Dear Samsung,

As a daily Samsung user, I can attest that Galaxy devices are amazing. I’m sure anyone who’s going to sign this thinks likewise. I’ve been traveling lately, taking gorgeous pictures, enjoying great battery life, and yet, this has made me realize Samsung has a big problem. Something’s been ruining the premium experience our Samsung devices offer, and I think it’s time for Samsung to fix this mess: I’m talking about the Country Specific Code system (CSC).

HOW THIS ALL WORKS

When you insert a new SIM card into your device, you’ll be getting a prompt to restart.
What your phones does is change software settings that are specific to your carrier: that’s what the CSC is, a carrier specific part of the Samsung software.

STOP THE BLOATWARE

All devices come with preinstalled apps from your phone manufacturer. A few examples of these would be the Phone, Calculator, or Messages apps. This is fine, as these apps are truly essential to everyday usage.

Samsung devices—compared to Google Pixels or iPhones—come with extra apps that are simply unnecessary: they’re called bloatware. 
For instance, carriers preload their own app onto our phones, without asking for permission. Some of them aren’t even carrier related, like the Amazon app, sometimes preloaded depending on your carrier.

You cannot uninstall these apps. At best, you can disable them, but they’re still there.

During the initial setup, you even get carrier suggested apps, essentially ads from the very beginning.

Carriers should NEVER preinstall ANY apps onto our devices. Ever. We get to decide.

DUAL SIM SUPPORT

Many Samsung devices now support the simultaneous use of two cellular plans. Now that eSIM is taking over, it’s never been easier to switch carriers, or get an extra cellular plan.

Every time you switch on your SIM cards, your phone will reboot.
Here’s an example: you turn off your Personal SIM card and turn on your Work SIM. The phone will prompt you to restart, to apply your work carrier’s CSC. You head home, and turn off your Work SIM, and turn back on your Personal SIM. The phone will, again, prompt you to restart. This happens each time.

Not only is this frustrating, but it can also lead to some apps disappearing out of the blue, deleting all your data. This can even happen if this is your first time inserting a SIM card ever into the device. In that case, the entire phone is wiped. You cannot recover your data afterwards.

How does the competition deal with this?
On a Pixel or iPhone, no need to restart. Your phone will download your carrier settings in the background.

This whole process can be simple, but CSCs make the dual SIM experience simply painful.

GALAXY DEVICES ARE NOT GOOD TRAVEL COMPANIONS

Samsung phones do not come with all CSCs available worldwide. For instance, a Canadian Galaxy phone will only come with Canadian CSCs.

Why does it matter? Well, let’s say you travel to Europe and insert a European SIM card. Your will get a prompt to restart the device, and it will switch to a “neutral” unbranded CSC, not a European one. You won’t get any carrier specific features, such as visual voicemail. Sometimes, this will even cause LTE and Wi-Fi calling to simply not work.

Sadly, this isn’t the only issue. Some CSCs disable LTE and 5G bands, effectively reducing coverage in all areas. Here’s an example:

In France, some carriers rely on band 28 to offer LTE signal indoors, as this band is great at traveling through walls and obstacles. With a Canadian Samsung phone, you won’t pick up the signal, and will only get 3G. This translates to poor coverage indoors, and in rural areas. What’s frustrating is that this is purely software-based. With a few nerdy tricks, you can enable these locked bands.

Samsung, it makes no sense to purposefully diminish coverage.

Another problem this causes is incompatibility with LTE+ and 5G. As Samsung/carriers disable certain features, you will get slower speeds, just because you bought your phone in another country.

Most of the time, this isn’t a hardware limitation.

DELAYED UPDATES

When a new software version comes out, manufacturers like Google or Apple have been using a global approach: when the update is out, everyone gets it at the same time. This ensures consistency, and global satisfaction from users. No one feels left out.

Samsung has chosen a different—worse approach. Carriers get to say when the updates roll out. Frequently, European & Korean users get them first, then the United States, then Canada, then other countries. Samsung seems to be the only manufacturers that treats users differently based on where they live. It’s frustrating.

Carriers shouldn’t have the power to decide when the new update rolls out.

CSCs also limit the use of certain features such as the ability to record calls. 
A similar feature has been introduced to iPhone users with iOS 18, available worldwide.

Rolling out features to some while ignoring others makes us users feel left out.

NOT THE PREMIUM EXPERIENCE YOU'D EXPECT

You have reached the end of this petition. The use of CSCs limits your coverage abroad, locks you out of certain features, makes using two phone plans hell, and gives carriers much more power than they should have. This is far from the experience you’d expect coming from Samsung, a reputable brand name, especially at the price point some of their device retail for.

Let’s tell Samsung we’re done with these practices.