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Yeah, I'd say this is wrong. His direct quote is [1]: > Today, because of Android, a typical phone comes preloaded with as many as 40 apps from multiple develo

Yeah, I'd say this is wrong. His direct quote is [1]: > Today, because of Android, a typical phone comes preloaded with as many as 40 apps from multiple developers, not just the company you bought the phone from. If you prefer other apps—or browsers, or search engines—to the preloaded ones, you can easily disable or delete them, and choose other apps instead, including apps made by some of the 1.6 million Europeans who make a living as app developers. "Easily disable or delete"? Not to mention the lack of deletion on a lot of these (...any? I don't recall if I've seen any with deletion), I don't always even find a hard way to disable or delete preinstalled apps on phones... unless we're talking about booting custom bootloaders and wiping your phone etc. [1] https://www.blog.google/around-the-globe/google-europe/android-has-created-more-choice-not-less/ https://www.blog.google/around-the-globe/google-europe/andro...

kevindqc 8y ago
Don't you just need to long press the app icon and choose disable/delete?
- enriquto 8y ago
  yes, but you cannot delete the google apps such as chrome or gmail (the option is not "enabled")
  - digi_owl 8y ago
    Thankfully those are most often bundled as stubs that take barely any space. roll back the updates and then disable. Did that to Chrome for the longest time as i was using Firefox on my Android device (before Mozilla went nuts. Now i am flipflopping between Opera and Brave, while waiting for Vivaldi to get a mobile version).
    - mehrdadn 8y ago
      Keep in mind that (a) if the fact that you have to roll back updates is not obvious to people here, I'm not sure how a normal user is supposed to find it "easy", and (b) if you have to roll it back too, you'd lose your data in that app, so it's neither as consequence-free as disabling, nor as thorough as deleting (freeing all the space etc.).
      - kllrnohj 8y ago
        Simply hitting "disable" warns you that it will uninstall updates & delete user data. It's literally a single button press to get back 100% of the space possible, and it's the button called "disable" right in front at the top of the app's info section.
        enriquto 8y ago
        It's infuriatingly confusing and it's not clear that you will get back 100% of the space. If they are sincere about this, why cannot you simply fucking uninstall the damn application ? No stub, no nothing. Just a normal app like the others, that you can install or not.
        kllrnohj 8y ago
        Because it's on the system partition which is fixed size and read-only. That's how factory reset works, by nuking the data partition. They probably should just lie and rename the button to uninstall. That's basically what it is.
  - vetinari 8y ago
    You can disable both. (I have Chrome disabled, because I like Firefox more).
  - kllrnohj 8y ago
    Yes, you can. Both gmail & chrome have working disable buttons. At least they do on a Pixel 2.
    - s73v3r_ 8y ago
      Disable is not delete.
      - kllrnohj 8y ago
        Yes, it is. It no longer exists on the data partition nor can it run any code or be loaded. It has no size impact to you. The only difference is a factory reset will restore it.
        s73v3r_ 8y ago
        "Yes, it is" No, it isn't. That's why they call it "disable" and not "delete".
        kllrnohj 8y ago
        Ok so they just need to rename the button and you're happy. Got it.
- mehrdadn 8y ago
  For the ones that allow you to, yeah. But how would you e.g. easily disable/delete Google Play Services (say, if you didn't want Google on your phone)? The disable option is disabled. Also, even when I try disabling some of these built-in Google apps that I supposedly can disable, I get a prompt warning me that "If you disable a built-in app, other apps may misbehave"... you can't keep a straight face telling a user "oh but you can easily disable this!" when you yourself are telling them the consequence is that it might break other things on their phone. (!)
  - testvox 8y ago
    They just mean apps that use Google play services will be broken. I don't think that's unreasonable. it seems you want it both ways, you want the ability to remove or disable Google play services, without losing access to them.
    - gmiller123456 8y ago
      A lot of built in apps do not offer services to other apps, but they still display the same message. Google Play Services is the exceptional case.
- russdpale 8y ago
  Some apps can't be disabled. The t-mobile application for instance.
- ionised 8y ago
  Some of them simply reactivate/redownload themselves every time you do this. You basically have to root the phone to remove a lot of the Google/vendor bloatware.
nine_k 8y ago
You sure can disable preinstalled apps. Gear icon -> Apps -> select a preinstalled app, you have options to "Disable" and to "Force stop" the app. What you can't is to remove the app and reclaim the storage it's taking. At least so it looks on an un-rooted Sony phone running Android 7.0 that I have before me.
- Klathmon 8y ago
  Many preinstalled apps that aren't essential are just a stub, a few kb that points to the app store to be downloaded on first boot. When these are "disabled" all that remains on the device is a pointer to the app store in a disabled state. It's a few KB of data, and in my opinion a fantastic trade-off to actually allowing deletion then not being able to "factory reset" since that data is no longer on the device.
  - s73v3r_ 8y ago
    "Many preinstalled apps that aren't essential are just a stub" I've never seen this. Just about every preinstalled app on the phones I've had are the actual app.
    - Tijdreiziger 8y ago
      I bought a Samsung Galaxy S9 a few days back. The preinstalled Facebook app (which I immediately disabled) has a listed version of 'stub (23.1.1)', and it's only 127 kB large.
  - StudentStuff 8y ago
    This is definitely not the case on any Android I've recently worked with, disabling Facebook, Google Play Games, Google Newsstand, etc all just delete the user data and supposedly disable the app. I hate that this shovelware is on my phone in any form, and it makes me regret buying a non-ROMmable phone in the first place.
    - Klathmon 8y ago
ivanhoe 8y ago
Not just that you can't truly uninstall them without rooting the phone, but on my last android phone you couldn't even move Google's apps to the SD card to at least save some space.

kevindqc 8y ago

Don't you just need to long press the app icon and choose disable/delete?

enriquto 8y ago
yes, but you cannot delete the google apps such as chrome or gmail (the option is not "enabled")
- digi_owl 8y ago
  Thankfully those are most often bundled as stubs that take barely any space. roll back the updates and then disable. Did that to Chrome for the longest time as i was using Firefox on my Android device (before Mozilla went nuts. Now i am flipflopping between Opera and Brave, while waiting for Vivaldi to get a mobile version).
  - mehrdadn 8y ago
    Keep in mind that (a) if the fact that you have to roll back updates is not obvious to people here, I'm not sure how a normal user is supposed to find it "easy", and (b) if you have to roll it back too, you'd lose your data in that app, so it's neither as consequence-free as disabling, nor as thorough as deleting (freeing all the space etc.).
    - kllrnohj 8y ago
      Simply hitting "disable" warns you that it will uninstall updates & delete user data. It's literally a single button press to get back 100% of the space possible, and it's the button called "disable" right in front at the top of the app's info section.
      - enriquto 8y ago
        It's infuriatingly confusing and it's not clear that you will get back 100% of the space. If they are sincere about this, why cannot you simply fucking uninstall the damn application ? No stub, no nothing. Just a normal app like the others, that you can install or not.
        kllrnohj 8y ago
        Because it's on the system partition which is fixed size and read-only. That's how factory reset works, by nuking the data partition. They probably should just lie and rename the button to uninstall. That's basically what it is.
- vetinari 8y ago
  You can disable both. (I have Chrome disabled, because I like Firefox more).
- kllrnohj 8y ago
  Yes, you can. Both gmail & chrome have working disable buttons. At least they do on a Pixel 2.
  - s73v3r_ 8y ago
    Disable is not delete.
    - kllrnohj 8y ago
      Yes, it is. It no longer exists on the data partition nor can it run any code or be loaded. It has no size impact to you. The only difference is a factory reset will restore it.
      - s73v3r_ 8y ago
        "Yes, it is" No, it isn't. That's why they call it "disable" and not "delete".
        kllrnohj 8y ago
        Ok so they just need to rename the button and you're happy. Got it.
mehrdadn 8y ago
For the ones that allow you to, yeah. But how would you e.g. easily disable/delete Google Play Services (say, if you didn't want Google on your phone)? The disable option is disabled. Also, even when I try disabling some of these built-in Google apps that I supposedly can disable, I get a prompt warning me that "If you disable a built-in app, other apps may misbehave"... you can't keep a straight face telling a user "oh but you can easily disable this!" when you yourself are telling them the consequence is that it might break other things on their phone. (!)
- testvox 8y ago
  They just mean apps that use Google play services will be broken. I don't think that's unreasonable. it seems you want it both ways, you want the ability to remove or disable Google play services, without losing access to them.
  - gmiller123456 8y ago
    A lot of built in apps do not offer services to other apps, but they still display the same message. Google Play Services is the exceptional case.
russdpale 8y ago
Some apps can't be disabled. The t-mobile application for instance.
ionised 8y ago
Some of them simply reactivate/redownload themselves every time you do this. You basically have to root the phone to remove a lot of the Google/vendor bloatware.

nine_k 8y ago

You sure can disable preinstalled apps. Gear icon -> Apps -> select a preinstalled app, you have options to "Disable" and to "Force stop" the app. What you can't is to remove the app and reclaim the storage it's taking. At least so it looks on an un-rooted Sony phone running Android 7.0 that I have before me.

Klathmon 8y ago
Many preinstalled apps that aren't essential are just a stub, a few kb that points to the app store to be downloaded on first boot. When these are "disabled" all that remains on the device is a pointer to the app store in a disabled state. It's a few KB of data, and in my opinion a fantastic trade-off to actually allowing deletion then not being able to "factory reset" since that data is no longer on the device.
- s73v3r_ 8y ago
  "Many preinstalled apps that aren't essential are just a stub" I've never seen this. Just about every preinstalled app on the phones I've had are the actual app.
  - Tijdreiziger 8y ago
    I bought a Samsung Galaxy S9 a few days back. The preinstalled Facebook app (which I immediately disabled) has a listed version of 'stub (23.1.1)', and it's only 127 kB large.
- StudentStuff 8y ago
  This is definitely not the case on any Android I've recently worked with, disabling Facebook, Google Play Games, Google Newsstand, etc all just delete the user data and supposedly disable the app. I hate that this shovelware is on my phone in any form, and it makes me regret buying a non-ROMmable phone in the first place.
  - Klathmon 8y ago

ivanhoe 8y ago

Not just that you can't truly uninstall them without rooting the phone, but on my last android phone you couldn't even move Google's apps to the SD card to at least save some space.