This morning I was surprised to see that my "Device Care" app (on my Samsung A54) was showing a notification. I opened the app, which was reporting that my device condition was "Great!". I then walked through various internal items that had an orange notification dot on them, including a list of unused apps, each of which in turn had its own notification dot. I walked through all the internal orange-dot items, and in doing so turned each of them off. Then I exited the application, and was annoyed to see that the app's notification was still showing "1" in a red orange dot. So I went back into the app and walked through all the items, even though none of them at this point had an orange notification dot on it. As far as I can tell, absolutely nothing inside the app is indicating that it wants attention. Once again after leaving the app, the app's orange notification dot (with a "1") was still there. So I responded by removing the Device Care app from my main screen.
Samsung's app developers seem to have a disturbing inability to properly manage notifications. To see other problems I've encountered, search my other posts here. I suspect that Samsung is hiring too many programmers who don't know how to do "finite state" modeling, which is the sort of software skill you need in order to manage things like notifications properly. Aside from this, app developers (especially web site developers) seem to be enamoured of the idea that it's always better to display more notifications (warnings, popups, whatever). They don't seem to realize that after awhile, all-notifications-all-the-time is just like no-notifications; after awhile people become immune.
I'm coming up on the six-month anniversary of having gotten my Samsung phones, and I'd have to say at this point I wouldn't recommend them to anyone; there are just too many bugs, some of them serious. That's astounding, considering that Samsung is currently the #1 vendor of Android phones. Even more astounding is that none of the reviewers of Samsung phones ever seems to mention all the bugs. It strikes me that unless Samsung starts focusing on managing basic network connectivity and notifications properly, it's going to start losing market share. Certainly they've lost me; if I had to buy another phone today, it wouldn't be a Samsung.
