
South Korea rules pre-installed phone bloatware must be deletable (2014) - vezycash
https://www.zdnet.com/article/south-korea-rules-pre-installed-phone-bloatware-must-be-deletable/
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topspin
> Under the new guidelines, telcos are required to make most of their pre-
> installed apps deletable except for four necessary items related to Wi-Fi
> connectivity, near-field communication (NFC), the customer service center
> and the app store.

I don't believe the purveyors of 'bloatware' are going to struggle much
exploiting that list of exceptions. I think I could shoehorn just about
anything into 'customer service center' and 'app store.'

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slezyr
In fact there is no "non deletable" apps on your phone. You can do "adb shell"
then "pm uninstall -k --user 0 com.huawei.android.mirrorshare". No need for
root or something.

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azinman2
Because that’s what your average consumer knows how to do....

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LifeLiverTransp
Its a miracle what is all possible, if somebody manages to inconvinience
politicians.

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jsmith99
It's from 2014.

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jeena
God damn it, and Samsung made the Facebook app now non deletable
[https://toot.jeena.net/@jeena/101478873892782169](https://toot.jeena.net/@jeena/101478873892782169)

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jammygit
I was using an s8 last year and iirc facebook could only be 'disabled,' not
uninstalled. Same with many others. I switched to a lineageOS friendly phone
since with very few issues (pixel XL).

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dmitrygr
On modern Android, disable and uninstall are the same exact thing. And please
don't start telling me that the difference is the binary stays around. It does
not run. Ever.

Trust me, you prefer it this way. The system partition being read only is the
same reason why your phone is much more secure than it would be otherwise.

And as to why it is there in the first place, that is a question for Samsung.

But please stop spreading around false information about Android. Uninstall
and disable are the same thing as far as the app is concerned and as far as
the user is concerned and as far as the operating system is concerned.

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anoncake
Disabled apps take up space. It's not the same thing.

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dmitrygr
No they do not!!!

They are in the /system partition, which is sized once per Android release and
never changed again. If you remounted it as read/write, and deleted them, you
would recover no space!

Any application installed in the /data partition can be deleted. That has the
space you see and the space you can free. Applications that come pre-installed
on the phone and cannot be deleted are in the /system partition. It is a
completely separate part of the storage, not accessible to the user for
writing and does not count against free space. It is where the OS lives. Even
if you do modify this partition, no matter how, you will not get any more free
space for your user data

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jeena
I guess if even I myself didn't get that from the UI then most probably most
of the people out there have no chance to get that either. It would be nice if
the UI would somehow convey this information.

Also, the size of that partition is decided by taking into account that the
Facebook app will need to fit there. If you hadn't any preinstalled apps then
this size would be able to be smaller and then you would get more space on
your device for applications which you actually need to use.

~~~
dmitrygr
Actually, it's sized with some amount of free space to allow for future
updates. Pre-installed apps rarely make a significant difference. Core Android
at this point is pretty large

