Jimmy Westenberg / Android Authority
TL;DR
- There will no longer be Samsung ads in some of its first-party smartphone apps.
- The first two apps to lose advertisements are Samsung Pay and Samsung Health.
- Samsung Themes will eventually join the club, but there’s no date for that yet.
One of the coolest aspects of Samsung’s Android skin known as One UI is that it mostly works the same across its entire lineup. This means the software experience on a budget Samsung phone is largely the same as the experience on its top-of-the-line flagships.
See also: The best Samsung phones you can get
Of course, the downside to this is that money-saving application advertisements appear across the board. It’s a little weird to spend $1,100 on a Galaxy S21 Ultra, for example, and then see Samsung ads throughout your phone.
Thankfully, that’s starting to change. Samsung promised it would cut out advertisements in at least some of its apps this year, and the removal has begun. According to forum posts in the official Samsung community (via TizenHelp), Samsung Health and Samsung Pay are now ad-free in South Korea. Korean users are reporting ad-free experiences in the forums, too, so it looks like things are rolling.
Theoretically, these changes should make their way to other countries very soon.
The only other app with Samsung ads that we know will also go ad-free is Samsung Themes. However, it’s likely other Samsung apps will also lose all advertisements in the near future.