- cross-posted to:
- android@lemdro.id
- cross-posted to:
- android@lemdro.id
Because money.
and the most delicious kind of money of all: dark money! ooooh it’s so good because the sources of the dark money offer you a lot of it, and they specifically ask you not to ask questions, which is so good for you because these bloatware programs make your device sell worse and provides no value as a sales platform because it turns out that billboards and radio spots are, surprisingly, the most effective form of advertising.
but! you have a sense of solidarity. you have faith that by never offering a phone without bloatware, your entire industry will ensure that all phones won’t have bloatware. you rest easy at night knowing your phone won’t sell poorly, at the end of the day, because every phone is like this. your contributions to a surveillance and propaganda machine that should punish you in the market because won’t because all your peers are your allies in this.
and it gets better! every time someone else’s phone gets more bloatware and more dark money attached, then everyone else appears comparatively better, allowing them to get worse. ooooh you love it so much when you get to take more dark money. and all it costs you are several thousand lives far away from your big mansion. you don’t even have to see the suffering
adb device
adb shell
pm list packages | grep 'packagename'
you have to be careful what packages you remove, some can softlock your device.
The big one that matters is Verizon Software Manager. Used to be DT Ignite or something. They try to disguise that garbage forced installer as something genuine. I forget what it is on AT&T but I think it still has DT in the package name. The Verizon one is like some crazy package name thats not the name of the software at all. Must be the name of the company that makes it.
everytime i factory reset my device so much bloat/spy/malware gets installed automagically
Keep that thang (abd) on you
naw, it gets tiring. Either A) im going back to the flip phone i have or B) once i save up enough money ill get a pixel and install graphene.
For the same reason we have every fucking other problem in the world right now.
Capitalism.
You cannot align incentives towards growing the wealth of a microscopic yet astronomically lecherous group of monsters and expect society to not just crumble under the weight.
It’s 2024 though?
you suggestij we win this fight within this month?
press X to doubt
If you’re still in 2024, you’re already behind. Get on with the times and start grinding. DM for a link to my weebinar and 5% discount on my eebook.
Because people keep buying Xiaomi and Samsung shit that’s loaded with crap (at least over here, I understand this varies massively by region).
Base Android is also loaded with crap, directly from Google. Android is the worst mobile operating system, with the exception of all the others.
Base Android (AOSP) is not, what you probably mean is Google Android.
Look at GrapheneOS, that is a usable, privacy-focused Android without bloat.
Almost none of the devices are shipped with anything but Google’s Android, and manufacturers don’t provide you alternative versions of Android
Yes, Google owns Android as a whole, but (almost?) every single OEM customizes Android for their purposes. That is not the same thing.
Moto doesn’t.
I mind the Google crap more than I mind the Samsung stuff. At least Samsung’s browser supports ad blockers since ages. That Chrome POS is just useless.
i buy samsung cause parts aka easier to source parts.
fixing phones is the biggest scam ever. once you open the phone you are always going to have problems with the phone. they are not made to be opened and repaired.
As much as I hate this saying, it sounds like a skill issue
I’ve done repairs on all my phones. New buttons, screens, batteries, ports, etc. I’ve never caused an unforeseen new issue by doing so.
Its not so much a skill issue, more so phone repair stores are the scams. they break stuff that wasn’t broken in the first place and get you to come back with the that issue or say it was also broken. Source: used to work in the phone repair industry and knew people who did this on the regular and is a standard.
What you describe is literally a skill issue though, if they’re breaking unrelated components.
Depends on the model, and the manufacturers would certainly prefer you replaced it, but I’ve privately fixed a few phones for friends/family. Fucked up and broke the first one, but the ones after are pretty much all still running without issue.
you can argue that iphones and pixel phones etc… have bloatware/spyware/malware as well.
Because it’s profitable to include.
Why would companies care as much about the minor brand value decrease in the eyes of more technical users when they can make more money right now by making things shittier?
We’re not. It’s 2024.
You mean it’ll all magically go *POOF!* come the new year?!? I’ll wait until then to set up my new phone, then!
And laptops, desktops, televisions …
- buy a laptop/desktop
- boot up windows and setup with fake shit
- download and flash your favourite linux distro
- disable secure boot
- boot from usb.
- ???
- profit!
Most mainline Linux distro work pretty seamlessly with secureboot these days.
ugh. wanted to get a oled tv but will not buy a smart tv.
Honestly … Just don’t connect the TV to the Internet.
ive been pretty anti consumerist lately so I don’t need much to get me to not buy things.
deleted by creator
Basically, because we don’t own our devices. We are allowed to use our devices by the good graces of the manufacturers that charge a premium for them.
This really needs to change. I remember the preinstalled app antitrust suit(s) in the early 00s. Those need to happen again, but likely the EU will have to as the US is entering a dark age, and the US will continue to have inferior everything to the rest of the world for the foreseeable future.
It’s called enshitification. Deshitification isn’t so much a thing.
Is it really enshitification if it was like this from essentially the start?
Outside of like literally the very first few android phones when there wasn’t even apps for the platform, they came bundled with all sorts of shit. I remember my HTC from 2010 drove me insane with the junkware bundled in, and that was about 2 years post Android’s first phone. We’re at like more or less steady state shitification. (varies by phone/brand)
I used to buy my phones with a specific eye towards avoiding bloat. It was still possible to avoid most of it 8-10 years ago, but not anymore.
This is a wild take for me. I had bloatware on my dumbphone. Hell, the old nokia phones had app/ringtone dlc bullshit in them too. My old palm pilot had bloatware. Where did you get a phone without it?
Not without it, just a lot less. 1plus used to be not too bad. Not like today where dozens of apps come with everything.
What’s sad is how true this is. Companies enshitify once they have a solid hold on the market. But if they start to slip in numbers, do they ever deshitify to regain trust and users? Fuck no, they triple down on the enshitification to make one last cash grab as they prepare to abandon ship with life preservers full of bonuses for themselves
Facebook, Netflix and Spotify are bloatware.
IMO all google and manufacturer apps are too, they should be optional during install.
Most people aren’t - they’ve given up the fight.
The problem is that most phones don’t support ROM’s like Graphene or Linage, as people installing custom roms is a relic of years past. Next time you get a phone, think about if you want this option for yourself. Also, do keep in mind that some phones have HW backdoors on them, so even installing a stock rom/graphene does not save you from privacy.
That’s true. Graphene is majorly Pixel limited, I guess. And even Lineage has a small set of devices when one considers the nos of OEMs and variants they manufacture per year.
Even pixel or Fairphone is fairly free of bloatware compared to Samsung and shitty Chinese brands as long as you are not privacy paranoid about Google services.
I am privacy paranoid.
And that’s fine, but first people like you (and me to some extent) are in the vast minority and that’s also not an issue of bloatware per se.
yeah the only problem is that i have to participate in this hellhole capitalist society. Im trying to figure out what the best VPN is to use, along side if tor is worth using.
Capitalism
Companies want to spy on you and make money, it’s no secret. Just install stock Android or your favorite fork; it quite literally takes 5 minutes with a WebUSB installer.
it quite literally takes 5 minutes with a WebUSB installer.
With a supported phone, on a Chromium browser on Windows. It takes much more than that usually, depending on device, to unlock the bootloader and install a custom ROM
I guess I only have one data point from installing Graphene on my phone. I can see why it would be harder on other devices. Though I was using Linux, and Windows is absolutely not required for WebUSB.
Doesn’t’ the fork like Lineage OS or Graphene also need to support those phone models first?
Yep, Graphene only runs on Pixels but (IIRC) Lineage runs on most mainstream devices. Otherwise stock Android should work fine.
…and then you’re locked out of using your phone to pay for things, can’t install banking apps and marginal ID apps, et cetera. 😢
- do you really need to pay with your phone?
- do you need to use a banking app and not call the automated system to check?
- What ID apps would you used on a phone? Having digital ID’s is in it’s own a huge breach of privacy and i would never consent to such a system
It’s a tradeoff for sure but it’s worth it for a lot of people.
Unlocking bootloader took me few hours.
I must register new account, install Windows application (Linux not supported, but Windows Server evaluation is free and works as a VM),
have valid SIM card with Internet access.But worth it, much better experience.
Unfortunately, average person won’t do all this things.
That sounds like Xiaomi. The best price to performance ratio of any OEM, but at the cost of terrible software and this… experience… when you want to get rid of it.
Worth noting that not all OEMs are like this.
Yeah, bingo.
I hope there are no backdoors in a firmware or modem.
Time to load up some custom Android OS. Lineage, Graphene, seem to be the best at the moment. Any others?
DivestOS seems like a solid choice too
Jesus, their device download page is a hot mess.
CalyxOS, if your posture isn’t strick enough to require GrapheneOS (more strict than the Average Joe, but not as strict as Snowden).