Lenovo Tab M9 Rant - Shame On You, Lenovo

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I don’t know why I’m making this thread, except that this stuff is starting to rile me up, probably more than it should, lol, and I want to let it out.

A while back I bought a Lenovo Tab M9 when it was on sale for 80 or 90 dollars. Just to have a cheap, small tablet. It’s slow, but it’s fine.

Yesterday, it had an update. After the update I had TWO different notifications telling me I needed to complete setup. The first one was several pages of like a dozen apps each that it was going to automatically install. So much freaking trash. Just piles of trash and adware. I had to go through and painstakingly uncheck everything on page after page. but once I was done, nothing got installed. Fine. The next one said “Finish setup your device,” which doesn’t even seem like proper grammar. It was ANOTHER, random thing trying to automatically install stuff, and there was seemingly no way to uncheck them. And there was a thing saying I had to agree to some third-party terms of service to proceed. No thanks. I just closed out of it. But now it keeps coming back. Barely even use the thing anymore, but now, wherever it’s sitting, over and over all day I keep hearing this “bing, bong” from my tablet. It’s the stupid notification saying I have to “finish setup your device,” and that they have some great apps to get me started.

Even after re-starts and dismissing it multiple times, it keeps coming back and requires me to agree to some third party terms so it can install a bunch of absolute trash. No. I’m not doing that. It’s not even some Lenovo thing that makes me agree to Lenovo terms. It’s a third-party thing that Lenovo must have teamed up with to push garbage adware to people’s devices.

Maybe I’m making too big of a deal about this, but I’m getting so sick of stuff like this. If I have to agree to some third-party terms in order to continue, then let me skip it if I don’t agree. If I buy a device and agree to the initial terms of use, how can they force some new crap on it later that requires a different agreement to different terms from a different company, and refuse to let me just…not agree? It’s not like Lenovo updated their terms or something. It specifically says it’s third-party terms.

Again, I’m sure I’m making too big of a deal about this. I could probably just agree, let it install the…stuff, and then uninstall it after. But why should I have to do that? Why shouldn’t I be able to just say no? It says something like “by continuing, you agree to the terms and conditions of the third-party shown below,” and then there’s some fine print at the bottom. Okay, so what if I don’t want to continue? Why isn’t that an option? I mean, I guess technically it is. But then I have to deal with this notification ding-doinging me all day, every day. And it’s a system notification. It’s not coming from an app I can just uninstall or disable. It seriously makes me want to smash it and drop it off at an electronics recycler.

I deal with similar, intrusive software auto-installed on Dell and Lenovo laptops. Stuff that seems like it’s just trying to keep your device up to date, but also manages to push you to pages with ads, and interrupt you constantly with lists of ways you would be better off if you paid for their “premium” service.

Don’t get me wrong, Framework has a long way to go on the firmware/BIOS, and on the support side. But crap like this reminds me why I wanted to support them in the first place. How about if I own my device, and if I don’t want your crap software on it, I can just say no?

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Frankly, I’m shocked anyone trusts Lenovo after the whole Superfish debacle. These dudes full-on proved they’ll install whatever whackadoodle BS software they so desire on a device you purchase from 'em.

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I haven’t heard about that. I have been pretty annoyed by “Lenovo Vantage” which my Thinkpad (years ago) pushed on me, and which my M9 tablet randomly makes me say no to joining, once in a while.

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That’s one of many things I dig about Framework. No damn junkware shoveled down our throats.

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You are not. It’s insane and unacceptable to have spamware forced onto a device you paid for and own.

Stories like this are why I will not buy a device that is not rootable at bare minium. And for anything I plain to use much, I really need bootloader unlocked. And ideally to see that the ROM community either already has something or is very active creating something. It certainly limits my choices, especially if I want more than just bare minimum root, but I can not tolerate the sh!t device makers do. And on top of it, the skinned android they put on their stuff too often is bloated & runs slower than proper vanilla android. I have one OnePlus phone where their skinned android was so poorly made for that particular device that I’ve heard it’s near unusable. I wouldn’t know first-hand though, because I ripped it out in the first 5 minutes.

Look into disabling the updater nag .apk with adb, android debug bridge. It’s usually used to disable shovelware apps that have uninstall blocked, when one doesn’t have root.

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Lenovo’s consumer sector products are not even something I would look at.

When it comes to ThinkPads, the thinkvantage thingy is ‘optional’. Beyond drivers (WHQL from Windows updates…), the only other thing I need is the battery charge limiter: English Community-Lenovo Community

For tablets: They’re all marketing / privacy invasion platform, whether it’s Google, Samsung, Apple…etc.

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Block updates or install a custom OS?

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I appreciate the tips. I’m sure I can figure something out or just deal with it. It’s more just the idea that they would pull that crap in the first place.

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Logitech is also bad. I bought a very basic bluetooth mouse, M240. This mouse is plug and play. However after pairing, Windows shows “your device is missing important updates” upon updating, “Logitech Download Assistant” malware is installed and will pop up ads on the lower-right corner of your screen. Logitech packaged the malware as “device driver” and it will come back after uninstalling the fake “driver”. The only way to stop it is to use group policy or regedit to disable all driver updates from Windows update.

Back to wired mouse I guess. Are there any other low-cost bluetooth mouse that doesn’t come with bloat?

Lenovo was good, back in Windows 7 era Thinkpad not only has battery charging limit, but also has something like “power scheduler” i.e charge to x % at y o’clock. This optimizes power usage if you own a fleet of Thinkpads. Sadly that program doesn’t support Windows 10

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Trying to Google what that is…as I personally have not come across / no experience with this.

The only thing I’ve found is the Power Agenda configurations in Power Manager, which changes the charging thresholds based on schedules. But it’s different from " i.e charge to x % at y o’clock"

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It’s years if not decades ago I probably misremember things…