Samsung Galaxy phones rumored removing (some) ads

Today it appears that Samsung unofficially announced they'd be removing advertisements from inside their own apps. This means the Samsung Galaxy device apps like Samsung Weather, Samsung Pay, and so forth. It's been ages since we last heard about even the possibility that Samsung would remove advertisements for their own products inside the apps that are placed in their own products!

Information today comes from leaker FrontTron, or Tron, however you'd like to say it. Samsung Electronics had a bit of a "BLIND" release – which leaves the benefit of the doubt for Samsung, since it is effectively anonymous. In said release, a Samsung Online IM Town Hall meeting for employees saw an employee ask "Why do default apps have ads?"

The reply from Samsung's TM Roh was "We will remove ads and release builds without them in Weather, Pay etc." This is fairly to-the-point and sort of unexpected, as removing said advertisements would make a significant change to the software delivered with Samsung devices. We do not have confirmation from Samsung proper about this change, nor do we have an expected timeline for said changes.

Samsung has been sending notification pop-up advertisements to users for new Samsung products for quite some time. They've been appearing as recent as early this month, when Samsung smartphone users saw a pop-up advertisement and link to information about the company's new foldable devices. It'll be interesting to see if Samsung considers these pop-up ads to be in-app ads, and if they'll remain in the future, too.

Have you noticed advertising in your Samsung Android smartphone? Do you think Samsung will remove said advertising in future builds and updates for apps in their own phones? Take a peek at the timeline below to see more occurrences of Samsung's advertisement system within their own apps in Samsung Galaxy smartphones, tablets, and more.