Why not down-rate pre-installed apps?

[Red Storm]

When I got the Razr Maxx I was surprised to find that I could uninstall several pre-installed games. I was thinking "They finally understand!" until I tried to remove the other bloat apps...

I now have 36 hidden applications in my launcher, that's more than the number of apps I actually use on the phone. Ridiculous.

 

[BoberFett]

Some of you are horribly ignorant, and irritatingly smug on top of it.

On my Optimus V I have several piece of crap preinstalled apps that take up valuable space and which I can't do anything about until I get around to rooting.

Virgin in their infinite wisdom decided that I want shitty bloated things like Where, Poynt and Twidroyd installed. Beyond that Maps is preinstalled and therefore can't be moved to the SD Card and has to remain on the phone, which is a big fat app taking up lots of space. All of these being preinstalled mean I have very little space for apps I actually want and constantly have to manage what I have installed. It's a pain in the ass.

 

[Bateluer]

To my knowledge there has never been one that does. Even vanilla ICS includes "bloatware". iOS does too. Why don't we all go on a campaign to protest Microsoft including notepad preinstalled with Windows while we're at it. It's seriously a non issue.

Several carrier installed apps on the Tbolt ran in the background constantly, sleeping. Their CPU usage was extremely low and they only took of a few MBs total of RAM, but they were there and impossible to get rid of without root.

The 'bloatware' in vanilla ICS are things like Google Maps, Gmail, etc. They may not be something every user uses regularly, but they serve a legit and practical use. Verizon installing Bing Maps and VZ Navigator, on a phone with Google Maps, is idiotic.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

Does that include preinstalled carrier apps as well?

As I said so long as the carrier did not take steps to prevent it yes. I installed a bunch of apps that came with my At&t Galaxy S2 however there were still a few that At&t did not allow you to remove so you would need root to get rid of them.

 

[Zaap]

I thought everyone already did this. (Down-rate bloatware apps.)

Just check out user ratings/reviews of the Blockbuster app on Android for a good laugh. Even the good ratings are mostly accidents.

 

[bgstcola]

yea I think people do this already. On the SGS2 there was this annoying voice command app that sometimes started by accident. The app got a lot of bad ratings because it couldn't be removed. Now with the ICS update it's suddenly possible to remove the app.

 

[deputc26]

If I really wanted the app, it's install it. Give me a folder with some suggestions... ok great. Install it and don't let me uninstall? I hate your app out of principle.

this

 

[Red Storm]

yea I think people do this already. On the SGS2 there was this annoying voice command app that sometimes started by accident. The app got a lot of bad ratings because it couldn't be removed. Now with the ICS update it's suddenly possible to remove the app.

That has more to do with ICS.

 

[McWatt]

One has to be really really OCD to be bothered at all by preinstalled apps.

You can have OCD. You can be OC. You can't "be" OCD. Also, what you described has absolutely nothing to do with OCD.

 

[WelshBloke]

Some of you are horribly ignorant, and irritatingly smug on top of it.

On my Optimus V I have several piece of crap preinstalled apps that take up valuable space and which I can't do anything about until I get around to rooting.

Virgin in their infinite wisdom decided that I want shitty bloated things like Where, Poynt and Twidroyd installed. Beyond that Maps is preinstalled and therefore can't be moved to the SD Card and has to remain on the phone, which is a big fat app taking up lots of space. All of these being preinstalled mean I have very little space for apps I actually want and constantly have to manage what I have installed. It's a pain in the ass.

But not enough of a pain in the ass to actually get round to rooting it and doing something about it?

 

[BoberFett]

But not enough of a pain in the ass to actually get round to rooting it and doing something about it?

LOL

I'm a smartphone n00b. I understand PCs because I've been working on them for 20 years, but don't understand the whole phone OS architecture all that well. I really don't want to brick my link to the outside world so I'm very cautious about mucking about with my phone too much.

 

[gorcorps]

LOL

I'm a smartphone n00b. I understand PCs because I've been working on them for 20 years, but don't understand the whole phone OS architecture all that well. I really don't want to brick my link to the outside world so I'm very cautious about mucking about with my phone too much.

Understandable. Though rooting itself is generally pretty easy. With some phones you just have to run the apk file like any other program. It only gets hairy when you want to load a completely different rom, but even that's simple enough to learn.

To get rid of built in apps you should only have to be rooted, and that's the easy part. I recommend googling how to JUST root your phone some time to see if it's one of the easy ones.

 

[lothar]

Blame Google for making preinstalled apps unremovable.

Ever heard of root?

I guess you don't work for an app developer or a carrier then. If you did, you would know that it doesn't work that way.

Anyway, since you're not in the biz, I'll stop responding since you don't have experience in the field.

Okay, clearly you don't know what the word root is, nor how to do it.
You're doing yourself a favor by stopping early while you're at it.

 

[lothar]

One has to be really really OCD to be bothered at all by preinstalled apps.

I am bothered by pre-installed apps.
However, I'm not really OCD enough to down rate or give them negative reviews on Google Play.
Where do I stand?

I root my phone and uninstall most of the pre-installed apps.
Social hub, Game Hub, Music Hub, Reader's Hub...What do I need these on my phone for?
If this was a Verizon phone, expect 2-3x the junk. vCast, vNavigator, vRhaspody, vWhatever, etc...

To my knowledge there has never been one that does. Even vanilla ICS includes "bloatware". iOS does too. Why don't we all go on a campaign to protest Microsoft including notepad preinstalled with Windows while we're at it. It's seriously a non issue.

Voice command: 7.2MB
Social Hub: 1.9MB
Social Hub(yes folks, another one with the same exact name as above but different icon): 5.6MB
Game Hub: 1.8MB
Buddies now: 1.6MB

You close(or end process) on those Samsung "Hub" bloatware but they start again on their own immediately.
If I had one of those crappy Android phones with with limited 256MB RAM, I'd be pretty pissed. Thankfully, I don't.

Because Notepad is not currently running as a process using RAM and CPU resources.
I just opened Task Manager now and I don't see any Notepad associated process draining my CPU resources or hogging my memory.
When you buy an HP computer, do you leave all their pre-installed junk to? Including the spywares?

 

[Raduque]

Edit: I don't really care about carrier or manufacturer preinstalled apps. I only delete redundant ones, such at the AT&T Navigator app.


I think you can still delete every preinstalled app off a Sprint phone. I remember a while back they made a bunch of noise in the media about that. Everything except the SprintID app (do they even still use that one?) because it's a Sense/Blur/Touchwiz type thing.

Some of you are horribly ignorant, and irritatingly smug on top of it.

On my Optimus V I have several piece of crap preinstalled apps that take up valuable space and which I can't do anything about until I get around to rooting.

Virgin in their infinite wisdom decided that I want shitty bloated things like Where, Poynt and Twidroyd installed. Beyond that Maps is preinstalled and therefore can't be moved to the SD Card and has to remain on the phone, which is a big fat app taking up lots of space. All of these being preinstalled mean I have very little space for apps I actually want and constantly have to manage what I have installed. It's a pain in the ass.

Non-removable preinstalled system apps don't reside (or take up space) in the user-accessible application storage. They are in /system/app. User apps are in /data/app. On these linux-based phones, each root folder (/system, /data, /cache, etc) is a separate partition.

UPDATES for the non-removable preinstalled system apps however, CAN and do, take space in /data. You can uninstall the updates for those apps, and simply refuse to update them in the future.

But the base apps themselves don't live in your /data partition.

And honestly, the real problem is you're using a phone that has less than 200mb available for app storage. That shouldn't have been allowed to hit the market even in 2010.

 

[Mopetar]

Hmm... I've started a trend. After my round of 1's, there were about ten people that followed.

Brought one down half a star in less than a day.

Come on people.... we can do it!

If this has any effect at all, it's just going to cause developers to release two versions of the app. One that's not preinstalled, and one that is. The names might change slightly but that's about it.

Also there's no telling if Google's systems might just flag a large influx of one star votes as some kind of spam or attempt at manipulating the market and toss the results out.

 

[ChAoTiCpInOy]

People seem to forget that apple also has preinstalled apps. What do you guys think about their preinstalled apps that can't be deleted?

 

[rudeguy]

People seem to forget that apple also has preinstalled apps. What do you guys think about their preinstalled apps that can't be deleted?

They all suck. I understand the reasoning behind installing them but not letting me uninstall pisses me off

 

[2timer]

Some of you are horribly ignorant, and irritatingly smug on top of it.

On my Optimus V I have several piece of crap preinstalled apps that take up valuable space and which I can't do anything about until I get around to rooting.

Virgin in their infinite wisdom decided that I want shitty bloated things like Where, Poynt and Twidroyd installed. Beyond that Maps is preinstalled and therefore can't be moved to the SD Card and has to remain on the phone, which is a big fat app taking up lots of space. All of these being preinstalled mean I have very little space for apps I actually want and constantly have to manage what I have installed. It's a pain in the ass.

THUMBS UP to this Bober. The two guys having a snafu on page 1, sheesh, that was awful and irritating.

Bober I have an OV too - PM COMING

 

[2timer]

I thought everyone already did this. (Down-rate bloatware apps.)

Just check out user ratings/reviews of the Blockbuster app on Android for a good laugh. Even the good ratings are mostly accidents.

Zapp I did have a good laugh, thanks man. Some of the more choice reviews: "Useless tumor of an app" (lmfao). "HATE this app, eat SH*T and DIE Blockbuster!" (lol)

 

[TuxDave]

They all suck. I understand the reasoning behind installing them but not letting me uninstall pisses me off

They don't all suck. You forget Google maps is one of the pre-installed apps.

But you're right, I did create a folder called useless where I moved Game Center, Video Player, Voice Memos. I actually use the rest of the preinstalled apps still.