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this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2026
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About 12 years ago I bought a Samsung tablet that had an IR blaster function so I could control my TV and audio equipment. It was a primary reason I chose that model. Less than a year after purchase Samsung discontinued their app and remotely disabled the tablet's IR blaster.
It was less than $5 for a replacement app that could be configured to get it working again, but the fact Samsung thought it was just fine to remotely remove a feature that was one of the primary reasons for my purchase was not something I've forgiven.
Since then I've bought lots of consumer electronic products but have not (and probably never will) consider another Samsung product.
That sort of crap is why I specifically buy older Samsung hardware like that tablet. I love a Samsung Galaxy S10e for my phone, because I can flash Graphene onto it and not have to deal with their firmware. If that tablet had/has an IR blaster, it's old enough to do the same thing and rip all that Samsung software off of it, flash it with a FOSS ROM, and enjoy your hardware.
I never understood why they got rid of that. I always thought it was a cool feature that they could have really leaned into. I had a tablet with it and I never used it much because I don't watch TV, but it felt like something that could have been super useful to someone who did watch TV a lot (and I also had fun setting it up for my family TV and then casually sitting in the background adjusting the volume, changing the channel, and tweaking other settings and watching the chaos that ensued while I oh so innocently appeared to be oblivious and busy playing games on my tablet)
The Samsung IR app also was used for their streaming service. They could have easily updated the app to allow it to run without connecting to their servers once they killed the service, but it was easier to tell their customers to pound sand.