Call it “Tizen” or call it “OneUI”, either way it is one of the most frustrating and poorly designed software interfaces I have ever used.
My most obvious complaint being the overwhelming number of Ads and Promotions. Samsung has clearly prioritized cashing in on promoting services that I do not use or even want, gobbling up the valuable screen real estate from the things I actually do want.
And even beyond the promotional noise, the interface for that stuff I do use is totally disorganized, unintuitive and lacks really any basic customization options.
And I honestly tried looking past all of that, but to top it off, the performance is frustratingly slow. And it frequently lags when navigating between apps or menus.
I finally decided to cut my losses and bought a used unit (rhymes with Schmapple TV) to quarterback my app navigation so that I will never have to fight my way through Samsung’s UI failures again.
By investing in a premium Samsung product, I expect the software experience to have matched the hardware quality. Unfortunately, it falls way short of the standards that I associate with the Samsung brand.
I would urge Samsung to think like their users, rather than treating their interface as a monetizing billboard while relegating anything of actual use to an afterthought.
Sincerely, but rather disgusted,
Dave
PS. I would have preferred to send these comments to some sort of TV software customer service inbox, but Samsung seems to be adamantly opposed to providing any feedback correspondence mechanisms. Zero…
No one is calling the TV software One UI. That is the build of Tizen/Android distributed for cell phones, not TVs. It is Samsung's responsibility to make money for it's stockholders. If you don't like using what is arguably the best TV software on the marketplace, go buy a Roku. Good luck with that, by the way. I wouldn't wish an Macpple TV on anyone. They are super buggy and extremely slow and unreliable, and need nonstop software updates that are outrageously huge.
I understand that Samsung is not a charity, and sure, they ultimately have a responsibility to make money for their stockholders. I am merely lamenting the fact that they have prioritized that greed over end-user usability.
Because we will just have to agree to disagree on what you call “arguably the best TV software on the marketplace”.
Clearly you love it, and I find it completely unusable. We are both entitled to our own opinions. Different strokes as they say.
Personally I think tv OS does things right. I have used it for years on another TV where it has worked like a champion (wide app support as well as being reliable, fast and responsive). So yes, I am quite happy with my choice to abandon what does not work for me in favor of something that does.
As for the naming confusion, I was merely go off an article I read on Toms Guide wrt Samsung’s announcement at the Samsung Developer's Conference in early October, where they announced that were bringing OneUI to Tizen.
digitaldem closed with "I would urge Samsung to think like their users, rather than treating their interface as a monetizing billboard while relegating anything of actual use to an afterthought."
AMEN, Brother!!! The marketers and bean-counters have obviously taken over from the engineers. In the three weeks since I posted a question about how to block "suggestions" from Samsung TV+, nobody from Samsung has bothered to respond. So last night I followed the instructions in a 2 or 3-yr old post which would supposedly removed TV+ entirely (until they add some new "channel", whereupon it may rise from the dead again.) No such luck. Now the home screen pushes a row of suggested movies that can be rented for less than $4 above the row of connected devices, apps, and other sources, then below that a row of "Advertisements." But the app that I searched out and installed (Kanopy, no-cost movies co-sponsored by hundreds of public libraries) does NOT show up in that row of connected devices etc. - presumably because they haven't paid a bribe to Samsung.
Looking through recent postings on this forum, it doesn't look as if Samsung even bothers to pay any employee with tech knowhow to participate regularly in this forum. I'm reluctantly concluding that "Friends don't let friends buy Samsung TV's."
My initial fear would be that changing the country setting to disable the noise from Samsung TV Plus might have the unintended side effect of clobbering my useful apps too.
I guess it just feels like an inordinate amount of effort to enact a work around to disable something that I find overly intrusive because Samsung decided to make a cash grab.
Which I guess brings me back to my original point, because that is really just one piece of the puzzle.
Take for example the gratitous promoted content and recommendation content strips. Eating up the precious screen real estate. As far as I can tell, I cannot remove ones I find irrelevant. And unfortunately I find most of them a zero-value add for me.
And speaking of zero-value add, I did try to use the save for later feature, but stopped once I realized it was not an integrated action. Saving something does not push a request to my saved list at the actual content provider. Which means “saving” something on my Samsung does not synchronize that action and make it available through those provider apps on various other devices.
It becomes yet another siloed list to maintain.
And if Samsung’s intent is for this UI to be a centralized content hub, to help manage the fragmented content landscape, then my opinion remains that they are failing miserably. The user experience must be first and foremost to make that kind of an endeavor successful, not their revenue streams.
I haven't used the smart part of a TV since streaming devices became a thing. Faster apps are updated more frequently, more storage. I use Google TV, I like to side load apps and have access to Google Home right on my TV.
