Android handset makers need to stop doing this

September 19, 2020

It’s fair to say that I have a love/hate relationship with Android handsets. There’s stuff I adore about the ecosystem, and things I loathe entirely.

But here’s one thing that I hate with the white-hot fury of a billion stars.

That that’s handset makers putting watermarks on the photos I take.

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Here’s an example from the other day.

It’s not that big in real life, but it’s big enough to be a real annoyance.

Here’s now much of the photo the watermark takes up

Grrrr!

This doesn’t catch me out often, and sometimes I can salvage the photo with careful cropping and judicious use of Photoshop. But sometimes it means having to recreate a shot, or living with the dumb watermark on it.

I get it that not much differentiates one Android handset from another, and that makers are all scrambling to grab market share, but this is annoying and offensive.

I can’t think of a single person that wants this feature.

Stop it.

If you’re suffering from this, you can normally turn it off by going into the Camera settings and disabling “logo” or “watermark” or “logo watermark” or something similar.