South Korea rules bloatware on Android must be removable.

[Ravynmagi]

According to the story an Galaxy S4 phone comes with 80 apps installed by default, 39 from Samsung, 25 from the teleco, and 16 from Google. And most of these pre-installed apps can not be removed (without rooting and using a third party app).

http://www.zdnet.com/south-korea-rules-pre-installed-phone-bloatware-must-be-deletable-7000025533/

South Koreans are fed up with that BS and are doing something about it. They've deemed the practice to be an inconvenience to the users and an unfair competitive practice. So if the app is not responsible for the functionality of core services on the phone like wifi, NFC, user settings, and such, then it needs to have the ability to uninstall it. Apparently Google's own apps like Gmail may be included in this.

Also phones will need to clearly advertise how much space the pre-installed apps are using. A fully bloated phone with 80 preinstalled apps can use up to triple the space the stock OS uses and it's probably good to know if that 16GB phone only has 9GB of free space out of the box.

 

[ViRGE]

According to the story an Galaxy S4 phone comes with 80 apps installed by default

Holy crap!

 

[StrangerGuy]

Forget about Samsung own bloatware, would US carriers even give up pasting their gaudy logos on phones let alone their crapware? Nevar.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Forget about Samsung own bloatware, would US carriers even give up pasting their gaudy logos on phones let alone their crapware? Nevar.

Yeah seriously that's another load of bloat we don't need. I think carriers should be forbidden from doing this.

 

[Red Storm]

Funny considering Samsung and LG are Korean companies.

 

[Roland00Address]

Funny considering Samsung and LG are Korean companies.

Why is that funny? Just because I think what coca cola, exxon-mobil, and microsoft do is the paragon of truth, justice, and the american way! That does not make the actions of non american companies, or non american courts funny.

 

[pw257008]

Why is that funny? Just because I think what coca cola, exxon-mobil, and microsoft do is the paragon of truth, justice, and the american way! That does not make the actions of non american companies, or non american courts funny.

weirdly defensive much? i doubt s/he meant haha funny, i think s/he meant funny as in interesting and amusing that the home country will do something about this while the US will not (or something along those lines)

 

[AstroManLuca]

I remember showing my wife's cousin how to "disable" apps on her SGS3 over Christmas. Wasn't rooted or anything, but at least there was a built in function letting you disable them so they can't run in the background and won't show up in the app drawer. She was so grateful!

I've been on WP8 for about 6-7 months now and one of the great things is that you can remove nearly everything. All the built-in T-Mobile apps got ditched on day 1 without a fight.

 

[TuxDave]

So if the app is not responsible for the functionality of core services on the phone like wifi, NFC, user settings, and such, then it needs to have the ability to uninstall it.

I'm pretty sure the list of "core services" will just grow instead.

 

[Red Storm]

Why is that funny? Just because I think what coca cola, exxon-mobil, and microsoft do is the paragon of truth, justice, and the american way! That does not make the actions of non american companies, or non american courts funny.

... It's funny because Samsung and LG love to put loads of bloat on their phones.

 

[poofyhairguy]

I wish they would mandate every Android phone released needed a GPe version. Half the "bloat" is Touchwiz.

 

[Roland00Address]

Why is that funny? Just because I think what coca cola, exxon-mobil, and microsoft do is the paragon of truth, justice, and the american way! That does not make the actions of non american companies, or non american courts funny.

... It's funny because Samsung and LG love to put loads of bloat on their phones.

weirdly defensive much? i doubt s/he meant haha funny, i think s/he meant funny as in interesting and amusing that the home country will do something about this while the US will not (or something along those lines)

My comments were not entirely without humor, think Stephen Colbert. Are we supposed to blindly follow corporation agenda out of nationalistic pride? You will love Coca Cola, McDonalds, Wal-Mart, Goldman Sachs, Exxon Mobile, Microsoft etc, for these are American companies and America can do no wrong, and you will all think this for you are from America!

The term Truth, Justice, and the American Way was originally a superman phrase. "The American Way" part was added to the Truth and Justice saying during World War II and the full saying was used in the opening of the syndicated tv show in the 1950s (when we were fighting the Red Scare / Communism.) I am sorry if my pop culture reference was not clear enough.

 

[dagamer34]

One of the few concessions out carriers Microsoft got with Windows Phone, everything but stock apps must be un-installable, including 3rd party apps. Though sadly, since the apps come back when the phone is reset, it means they are still taking up storage space somewhere.

 

[lopri]

Will this have any bearings in the U.S.? S. Korean government has no jurisdiction in the U.S., obviously. As far as I know the hardware are also different most of the times between Korean versions and the U.S. versions.

If it truly works out to consumers' convenience then props for them. I won't hold my breath.

P.S. Not sure how many Google's proprietary apps can be uninstallable - at least those that come with Nexus devices. Disabled apps, being tightly woven together, often break updates for the others in my experience.

 

[Commodus]

Will this have any bearings in the U.S.? S. Korean government has no jurisdiction in the U.S., obviously. As far as I know the hardware are also different most of the times between Korean versions and the U.S. versions.

If it truly works out to consumers' convenience then props for them. I won't hold my breath.

P.S. Not sure how many Google's proprietary apps can be uninstallable - at least those that come with Nexus devices. Disabled apps, being tightly woven together, often break updates for the others in my experience.

It won't have an effect on this side of the Pacific, unfortunately.

This is one reason we need the iPhone, Nexus devices and Windows Phone. It's your phone, not the carrier's -- why buy a device where you're forced to put up with third-party apps you can't remove?

 

[LostPassword]

at least somebody in the world standing up against phone/telcos!

 

[WelshBloke]

at least somebody in the world standing up against phone/telcos!

I think its an American thing to load up a phone with carrier bloatware. I certainly haven't seen much over here for a long time.

 

[Bateluer]

Heh, if the FCC were to make a policy that says preinstalled apps much be removable, you could just expect Verizon to file a suit and make some bribes in Washington, and the policy would be as good as dead.

 

[styrafoam]

Phone makers only have themselves to blame for the attention. Expecting to get away with using more than 50% of the internal storage is silly, especially when they charge such a premium for more internal space.

http://blogs.which.co.uk/technology/phones-3/phone-storage-compared-samsung-s4-still-in-last-place/

 

[magomago]

I could also imagine this hurting google: if its core services, i.e. most of GApps, is now bloatware, then they potentially lose some control of their OS.

Anyways despite having an option for an SD cards, its hilarious that an S4 comes with just 8.5GB free. The Nexus's 12GB free is more a function of the need to provide as much free space as possible because it lacks an SD card rather than worrying about bloatware (doh! I just read the article and they said the same thing).

Ultimately I don't think this will change how much bloatware is put on the phone, but it might mean that the quality of software has to increase, otherwise people will simply uninstall all that junk.

that said, functionally I don't think anything will really change for the average user. Sure power users will now be happy to remove all those extra apps, but most people I know have no idea how to uninstall an app. They think removing the shortcut on the desktop does the job.

 

[WelshBloke]

I could also imagine this hurting google: if its core services, i.e. most of GApps, is now bloatware, then they potentially lose some control of their OS.

Yeah, that would just be silly.

Anyways despite having an option for an SD cards, its hilarious that an S4 comes with just 8.5GB free. The Nexus's 12GB free is more a function of the need to provide as much free space as possible because it lacks an SD card rather than worrying about bloatware (doh! I just read the article and they said the same thing).

That's true that Samsung roms take up way too much room but I'd still rather have 8.5gb free plus 64gb on a card than just 12gb full stop.