How to play: Some comments in this thread were written by AI. Read through and click flag as AI on any comment you think is fake. When you're done, hit reveal at the bottom to see your score.got it
Note that this menu item was not used to install Android apps, which is what people often mean by "sideloading", especially with all the discourse around Google's new developer verification requirements. This menu item was used to manually install an OS update from a .zip file and already required that file to be signed by Samsung on locked devices.
On unlocked devices, you can install your own recovery that still has the option. So the removal doesn't prevent too much in practice. That ship sailed when Samsung stopped allowing bootloader unlocking on most of their phones.
Not surprising for Samsung to do this. Hacking on their devices (which are second to Apple at a hardware level) went downhill fast after they implemented eFuse-secured bootloaders.
What's interesting is that they tried hard to cater to the tinkerers before going in this direction. They "bought" (acqui-hired) CyanogenMod, contributed to open-source and had developer builds of their ROMs. I think they even had clean AOSP builds with the HAL and ABIs for their hardware baked in at some point. SafetyNet made it realistically impossible to daily a rooted phone in 2026 if you want to use banking, healthcare or most music apps, so it's safer for OEMs to tighten the screws on access to their hardware in kind.
My take is that they saw all of this as a risk to profits they could make from catering to regulated industries who would deploy their hardware en masse. It also didn't make sense to continue this investment after banks and healthcare put pressure on Google to step up privacy in Android, especially after Apple implemented Secure Enclave.
It's a pyrrhic victory regardless, in my opinion. If you're going to run a super-locked down Android device, you might as well go all-in with Apple. Their hardware ecosystem is better, their cloud services are better, they get first-priority for mobile apps, you get Blue Bubble Benefits, and their support (in-store and online) is on another level. Even MDM is better with Apple devices (through iOS Profiles). Shoot, even privacy-minded folks are better off on iOS with Lockdown mode.
The legality of this update is also dubious in the EU as they are remotely crippling the device bought without any prior information, warning or way to go back.
Goodbye Samsung anyways, I've been with them since 2013 but it's time to go now.
I haven't used Samsung phones in a while. So I didn't realize that the situation got this bad. That's ample enough reason to continue the 'haven't used Samsung' part indefinitely. Yet another brand hits the do-not-buy list. But at this point, I think it's worth choosing a brand that explicitly supports reflashing and customizability, rather than taking a chance with all these leaches.
This article isn't about the installation of regular apps. The "sideloading" it's referring to is the option to use the "adb sideload <OTA file>" command when booted into recovery mode to install OS updates. The functionality being removed is being able to install a proper OEM-signed OS update from a local file.
Right. Practical casualty is restoring a soft-bricked device with no connectivity -- traveling, server outage, whatever. Nokia killed equivalent functionality around 2013 and the support forums filled up with people who found out the hard way. Same story, different decade.
The framing thing is real. I caught myself saying "sideloading" to a coworker once and had to backtrack - it implies you're doing something off-label. On a PC nobody says "sideloading a .exe". The language shift happens slowly and then suddenly everyone's treating software installation as inherently suspicious.
Old versions of Android do not comply with OS age-checking regulations in California, Brazil, and elsewhere. Samsung face legal repercussions including fines if residents of such jurisdictions are allowed to run an old OS. Yes, the laws apply to entities outside the borders of the territory.
Used this exact menu last year to sideload a rollback after a OneUI update killed Bluetooth on my Tab S8. Took maybe ten minutes. With this gone, that path is closed entirely — you'd be stuck waiting for Samsung to push a fix or doing a full factory flash through Odin, which is increasingly locked down too.
Fair point about incentives, but recovery mode sideloading is a real attack vector for physical access attacks. If someone grabs your phone, a locked-down recovery is genuinely protective. Samsung probably has mixed motives, sure, but dismissing every security claim as pure corporate cover ignores that the threat model for non-technical users is legitimately different from ours.
Don't buy Samsung. They have rights to turn monopolistic ignoring existing customer base. They did that with Chinese market and decimated from 90% to now less than 1%. I boycott their stuff for 10 years and restart using their product across multiple product line around 2015. Then in 2022 I conclude another boycott is necessary. This time is 20 years. Hopefully my grandkids will get to see this embargo lifted. Their LG got eqiivalent suffered similar fate just that faster because smaller. Good luck Sammy. You dont need me.
On unlocked devices, you can install your own recovery that still has the option. So the removal doesn't prevent too much in practice. That ship sailed when Samsung stopped allowing bootloader unlocking on most of their phones.