Android 10 update kills Daydream compatibility

[GinKage]

Just like that, without any notice or warning, Daydream no longer works on my S9+.

The same applies to S9 and Note 9, which used to be perfectly compatible with Daydream, but now all you get is this:

Note that the scene behind this dialog window is actually perfectly rendered, and the phone itself is using the "low motion-blur" screen mode.

The problem is, in Android 8 and Android 9, these phones have defined a system flag "android.hardware.vr.high_performance", which is no longer defined on Android 10.
This is a Samsung-specific problem, as Pixel phones running Android 10 can still use Daydream perfectly (as reported in this Reddit thread).

Hopefully Samsung will be able to get around to fix this problem in a future system update, as it only requires them to add a single xml file to the system image...

[Keqi2020]

Please fix it , bring back my Daydream VR

[Lennart17]

Please Samsung, just fix it!

[User111]

What Samsung did is definitely not ethical, not fair/respectful to its customers and so on, but I wonder if it is even legal. People bought products (Daydream headset, apps/games, some people even bought the phone for this feature) based on explicit advertising of a feature, which suddenly got taken away through a software update (without any mention in the release notes, no warning whatsoever, not even a fine print). I am not a lawyer, but I think it is very illegal and the case will hold in a court and Samsung will either be made to provide a reasonable way of restoring this feature (rooting the phone and losing other functionality is obviously not reasonable), or be made to reinberse the investments people made (phone/headset/etc). I know, going to court for this is too much trouble and probably not worth it, but might be worth pursueing as a matter of principle... And all this, because Samsung refuses to acknowledge its fault and add 2 lines of code! 😞

[TheLittleDoctor]

To your credit, User111, Samsung's issues are definitely not ethical. It looks like, though, that this is going to be like Sonos. I'm sure you're familiar with the story, but Sonos basically acted like people didn't own the speakers they bought. This is one of the biggest mistakes that Samsung has made over the years, and I think that if they don't want to end up like Sonos, they could just fix the issue. We might not be able to take legal action, but we can certainly bring their questionable ethics to light.

[FrankKj]

I have been following this post from the start - been the owner of both samsung  tv ; tablet and mobile phone and now sorry to say - NEVER MORE SAMSUNG !!

Thanks to all

Frank Kjaerbo

Denmark

[Wreckronomicon]

Yeah, they've shown their colours so the best option we have now is to buy another brand phone. They simply don't care about a relatively small section of their consumer base (VR owners) and so this will not be fixed. Just buy another brand phone next time...that's all we can do at this point

[S9OG]

Yes. Does anyone have a reliable way to root the phone to make this change?

[Wreckronomicon]

I don't think it would be wise for anyone to give you instructions in case something goes wrong but you can find all the information you need on XDA, have a look around here:

https://www.xda-developers.com/root/

[JerryR]

@S9OG Rooting will trip Knox so apps that rely on it will stop working. Off the top of my head: Samsung Pay, Secure Folder, Samsung Health will all stop working. Maybe other apps, I'm not sure what else.

If you want to keep full functionality, downgrade to Pie instead of rooting. 

[User111]

Downgrading to Pie is not possible after the March update - they changed the bootloader version.

https://forum.xda-developers.com/galaxy-note-9/how-to/to-downgrade-android-q-to-android-pie-t4070299