Smartphones: the New Home of Crapware 308
Barence writes "Smartphones are replacing PCs as the new breeding ground for pre-installed crapware, argues Mike Jennings. The Sony Ericsson Xperia Mini Pro, for example, comes pre-loaded with McAfee security software and other associated apps, four different app stores, and a selection of games and other media management tools. 'And it's not like you can just get rid of this software, either — most of it's there to stay, with hard-coded blocks in place to ensure you don't uninstall any of the tat you don't want,' he adds."
Not news (Score:5, Insightful)
Even my regular old clamshell has pre-installed non-removable games and applications.
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Even my regular old clamshell has pre-installed non-removable games and applications.
+1 And all the carrier branding stuff that's in there, nothing new.
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Same here, but I've noticed that the non-removable applications and games on my old phone were buried under menus that I rarely used. On the new phone, well, they're right in my face and a fair number of them are little more than links to websites. Which is much more obnoxious.
Thankfully I can choose to bury that stuff in folders on my current phone, but how long will it be until they remove that capability? (After all, they do it to make money. You can't make money on what users don't see.)
Thankfully t
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There is a huge leap from good old snake to modern crapware.
Re:Not news (Score:4, Insightful)
With an old clamshell, chances are those applications really aren't doing much to slow down your phone. With smartphones though, they are because they all run in the background even if you don't use them.
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Re:Not news (Score:5, Insightful)
It is news. The news is that this only affects Android. Android has become the new Windows, home of viruses, malware, and pre-installed junk you can't remove. It's even worse than PCs due to fragmentation--the article mentions that the Sony Ericsson Xperia Mini Pro (what a name) has four different app stores. When Linux fans cheer about some perceived victory through Android, they're really cheering the fact that carriers throw Android onto their cheap, flimsy phones and load it with a bunch of branded crap. That's not the victory we wanted.
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Even my regular old clamshell has pre-installed non-removable games and applications.
And worse. I've not bought a phone via a mobile network provider since getting one that Orange had deliberately broken the mp3 playback functions on. Without a hack (someone found the keys for the DRM so people could sign their own content with certain tools) you couldn't play anything as either a track or a tone without it having a digital signature - presumably they wanted me to rebuy all my stuff from their online store. What incensed me was that the advertising for that phone by that network played up t
2 Words (Score:4, Insightful)
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If you root your phone at all, you can remove the crap without needing to switch to Cyanogen mod.
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Maybe so, but as root you can disable any or all the crap/bloat/malware you want with no penalty (I've often done so on my Desire). Just use Titanium or a similar app, or you can even do it from the commandline by calling 'pm disable ...'
It's essentially the same thing as deleting the package, but it's a lot safer!
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Untrue. Sony Ericsson phones can easily have all crapware removed with a simple root. Custom ROMs like CyanogenMod have had problems with driver support, true, but that's a different problem and is being resolved. The camera issue was fixed a week ago.
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If the devs cannot put out installation instructions that are not deliberately obtuse and which prevent even an experienced user from bricking the phone cyanogen mod is not much different.
I've tried to find a coherent set of instructions all on one page that does not brick the phone requiring a heimdall reinstall of the OS or actually sending it to someone who wants money to fix it.
It's good that's Android is so open as Bionix works at least until you try the pre-installed 'one click lag fix" then it'll ran
Re:6 Words (Score:2)
Does not work on all phones.
For some phones there far less ... buggy ways to remove crapware.
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I have had 5 defective Moto Droids (and a bad Droid 3).
Please say those phones were for a team of people and that's not your personal experience because, if those were all your phones then you might want to look into a different manufacturer... One is a lemon, two is bad luck, three is a pattern, five is you're not paying attention. Heck, that many duds - even across a team of people - I'd be looking for a new manufacturer for my next set of phones...
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Nope, all me. I am not rough on my phones, but I am very demanding, and don't accept regular faults as acceptable.
First one started random (~2/day) reboots after ~3 months.
2nd had a failed touchscreen after ~2 months.
3rd should have failed at QA- no keypad backlight out of the box.
4th started randomly locking up after ~4 months.
and now the 5th has a failed WiFi module (only 3G works) after 6 months. It's out of warranty, so I've stuck with it since, and it's been usable for about 9 months now.
The Droid 3
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I was told in the Sprint Store after I brought in my dead battery EVO, "your phone has a non-standard ROM installed which is fine, but we can't do any diagnostics on the software, we can only fix the hardware. If you need software support flash back to the Sprint ROM". They got enough of a charge in my battery that the EVO would charge it itself again, thankfully that issue has been fixed since it was a bit scary when it happened.
While I like CM7, I much prefer Synergy GodMode.
HEX
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If you need software support flash back to the Sprint ROM.
This is what happened with the WP7 mango beta, while the device was running the beta no software support was available, if you wanted software support you had to flash back, hardware issues were covered though.
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Actually, if you look on XDA there'll be instructions for most devices on how to flash back to stock with a broken screen (timing, numbers of keypresses, etc). And if your USB port is screwed, you can still flash back through the SD card (which is the standard method, anyway) ...
It's pretty difficult to be in a situation where you can't flash back to stock (not impossible, but very difficult) ...
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Paying twice as much to have bloatware removed isn't really a solution. It's more like extortion.
Solution: go Apple (Score:5, Insightful)
Whether computer, tablet, or phone, Apple don't do this. It's *one* of the reasons I like them.
Simon.
(haters in 3,... 2,... 1,...)
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Not only that, they COULD do it, and people would still buy their stuff/defend them. But they choose not to - I love that.
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ITunes? AppStore? Apple has preloaded marketing-oriented apps; they're just all Apple's.
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That's like complaining your OS comes with a browser and a package manager. It makes no sense, those apps are part of the core use cases for the device.
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That's like complaining your OS comes with a browser and a package manager. It makes no sense, those apps are part of the core use cases for the device.
No problem with them coming with the device, but why not let users replace them with something better or remove them entirely if that doesn't match *their* use case?
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Yes, it's a funny thing. Marketing is the core function of iOS.
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Solution: go Nexus
Get the best of both worlds: no crapware, no jail.
(But I must add, I haven't encountered any crapware on non-Nexus Android's here in Canada. The problem seems to vary by carrier and country.)
Try and remove some icons (Score:2)
Try and remove a lot of the default icons like the stock app. You can't unless you jailbreak it.
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And you can't do a lot of non-standard things with an Android phone unless you root it.
Right. Your point?
If you're looking for his point then read his post in the context of what he is replying to, it should make sense, but just in case it was that both iOS and Android prevent you from removing those default applications.
Wrong on Twitter, two ways (Score:5, Informative)
iOS 5 is bundling a Twitter app with it
Totally wrong. They are NOT bundling a twitter app.
What they are doing is in fact the opposite of bad. They are adding twitter posting as a system library, that applications can bundle in but do not have to use.
The reason why it's the opposite of bad is that Twitter is requiring the odious OAuth authentication protocol, which requires a number of stages to authenticate. Since iOS includes Twitter access as part of the core, it does all the Oauth stuff behind the scenes and all you have to do is enter a username and password.
That means that any apps that also post to twitter (which is quite a lot of apps these days) will have much simpler sign-in processes for the user to make use of twitter, basically none if you've logged in once anywhere else already (and before you get freaked out about background tweets going out know that the user has to confirm a tweet should go out before it is posted).
On the Mac side, there's iLife which gets bundled with new Macs whether you want it or not.
Which you can also simply drag to the trash?
It's not crapware I'd say if it's actually useful though!
I'd rather be a "hater" than a blind fanboi suckered by Apple's marketing into overpaying for crap hardware.
Funny, I'd rather spend my time using a computer than configuring it, paying about the same for the privileged. But whatever floats your boat.
It's also rather funny you call Apple users "blind" when it's you who apparently can't see with clarity what that are doing.
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My last Mac came pre-installed with a demo of iWork. The one before that came pre-installed with a demo of Microsoft Office.
Then there's the stuff that a lot of people find useful but I just don't want. Some of which is quite easy to remove (e.g. iLife) and some of which is difficult or impossible to remove (e.g. iTunes). And don't get Apple wrong: iTunes isn't bundled as a wonderful media player. It is bundled to sell you more stuff (which is why most crapware exists).
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some of which is difficult or impossible to remove (e.g. iTunes).
If you really wanted to, you could simply drag iTunes into the trash like any other app. Why do you think it's difficult or impossible to remove?
You do need it around to work with any iOS devices, that is true... but that's a different matter than claiming it's integrated into the system at a level you cannot remove.
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Except that won't actually work. Trust me on this, because I had to reinstall iTunes under Mac OS X 10.6 just to get my iPhone to sync with it again.
The process starts by dragging iTunes into the trash. But you're not done yet [apple.com]!
Next, delete /System/Library/AppleMobileService.kext and /Library/Receipts/AppleMobileDeviceSupport.pkg.
Reboot. Empty the trash to remove iTunes, and reboot again (according to Apple, I suspect this reboot is unnecessary, but what do I know).
That finally removes iTunes, and has your M
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Oh wow, two passes at the trash! How horrific!
I taken it you've never had to go registry key hunting in Windows or had to search for DLL's placed all over the Windows directory...
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Oh wow, two passes at the trash! How horrific!
Wrong - there's only one pass at the trash.
What there are two of (well, three if you reinstall) are reboots - once after moving iTunes to the trash, and once again after emptying the trash. (And optionally a third if you decide to reinstall iTunes.)
Under Windows, the process is simply "go to 'uninstall a program,' select 'iTunes,' click 'uninstall,' and then needlessly reboot because Apple can't be bothered to look up how to remove services properly."
Under Mac OS X, you'll need to find that support article
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I'd rather be using my computer then fighting it because I have a need it's designer didn't envisage.
I'd never use a basic image manipulation program like Paint after all.
My 4 years of supporting Mac's in an enterprise taught me that Mac's have a very, very limited feature set and if you want it do anything different you're in for a world of pain that makes compiling the most obstinate Linux distro from scratch feel like a holiday.
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"Can I remove it since I don't use twitter posting at all?"
No, but the tradeoff is worthwhile - much easier login to Twitter for many that DO use it, vs. 3kb of space that sits latent in storage for those that do not.
Remember that if it were an external download Twitter would simply demand it use the full Oath process, the way things work now.
It's better for developers and most users, and as noted not really a detriment to anyone else.
There's another option, of course, having a system repository of Apple-co
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The fact that it insists on trying to force iTunes and Safari on you when you install QuickTime is the reason I never install QuickTime on my Windows box. If actually requires it, I find an alternative that does not...
Free and open (Score:2, Informative)
I'm happy with my N900, it runs true Linux, i.e. it allows me to install/remove any app I want, right out of the box, without the need to execute some 3rd party binaries to "jailbreak". But as we all know - most people love to be pulled through the mud (as long as they are made to believe they are being pulled through liquid gold by the hand that pulls them).
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That may be true, but even with all their crapware, low-end Android devices are mostly faster than the N900, have a better selection of apps, require less end user knowledge of Linux and have a touchscreen that works in the way people expect it to ("Like the Eyefone!")...
Not sure what your comment is supposed to contribute, really... I like my guitars, and my bed, and my pants... oh and lasagna!
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Plenty of Android phones have to be jailbroken. Here's the first Google result for android jailbreaking. [youtube.com] A complex set of tutorials to get root access on Android.
The N900 has root access out of the box. Here's the first Google result for N900 jailbreaking. [ps3news.com] A tutorial on how to use the N900 to jailbreak other devices.
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It is a really cool device for a nerd to have, but isn't exactly the mecca of smartphones.
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Don't Trust Any App You Didn't Write (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Don't Trust Any App You Didn't Write (Score:5, Funny)
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Not clean enough, according to your mom.
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Can you point me at the browser you wrote? And the SMS client? I hope you wrote a good GPS navigation application.
I have a litany of other apps that I use day to day, but I'll start with the basics where I assume your use overlaps mine.
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I will only use apps on my Android phone that I myself wrote.
I have never understood the appeal of mindless games like Angry Birds.
Somehow I think those two are related.
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My 2 year old understands the appeal of Angry Birds. In fact there are very few other games she can play...but she picked up Angry Birds pretty quick.
You sound like someone who wouldn't be happy with an app UNLESS you yourself wrote it - so go you.
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Tit for Tat? (Score:2)
What is Tat? Where do I get it and how do I exchange it for the other one?
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I opt for freedom. (Score:2)
Right. This is why you root your phone. It's to de-crappify it. You take that crap off. I love Cyanogen Mod! Shouts to Cyanogen and congrats on the new job!
Vendors of phones and network providers refuse to accept the very concept that you own your bloody phone and have a right to do with it what you want. It's the Bell system from the '60's and earlier (pre AT&T divestiture) all over again. They get to tell you what you can do with your property and you will smile and you will like it.
Apple is ev
Re:I'll opt for what suits me... (Score:2)
So? (Score:2)
My phone came with some crapware too, and I can't remove it... but so what? The Kindle App? The Amazon.com shopping app? Some weird subscription GPS app that doesn't work as well as Google Apps? If I can't remove them, why wouldn't I just get over it and ignore them? It's not like they pop up when I don't want them to, like Norton Antivirus on a new PC. They just sit there. So what?
Common defect (Score:2)
This is the problem when the device vendor makes a fatal mistake in judging who their customer is.
Almost all cases like this they assume that some 3rd party, whether some junk software maker like McAfee or in the case of phones, the carriers, is the customer instead of the end user. So instead of getting a good, clean product (and paying what it actually costs) you get a subsidized version full of garbage.
This is one reason I refuse to buy devices on contract, and why I build my own PC. Perhaps if the hands
Pre Installed? (Score:2)
Ha! Verizon actually ADDED crapware to my DroidX with a software update that did nothing but force install the demo for some football game that could not be removed.
Now I use CyanogenMod.
'Smartphones' have never been full of anything ... (Score:2)
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Only applies to non-iPhones (Score:3)
Sorry to these religiously opposed to the iPhone but it doesn't come with any crapware.
Unless you consider iOS ITSELF to be crapware but I think most people (as indicated by the highest approval ratings in the industry) would disagree.
That's why I got the Nexus S 4G (Score:2)
It's pure Google :)
This is the shape of things to come... (Score:2)
PCs evolved in the wild wild west of arpanet, open source, even Microsoft had to deal with the explosion of possibilities, endless sources of hardware, software and content.
Telephones evolved for a century in the authoritarian straight jacket of Ma Bell, and phone companies are used to controlling every aspect of your digital resource, charging you for everything, forcing you to take what they want to give you. BUSINESS GET"S HARD JUST THINKING ABOUT THIS. The death of the PC will not be because of applicat
Re:Apple (Score:5, Insightful)
Ditto. Complain all you want about Apple's "Walled Garden," but I bet 95% of consumers would prefer not having that shovelware foisted upon them (especially the crap they can't remove) over the ability to play Ogg Vorbis or install a different operating system on their phone.
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The overwhelming majority of PC user's couldn't care less about "crapware" but are finding each revision of Itunes worse then the last and are relishing the chance to be rid of it. The critical difference is that they aren't forced to jump through hoops by the crapware to do basic things.
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The only reason Android is the fastest selling [i]phone[/i] OS (if you count tablets iOS is still on top), is because there are more manufacturers of Android phones than iPhones. As for people switching from the iPhone 3GS to Android, from what I've read there are just as many people switching from Android to the iPhone 4. People with AT&T are switching to Android and people with Verizon are switching to the iPhone (grass is always greener I guess).
Then there's this:
http://www.techradar.com/news/phone [techradar.com]
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if you count tablets iOS is still on top
Are you sure about this? According to this [gartner.com] there will be about 90 million iOS devices sold in 2011, and about 180 million Androids. Even if we assume those numbers are strictly for phones, that leaves a gap of 90 million devices.
According to this [bloomberg.com], Apple's selling fewer than 30 million iPads per year. And that doesn't even account for any of the popular Android tablets out there, such as the Xoom, the Eee Transformer, and the Nook Color.
Yes, iOS rules in tablet space. But it does not bridge the gap in pho
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Try making a handset that is not iPhone but does run iOS (legally). Given the choice, I'm sure some other manufacturers would produce iOS based phones already.
Your argument may hold up when talking about competition from Symbian or WP7.
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They don't really support them - not in the same sense that Apple do with the iPhone. Most of the handset manufacturers are still very much stuck in a 10 or 15 year old mindset where they build the phone, put the software together and as soon as it's in mass production they hardly touch the phone's firmware (except in occasional cases of really heinous bugs, and not always then).
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So that's why people are leaving their Iphone 3GS's for new Android handsets. The fastest selling OS is Android...
And the single most popular smartphone is the iPhone 4. The second most popular smartphone? The iPhone 3GS.
Sorry - you were trying to make a point. Silly of me to inject facts into your discussion.
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People are buying it because it's cheaper and the iPhone is not available on their carrier. If people were *leaving* the 3GS for Android, the iPhone wouldn't be gaining market share and the 3GS wouldn't still be the second best selling phone in the U.S.
If you really think that people are clamoring for the low-end Android phones because they think it's bet
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So that's why people are leaving their Iphone 3GS's for new Android handsets. The fastest selling OS is Android, people are buying it because it's better
Andoid isn't "better" pe sé, but for a lot of people an Android phone is a better fit because:
- they need some hardware feature (like a physical keyboard)
- they are on a budget, and lots of Android phones are cheaper than an iPhone.
I'd say the iPhone is the best phone in its category, with Android expanding by filling the need for smartphones outside of that category where people are increasingly dumping their dumb phones for app-phones. This is also why there's constant speculation about Apple creatin
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Fine, they can go off in Apple's walled garden.
I won't stop complaining, because I don't want such a restrictive approach to impact my ability to use my computers (of any form factor) the way I want to- and Apple's moves are making that highly likely.
Really? (Score:2)
Is that the only reason you won't stop complaining?
Since you can root your android phone, (or iPhone, if you prefer a better experience), run whatever on your computers and stuff, you really have nothing to complain about.
Yet, here we are.
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Well if I had an Android phone it would be rooted, but I won't buy into the iPhone precisely because Apple makes so many decisions for you.
Well, since Jobs is all about the "post-PC" era where PCs are high priced things few people have and instead most people use locked down devices like iPhones and iPads, I'm free to be critical.
Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, it's still worth complaining about, because there's a definite network effect here. While there are things Apple won't let me do with the iPhone that I want to do, the fact is, the more people use iOS, the more software development jobs are for iOS, and the more apps are for iOS -- and the more likely it is for a larger portion of these to be iOS-exclusive, and for at least one of them to be something I need...
This is exactly what happens with Windows. The more people use other platforms like cell phones or even Macs, the more companies are forced to migrate to something at least semi-portable, like the Web -- and the more I get to use stuff I want, like Android or outright Linux on the desktop. Or, failing that, at least we get the stuff that needs to be native on Android, too.
Except this would be worse than Windows. Apple is already going this direction on the desktop, and it really seems like too many people are moving in the direction of making iOS-like machines the norm... meaning the days when I can expect to buy a typical desktop computer and hack together some software to share with my friends may be numbered. The days a child can take the computer they have for other purposes and just use it to pick up software development may also be numbered.
So, complaining loudly about it, if it convinces anyone to avoid iOS and adopt anything moderately open, is still valid.
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the more people use iOS, the more software development jobs are for iOS, and the more apps are for iOS -- and the more likely it is for a larger portion of these to be iOS-exclusive, and for at least one of them to be something I need...
Maybe its just down to the type of apps I use, but I've found the exact opposite really. I have an Android phone (a rather old HTC Dream that will need replacing before long) and my girlfriend has an iPhone 3GS. She sometimes gets annoyed that some free app I have on my Dream either isn't available (and seeming no equivalent app exists) for the iPhone, or that she has to pay for it whilst I got it for free. This latter point is more irritating when, not infrequently, the _same_ app from the _same_ vendor
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You could just by a Nexus S that comes with vanilla Android and an unlocked bootloader you know. Pricing is a bit better than an iPhone.
Actually you can get unbranded phones easily in the UK. If you sign up via a third party like Phones 4 U they will give you an unbranded model instead of the branded one you would normally get when you deal directly with the phone company. That is how I got my Galaxy S, and it is largely crapware free.
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Such as? I can remove whatever I want.
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you can ?
i can't.
eg, stocks, itunes, game center, etc.
it is fairly easy to hide them away in a group labeled "crap" tho.
Lowering the bar... (Score:2)
I thought "fuck itself up because someone sneezed" was integral to the Windows experience.
Apple could have stuffed an 'iTunes inside a VMWARE virtual mac' so people wouldn't have to suffer with the Windows experience.
Since they have a better experience to offer, why would they want to step above the fray?
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I thought "fuck itself up because someone sneezed" was integral to the Windows experience.
Nope, just iTunes on Windows. Much more large and complex applications like Maya, Photoshop, AutoCAD, etc... are all fine cross-platform, just seems Apple's developers aren't that good at writing Windows software or have tried to do a lazy port, but of course that is to be expected given they are obviously much more focused on OSX.
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But they are all the carriers bitches, that was why the smartphone market was stagnant until Apple arrived on the scene in the first place.
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It depends on the quality and efficiency of the "Firewall", especially on a Portable Device. Even well known Security Software may be inappropriate in certain situations.
If the Software can't detect new threats (out-of-date definitions, no dynamic threat control) it is pointless having.
If the Software is constantly running in the background, consuming CPU cycles, RAM, network bandwidth and Battery, it is less than useless; it is a liability.
Software solutions that get bundled with an OS in return for some f
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It's not even just that. It's that it's not removable and it's crap nobody wants.
Safari isn't removable on iPhone. IE isn't removable on Windows Mobile. But nobody complains about those because they are intrinsically useful, and even if you don't like them, it's just because you prefer an alternative to the default.
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Because Google didn't bother ensuring that it was open for you. They hyped up the "open" aspect to draw in developers who were otherwise interested in mobile Linux.
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The PC revolution (led by Microsoft - if you're old you might remember when they were the underdog) is over. MS was the first company to realize the benefit of giving users (some) control over their hardware. Remember that anyone?
Actually I don't.
I remember, before there ever was an MS-DOS or an IBM PC, that Apple shipped their computers with complete schematics and ROM listings which, I would say, amounts to "giving users control over their hardware".
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Don't blame the OEMs, blame the carriers.
A number of OEMs (including HTC and Sony Erricson) have said that they WANT to ship unlocked Android handsets but that the carriers have said NO.
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The only reason Verizon are so popular is that they have spend vast sums of money buying spectrum (and in some cases exclusive rights in places like stadiums, subway systems, tunnels and other things) so that they can have the largest coverage footprint and can have coverage in all those places the other guys wont get.
If AT&T were smart, instead of investing big $$$ on LTE and high-speed-data, they would do whatever it takes so their coverage is as good as Verizon. And they would offer special deals to