Is Samsung Push Service redundant?

Question

I would assume the Android OS would handle Push Notifications for applications, since some phones are not Samsung phones. Can I safely disable this push service, and still get push notifications from non-Samsung related apps?

Answer 1

Short answer

If there's no app using it, it should be safe. You can disable it and find out for yourself; but before really removing it (i.e. deleting the "service app"), you should be very sure. Though: if any app wants to use it, but you don't care about that app: as Samsung's push service isn't pre-installed on non-Samsung devices, the app should continue to work. You'd only no longer get those notifications then.

More detailed

To understand this, you will first need to know how push notifications work. I will outline this here in a simplified way:

• the app that wishes to receive notifications registers with the local notification service on the device (and then can go to sleep)
• that local service registers "in the name of the user" (verified by account) with the central service on the Internet (in your case, Samsung's servers)
• long time ago, in another universe (kidding), the service sending out those notifications already had registered with the central server, and thus is known to it. So it sends its notifications there. The central service in turn notifies the (still listening) local service on your device, which in turn wakes the app and hands over the notification.

The idea behind it is not every app needs to be "awake and listening" all the time, but just a single "service" does. This saves battery, bandwidth, and other resources.

But now comes the culprit: apps have explicitly to support the given "notification service" – and there is more than one: Google's "GCM", Amazon's "ADM", Nokia, Samsung … No big deal if your apps support all of them and let you chose; but most times they only support one or maybe two of them.

So you need to be sure the apps you want those "cloud notifications" for support a service you have running. Usually you can tell that by taking a look at their permissions:

• com.google.android.c2dm.permission.RECEIVE indicates the use of Google Cloud Messaging (GCM), dealt with by the Google Services Framework (GSF) – which is part of the Google-Apps-Package (GApps) usually pre-installed on most devices.
• com.amazon.device.messaging.permission.RECEIVE points to Amazon's Device Messaging (ADM); not sure what is responsible here as "local service"
• com.nokia.pushnotifications.permission.RECEIVE would be Nokia's corresponding service
• (I currently don't know the permission for Samsung, but Samsung permissions usually start with com.sec.android)