Samsung is finally removing those annoying in-app ads from its apps

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Samsung has finally decided to remove the in-app advertising from its default apps on its mobile devices. That decision was confirmed officially; after Yonhap reported on a Samsung internal town hall meeting in which an employee asked TM Roh, Samsung’s mobile chief, about the in-app advertising.

The company told The Verge that the company “has made a decision to cease the advertisement on proprietary apps including Samsung Weather, Samsung Pay, and Samsung Theme,” adding that “the update will be ready by later this year.” That will make Samsung’s One UI cleaner, with fewer ads and hopefully fewer notifications about ads.

Only those three ads have been specifically called out so far, but we can only hope that the banishing of ads encompasses most of Samsung’s stock apps. If you don’t have a Samsung phone and want to see how bad the advertising has gotten, here’s a quick sample from us, but 9to5Google has a lot more available.

It’s pretty bad, and while you can mitigate them somewhat, you can’t ever fully turn off the advertising. Maybe Samsung’s data from all of its user’s disabling notifications finally made them realize that pervasive advertising wasn’t the way to go.

The company hasn’t given a concrete timeline for when the changes are happening, just that it will be done through a future One UI update. They’re not the only manufacturer throwing advertising at us constantly though, with LG getting in hot water earlier this year for serving ads onto its TVs during system app updates.

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Joe Rice-Jones

Maker, meme-r, and unabashed geek with nearly half a decade of blogging experience at KnowTechie, SlashGear and XDA Developers. If it runs on electricity (or even if it doesn't), Joe probably has one around his office somewhere, with particular focus in gadgetry and handheld gaming. Shoot him an email at joe@knowtechie.com.