribly is because of some setting, or some app setting? That data will just be restored on reset, solving nothing. Not to mention that previously when restoring from a cloud backup, Google and Samsung’s backup services conflicted and overwrote over the others data. Or in the case of my messages, the two made duplicate entries of each message (including images!), and over just a few backups I could end up with up to eight copies of each message! This wouldn’t happen if one of them was removed from the system, but as I mentioned before, Samsung acts like the Google half of the phone just isn’t there.

This time when backing up my data, the only things that I actually wanted transferred were messages, as the rest already had backups. My messages technically were already backed up on Samsung Cloud, but I wanted to be sure I had more than just that before continuing. So logically next I went to Google’s backup to make sure I had my messages there too. Google’s automatic backup triggers after your phone’s been idle, charging, and on Wi-Fi for two hours, which wouldn’t have been a for a while for my device, so I triggered a manual backup. This process was slow and didn’t provide much progress indication other than an unlabeled blue bar at the top and a notification. I’m perfectly okay with it taking as much time as it needs; but what is not ideal is the fact that it failed. I’m not entirely sure why, but I’m pretty certain it has something to do with my messages that it just got stuck on. I know this because after giving up on Google’s backup, I tried to push just my messages to Samsung’s temporary cloud backup, a very convenient service provided by Samsung that allows you to backup an unlimited amount of data to Samsung Cloud up to 30 days so that you can restore in that timeframe and get all your stuff back. All I selected were my messages and it errored out as well.

Accepting that maybe the cloud didn’t like me that day, I looked into local backup solutions. In the past I’ve used an open source app I found on F-Droid simply named SMS Import / Export, and it has served me well. So I loaded up the app and it exported all my SMS messages fairly quickly, but crashed near the end of the MMS stage. This is how I knew my backup problem likely had something to do with a weird MMS message I had. Maybe it’s 0 bytes in size, has a weird name, or something else entirely. Whatever it is, it’s probably the suspect preventing me from backing up my data. At this point I was fairly annoyed and just wished I could get my messages off this phone somehow. If my phone was rooted this would be a trivial task, as I could just pull the SQLite database that stores the messages via ADB (Android Debug Bridge). But this functionality is not available for non-rooted phones, as the Android Telephony data directory is blocked to the shell. Some might try to defend this, claiming security concerns that the database shouldn’t be accessible from a local shell. While there is some merit to that claim, why is it that a proprietary application that contains ads and in-app purchases can read them with one press of “Allow” but I can’t via the shell? With that being said, a proprietary app with ads and in-app purchases from the Play Store was finally the thing that allowed me to backup my messages into one big XML file. It took a while, but it did it! I sent the file and some other data to my computer via KDE Connect and proceeded to reset. Finally!

Fresh Start

Given that this was a fresh copy of the OS, the setup is the usual for a Samsung phone, but that does not mean it was a good experience. Again with Google and Samsung software conflicting, you’ll have to do everything twice. It’s like setting up two phones at once! Agree to terms and conditions twice, disagree to tracking and newsletters twice, and sign in to two different accounts. Even the UI design is inconsistent as it alternates between Google and Samsung design in between pages. The two different accounts made things interesting as well. I’ve done this setup more times than I’d like to admit, so I know how to move quickly, but it can get a little confusing when the Google login asks you to authenticate with the old OS you just deleted and most other options are disabled for some reason??? Thankfully the Samsung login realizes that you can’t authenticate with an OS that doesn’t exist anymore, and doesn’t ask any questions. Think of how confusing it must be for a non-technical user to login to one account, and then be immediately prompted to login to another one for the same phone. Not to mention that one of the options is to login with your Google Account into your Samsung Account, that’s not confusing at all! At least on a Pixel phone you just login to your Google Account, and on an iPhone you login to your Apple ID. Just another example of Google and Samsung software conflicting and Samsung ignoring the Google half of the phone. Of course you also get the obligatory Recommended App Install list that has a few useful ones, and then Candy Crush, King’s Castle whatever, Spyware Solitaire, and more apps you don’t want and didn’t ask for. But at least it’s not as annoying and intrusive as Microsoft Windows trying to shove ads in the operating system you paid for!

Thanks Big Tech

The post setup process is more of the usual “We’re almost finished up!” notifications, and a long process waiting for the Play Store to update all the apps on your phone. I don’t have a problem with that, but again, here comes the Galaxy Store to do the exact same thing and try to update/install Samsung apps alongside the Play Store. It gets worse when you realize that most Samsung apps like Wearable, Notes, Health, etc. are being installed by the Play Store. So why does the Galaxy Store exist again? Oh yeah, that’s right, to serve me ads in my notifications that are nearly impossible to disable. Seriously, what on Earth is this Samsung? Daily advertisements that mind you, promote gambling, that cannot be disabled by holding down on them, no switch in the Galaxy Store settings, and nothing in the Galaxy Store notifications settings. Is this a joke Samsung? Because it’s making your company look like one.

But hey, at least I get one click Spotify login with my Samsung account! Don’t even have to think about it. Spotify usually has good integration with Samsung, that is if you don’t count the OS trying to kill it at any opportunity it gets. Seriously, with all the extra Galaxy Garbage that Samsung phones ship with, the phone will do anything in its power in a last ditch effort to improve battery life. They try a few different things, including the aforementioned sleeping and deep sleeping apps, but the phone also notoriously kills any and every app that it can. In fact, it even happened while I was writing this article. I was listening to an album on Spotify and the music just stopped, with no indication of why. You’d think that music apps would have it a little easier since they’re actually doing something useful for the user in the background, but apparently not. Funny that SiriusXM has advertisements with the Galaxy Store push notifications considering that the SiriusXM app won’t survive if you’re not opening your phone every hour.

With my fresh new install of Samsung’s Android spin, my phone runs significantly faster with much better battery life, so I’ll take that as a win. I also did some debloating using ADB to remove some packages that really aren’t necessary. Things like the Meta App Manager (I don’t have Facebook, why does this come with my phone? Just to spy?), AR Emojis, Samsung News, the Edge Panels, Game Booster Plus, Game Launcher, various telemetry packages, and even Samsung Messages. Talk about a redundant app, Samsung Messages is really just added weight considering Google Messages ships by default as the primary messaging app, but then again, most of what’s on this phone by default is added weight. It’s been a rough one Samsung.