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Google pushed to take action against Android bloatware

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Re: Google pushed to take action against Android bloatware

#191

Post by dredmorbius »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #57
hadrien01 wrote: post #48

Most of the bloatware comes from Google itself: on my Samsung Phone I have Google Chrome, multiple Google Play stores, Google Keep, Google Photos (sends your photos to the Google cloud), Google Drive, Google office apps, etc. I've never wanted all those apps, I don't even have a Google account...

What's worse is I have an Android phone still that has Google+ and guess what, it's not going anywhere.

Demand an update that points to the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine links!

(Only ... slighly ... joking.)

Re: Google pushed to take action against Android bloatware

#192

Post by MBCook »

jandrese wrote: post #118
Arnt wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an orthogonal question. AIUI. Android One phones have to follow certain rules, but bootloader locking isn't on the list (or if it is I haven't noticed). That said, what do you prefer: The ability to install a ROM of your choice, or a guarantee that what you boot is what you bought?

Isn't it way way past time for smartphones to standardize the booting process the way PCs did back in the 80s? The old excuses of "we couldn't fit a generic kernel on our tiny built-in storage" rings hollow in these days of 16GB storage in the base model phones. This isn't a hard problem. We solved it decades ago. There should be an "Smartphone Kernel" that gets updated like the Linux kernel with drivers for all vari…

For PCs there was a very clear reason. IBM was in the lead and everyone else wanted to have a clone that worked with the software for IBMs.

Right now Samsung seems to be number one in android phones. what benefit would they get from doing this? Making it easier to update their old products? They don’t care. All that does is make people buy fewer new phones.

Across all the vendors they could save time… but I kind of doubt they’ll ever do it. I don’t think that motivation is strong enough for them to change the way they do things.

Re: Google pushed to take action against Android bloatware

#193

Post by MBCook »

niffydroid wrote: post #16

This will be good for the low end phones. My partner mother had an lg with 8gb of storage, it came bundled with all sorts of nonsense, 2 calculators, 2 alarms, some office suite. It made installing things like whatsapp or Facebook hard because of the bloat taking up the space. This only damages the reputation of these brands for me that do this sort of thing. Skins/ui and other functions are fine, but at least let me…

That’s the thing that astounds me about buying an android phone. When you buy an iPhone you get one app from Apple for each task. Because it would be ridiculous to get more than one.

But if you buy an android phone you might get a copy of Google Chrome. And some sort of rebadged Samsung browser. And maybe a Sprint browser because you bought a Sprint phone.

Now repeat that for email. And text messaging. And a couple other things.

It’s crazy. I’m amazed new users can figure out which one to use sometimes.

All because every layer of the supply chain has to add their “customization“. To add “value“.

Re: Google pushed to take action against Android bloatware

#194

Post by Polylactic_acid »

asveikau wrote: post #174
wpietri wrote: post #116

Does anybody understand the economic point of making apps nonremovable? From the point of view of a vendor paying for access, presumably their goal is to spark interest and shift default choices. So I get why LinkedIn would pay to be on the phone when it leaves the factory. But if somebody doesn't want it, what do they gain by preventing removal? To me it seems kinda like DRM: I'm sure some executives get woodies at…

There probably should be some apps marked non-removable, because they would break core functionality of the phone, and even if they are made re-installable via Play Store [many of them aren't], would generate tons of complaints and support calls from confused users who uninstalled by mistake. I'm thinking of: dialer app, SMS app, contacts app, settings app. The problem seems to be that OEMs mark apps as non-removable…

Android mostly fixed this ages ago. You can "disable" non removable apps which makes them go away from the app list and hopefully prevents them running in the background.

Re: Google pushed to take action against Android bloatware

#195

Post by [deleted] »

Polylactic_acid wrote: post #194
asveikau wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There probably should be some apps marked non-removable, because they would break core functionality of the phone, and even if they are made re-installable via Play Store [many of them aren't], would generate tons of complaints and support calls from confused users who uninstalled by mistake. I'm thinking of: dialer app, SMS app, contacts app, settings app. The problem seems to be that OEMs mark apps as non-removable…

Android mostly fixed this ages ago. You can "disable" non removable apps which makes them go away from the app list and hopefully prevents them running in the background.

[deleted]

Re: Google pushed to take action against Android bloatware

#196

Post by saagarjha »

Polylactic_acid wrote: post #194
asveikau wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There probably should be some apps marked non-removable, because they would break core functionality of the phone, and even if they are made re-installable via Play Store [many of them aren't], would generate tons of complaints and support calls from confused users who uninstalled by mistake. I'm thinking of: dialer app, SMS app, contacts app, settings app. The problem seems to be that OEMs mark apps as non-removable…

Android mostly fixed this ages ago. You can "disable" non removable apps which makes them go away from the app list and hopefully prevents them running in the background.

They're still on your phone taking up space, though.

Re: Google pushed to take action against Android bloatware

#197

Post by saagarjha »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #179
rhizome wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably the person you're replying to is a user too, so apparently the end result isn't the same for all of the people you're thinking of.

The person I'm responding to hasn't given any reason why the end result is meaningfully different. As far as we can tell, they just don't like the word "disable." If Android replaced the word with "uninstall," they would presumably be happy, which sounds like a minor complaint.

They take up space.

Re: Google pushed to take action against Android bloatware

#198

Post by pcurve »

robbya wrote: post #89
hadrien01 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chrome is bloatware when Samsung Internet is a much better browser included with my phone. The Play Store is not bloatware. The Play _stores_ are bloatware (books, games, movies, etc.)

Is Samsung Internet better than Chrome? I've always assumed it was bloatware since it's preinstalled and I haven't heard of people using it. I personally use the Firefox mobile browser, which I think works great.

I just tried Samsung Internet Beta on my old One Plus 3+ based on this thread. In terms of performance, it's much zippier than either FF or Chrome. Give it a go.

Re: Google pushed to take action against Android bloatware

#199

Post by saagarjha »

freehunter wrote: post #95
JiNCMG wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why keep them in a folder? Uninstall them? 3 Pages Deep? That's 27 icons. I don't think a default iPhone comes with 27 pre-installed apps.

It’s only been recently that you could uninstall them, and even then it just removes the icon but keeps the data for a lot of these pre-packaged apps.

It keeps the system frameworks they rely on. The app itself does go away.

Re: Google pushed to take action against Android bloatware

#200

Post by pcurve »

nkurz wrote: post #94
robbya wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Samsung Internet better than Chrome? I've always assumed it was bloatware since it's preinstalled and I haven't heard of people using it. I personally use the Firefox mobile browser, which I think works great.

I tested about a bunch of browsers on my Samsung phone (including Chrome, Firefox, Maxthon, Dolphin, Cheetah, Brave, Puffin, Opera, and Yandex), and eventually decided that the "Samsung Internet Browser Beta" was the best of them for me: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sec.androi... My main demands were a browser that had a reliable "reader mode", a black background "night mode", allowed reasonable…

thanks for the recommendation. I really appreciate the boost in performance or the samsung browser (even if it is based on chrome, it is much faster)
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