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Debloat non-rooted Android devices

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11–20 of 231 posts

Re: Debloat non-rooted Android devices

#12

> you CANNOT brick your device with this software! Disable Knox on a Samsung device and it will brick itself. Luckily when this happened to me I was still connected over ADB, able to re-enable it and the device unbricked

if you were able to reboot the device, was it really ever bricked?

Re: Debloat non-rooted Android devices

#13
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some OEM bloatware apps cannot be disabled in the Android UI but can be disabled via ADB.

Metro by T-Mobile has some strange bloatware that I was able to disable with adb. I can't imagine living with this garbage day in and day out. Makes me wonder if this is why some people in the US believe iPhone is better than android — they've only experienced carrier bloatware infested android devices.

this is why you get stock Android with a Pixel and Fi; although this shouldn't be necessary :(

Re: Debloat non-rooted Android devices

#14
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some OEM bloatware apps cannot be disabled in the Android UI but can be disabled via ADB.

Metro by T-Mobile has some strange bloatware that I was able to disable with adb. I can't imagine living with this garbage day in and day out. Makes me wonder if this is why some people in the US believe iPhone is better than android — they've only experienced carrier bloatware infested android devices.

> I can't imagine living with this garbage day in and day out.

What tangible harm is it doing that makes you think you can't live with it? If there's a Facebook binary on my phone that I've never logged into, is it doing anything? Is Candy Crush playing itself in the background if I never launch it?

Re: Debloat non-rooted Android devices

#15
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some OEM bloatware apps cannot be disabled in the Android UI but can be disabled via ADB.

Metro by T-Mobile has some strange bloatware that I was able to disable with adb. I can't imagine living with this garbage day in and day out. Makes me wonder if this is why some people in the US believe iPhone is better than android — they've only experienced carrier bloatware infested android devices.

Nope, it is just worst. Want a smart-phone? Get an iPhone. Want a mobile Linux computer you can make calls from? Android.

Android does not do the 'phone' part right. I constantly complain of a friend with his new expensive s23 or whatever that acts like a cheap phone whenever he gets in a group call and my whole group complains of the ear shattering noise and artifacts from his side immediately (nothing at all wrong with all of our iphones). It was bad enough we couldn't do higher quality facetime audio together, but the expensive phone's hardware on wasn't even good for various apps we tried to talk through.

From another thread they aren't even good at web browsing. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39729397 the entire ecosystem of Android is a mostly poorly cobbled together mobile Linux computer aiming to lower costs as much as possible to sell you ads. Notice how older iphones with worst specs are still working fine?

Still my Samsung S3 with it's forward thinking 2gb of ram in 2012 (4x the 512 in the iPhone 4s) is still sometimes being used as a Linux computer for me in 2024. Awful mic on it then as well.

Re: Debloat non-rooted Android devices

#16
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Metro by T-Mobile has some strange bloatware that I was able to disable with adb. I can't imagine living with this garbage day in and day out. Makes me wonder if this is why some people in the US believe iPhone is better than android — they've only experienced carrier bloatware infested android devices.

> I can't imagine living with this garbage day in and day out. What tangible harm is it doing that makes you think you can't live with it? If there's a Facebook binary on my phone that I've never logged into, is it doing anything? Is Candy Crush playing itself in the background if I never launch it?

Full screen ads out of nowhere in the middle of you using other apps, Click bait "news". I don't think you could imagine half of what I saw.

Re: Debloat non-rooted Android devices

#17
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Metro by T-Mobile has some strange bloatware that I was able to disable with adb. I can't imagine living with this garbage day in and day out. Makes me wonder if this is why some people in the US believe iPhone is better than android — they've only experienced carrier bloatware infested android devices.

this is why you get stock Android with a Pixel and Fi; although this shouldn't be necessary :(

Interestingly enough, it has gotten better in the sense that I used the phone for a couple of weeks before I put in the carrier sim and the bloat wasn't there (besides some OnePlus apps but those don't pollute my notifications).

Edit: bloat, not boost

Re: Debloat non-rooted Android devices

#18
I bought -- full price, retail -- a midrange Samsung phone for a relative recently. The amount of bloatware was incredible. Various social networks and shopping apps were preinstalled. In addition to all the Samsung apps that more or less duplicate the Google stack, poorly. The entire setup process was full of dark patterns designed to extract as much data from you as possible. No way a regular person gets through that without missing something.

Re: Debloat non-rooted Android devices

#19
post #18

I bought -- full price, retail -- a midrange Samsung phone for a relative recently. The amount of bloatware was incredible. Various social networks and shopping apps were preinstalled. In addition to all the Samsung apps that more or less duplicate the Google stack, poorly. The entire setup process was full of dark patterns designed to extract as much data from you as possible. No way a regular person gets through th…

I was furious when I found out that the default keyboard was infested with Grammarly, sending all my keystrokes without consent. Embarrassing for a $1200 flagship device.

Re: Debloat non-rooted Android devices

#20
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Metro by T-Mobile has some strange bloatware that I was able to disable with adb. I can't imagine living with this garbage day in and day out. Makes me wonder if this is why some people in the US believe iPhone is better than android — they've only experienced carrier bloatware infested android devices.

this is why you get stock Android with a Pixel and Fi; although this shouldn't be necessary :(

Yeah, this is what I have had for my past 3 phones. No bloatware issues at all.

Not to mention FI is cheap as hell if you use internet mostly over wifi.

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