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Because it's part of the factory install, and should be available after a factory reset. Much easier to do it that way than to either add a first-boot process
by andrewaylett 9y ago
Because it's part of the factory install, and should be available after a factory reset.
Much easier to do it that way than to either add a first-boot process to install it as a non-system app (thereby taking twice the space) or have the factory flash include it in the user partition, which means that a factory reset doesn't actually return the device to the state in which it left the factory.
- Zak 9y ago> Because it's part of the factory install, and should be available after a factory reset. That does make a bit of sense, though I suspect it wouldn't be too hard to tell Google Play to install a list of apps after the first boot.
- Klathmon 9y agoIn most cases that's all those apps are. At least in the case of things like "Google Sheets" and "Google Docs" the preinstalled apps are only like 1kb, and are basically just placeholders telling google to go to the play store and download the current version of the app once the phone is started (unless you disable and uninstall updates, at which point it's back to the 1kb placeholder)