[Updated] Samsung allegedly pushing ads via Weather app & Galaxy Store

New updates are being added at the bottom of this story…….

Original story (published on November 4, 2019) follows:

On October 1, 2019, Samsung Electronics filed a patent to trademark the brand name “Samsung Mobile Ads” with the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO).

Not needing a second look, you can definitely have a clear guess of what Samsung Mobile Ads is even before the company makes any official statements regarding it. According to the description, Samsung Mobile Ads is expected to bring targeted ads to Samsung phones, tablets, and other products.

Samsung already has an Ads program that runs on its smart TVs, but so far, no Samsung smartphone serves users with ads, at least until now.

While it’s likely that Samsung Mobile Ads could one day materialize, there is no way to tell when this will go down. Similarly, we don’t know whether the latest developments among Samsung smartphone users have anything to do with the recent trademark.

Apparently, several owners of Samsung Galaxy phones that include and are not limited to the Galaxy Note 10, Galaxy S10, and Galaxy S9 are annoyed by the fact that ads are now displaying through the Weather app and Galaxy Store app.

wtf is this shit? updated to september patch and im getting spam on the weather app..
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Wtf Samsung? Ads in the weather app now.
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Are you kidding me? I have to watch an ad before I can download something from the galaxy store.
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It’s highly unlikely that Samsung is already testing ads on some of its stock apps with respect to the recent trademark, but then again, nothing is concrete at this point.

Some thought that the ads are only showing up for those who are testing One UI 2.0 beta on their Galaxy S10 and Note 10 units, but the fact that some Galaxy S9 users are also affected says otherwise.

It’s not UI2 , I haven’t joinet Beta and I’m still getting stupid video recommendations on default weather app which are coming from https://weather.com/news/trending/video…. What’s next? Stories button in weather app?
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Also, it’s worth noting that the said ads are showing up on carrier-locked and unlocked Samsung phones in the U.S. and outside the U.S., so it’s pretty safe to assume this is a widespread issue.

Some started seeing ads on their Galaxy phones after the September security update while others after the October update, but it’s not an entirely new scenario. Samsung is already rolling out the latest November updates to some of these devices, but we don’t know if the ads issue has been addressed.

FYI, a few Android vendors already have ads showing in their stock apps, among them Xiaomi, Tecno, and Infinix, but these vendors do so to compensate for the affordable price tags on their devices.

For Galaxy devices that cost in the regions of $1000, Samsung should do something about this ad issue real quick or simply come out and clear the air in regards to the latest Samsung Mobile Ads trademark.

05:45 pm (IST): Samsung might be finally getting ready to fix one of the biggest problems it has with its software for phones, that is, removing the ads from stock apps. Head here for more info.

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