Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/01/25/a-bird-to-catch-the-spider.html
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south korea has been years ahead of the usa internet-wise for some time.
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I would absolutely love to delete all the worthless bloatware from my phone without having to go through the rigamarole of rooting my phone and risking a brick. I know 99.9% of phone users would agree. And gimme back the ability to swap out the battery like you can with every other battery-powered device.
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When I lived there, the markets never “obviated” this stuff.
Webpage design was cluttered and kludgy, with flashing GIFS and pop-up overlays. AFAIK, it still is. By law, they still must use Active-X. They bog computers down in security software that makes online banking sloooow. Last I heard, they finally got rid of real name ID.
Yeah, internet access is ubiquitous, fast, streaming and cheap and it’s everywhere: on top of mountains, inside tunnels, schools, and subways. But the interfaces are clogged in order to push new phone models.
But Korea does use an enforcement system that offers to split fines as a reward for citizens finding violations in the law. So there’s a financial incentive for ordinary citizen “bountyhunters” to register any violation in order to get a bit of sweet regulatory moolah.
What this will mean is that Samsung phones will likely be less bogged down in crap than Apple stuff, simply because of economies of production scale between domestic and international markets.
It will be easier to standardize all phones without crap, and monetize more streaming software interfaces to get around restrictions.
Whatever they will do, however, they will charge Korean phone users more for less, in order to subsidize losses and costs in their electronic export goods.
In the meantime, we might actually see some decent Korean software emerge, which they are traditionally poor at developing.
Eventually, you might see such software become more reliable than domestic US stuff.
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At the risk of stating the obvious, these South Korean regulations will apply to phones marketed in South Korea, regardless of whether they come from domestic or foreign vendors.
Samsung phones sold in other markets will surely still be pre-loaded with crap. Samsung phones sold in Korea will not be pre-loaded with crap, but neither will Apple phones sold in Korea.
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I understand but somewhat disagree. Pre-loading crap takes time.
Koreans are great at creating informal black markets and are very savvy at looking to gain any financial opportunity.
If you’re right, expect services between Korean middlemen for phones wiped of kludge for international markets.
No bloatware, and a swappable battery on the phone I carry
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flip phones typically did the phone part better, but i find i hate the phone part of my smartphone more and more every day.
phone numbers and email addresses are public endpoints that are mainly used by unwelcome companies to spam me. they suck at their one job. i am moving more and more to opt-in communication where both parties have to consent before communication can occur.
all my family/friends/coworkers use digital messaging/voice/video these days and only call or sms txt if i’m out of data range in the mountains.
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