To be mildly fair to Spotify Car Thing lasted for at least 3yrs. The worst part was, imo, it was really good. Like sure, my phone does voice commands but they work like 1/5 times. Car Thing worked nearly 100%, responded to anyone in the cars voice (pro/con depending on situation lol), and was a nice display for my preAndroidAuto headunit. Honestly I think the biggest mistake was that it was tied to a car, I used it on my desk for a while as a dedicated music control surface and it worked well. If more time went into making it just a universal Spotify controller it would have been much better as a thing. Have it mounted next to your receiver, or slap a battery in it and put it on a coffee table during a party and that would have been cool AF and requires zero phone interactions.

Samsung has even cut most of the horseshit out. My S22 had like a few Samsung apps, they live in a folder and I never see them. But that is similar to all of the Apple apps you couldn’t remove either (don’t know if that’s changed, haven’t had an iPhone since the 4)

Yea, like that would ever in literally any possible incarnation of any possible existence where Apple is a thing happen. Totally.