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Google Relaxes Handset Makers' Requirements for "Must-Include" Android Apps
According to The Verge, anyone who buys a new Android phone may benefit from an interesting change in their phone's default apps: namely, fewer pieces of included bloatware. However, the affected apps might not be the ones that a user concerned with bloatware might care most about (like carrier-specific apps), but are rather some of the standard Google-provided ones (Google+, Google Play Games, Google Play Books and Google Newsstand). These apps will still be available at the Google Play Store, just not required for a handset maker to get Google's blessing.
(Also at ZDNet.)
Now let's see Google let OEMs choose which browser to bundle with their devices. Open platform my aching ass.
Be nice if I could uninstall some of that crap. I just bought a Samsung and a Motorola mobile phone. Can't believe how little extra stuff is installed on the Motorola - it's wonderful. But both of them have a lot of Google apps I just don't want. Love Gmail and calendar, but news? books? Do not want. It would be wonderful if Google would let us remove these apps via the Play store. If they could do something about all the extra Samsung junk that would be great too.
Just my $0.55 (US inflation, 1774-2008, for $0.02)
What makes you think the Verizon browser would be anything but a shit sandwich with extra advertising on top?
Remember that Verizon still hasn't adopted IMAP for their email protocol. To view them as competent at anything is a farce.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I wish I could convince the phone manufacturers that I don't need the facebook app. I don't have a facebook account and have no use for the app, yet my phone will not let me uninstall it. In fact my phone keeps telling me that I need to update this large app that I never use.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
a) Why would you open a voicemail in a web browser? That's a stupendous security risk. And it would be an audio player, surely, not a browser?
b) What is your carrier doing to deliver voicemail by anything other than their voicemail service?
c) I share your pain somewhat here but: Put your phone on speakerphone when doing voice prompts. It's so much easier and you can ensure the screen doesn't go off. P.S. you have options to delay the screen turning off. Use them if it annoys you.
d) Two web browsers? Choice. You might want to just use Chrome, others might want something else. P.S. Android's "Internet" option is Chrome, just an old version. They don't brand it because they don't want to shove it down your throat but this way everyone has a browser and can STILL choose their own (like, say, Chrome, or Opera Mini, or anything else at all). Compare and contrast to Safari on iPad, etc.
e) Satnav - choice. They haven't said "YOU WILL USE THIS APP", they've given you apps, the carrier have given you apps, you can give yourself apps and choose what you want. Don't moan about choice. P.S. I use Copilot on all my Android devices.
f) Get a better phone if it overheats. If a smartphone overheats, so would anything with an LCD screen or even old school tech. They dial back the speed under heat, not break. If it's breaking your phone is shit or nothing would survive that heat nicely and it's stopping you having to buy a new phone.
Note: I hated smartphones for years and literally never used one until two-three years ago. Bought one Android Samsung, never looked back, stopped my old TomTom subscription/device and moved everything to the one place where I can choose to do everything or nothing. Hell, I can manage my workplace network from it. By far not a cutting-edge "YOU MUST USE THIS" kinda guy, but that seems to be exactly what you're moaning about the lack of. This ain't Apple. You can use / configure what you like how you like.
Well, it would be really awesome if i could actually disable or at least throttle something called 'Google Play Services' that keeps running the battery down on every single device
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.slashdot.org Errors found while checking this document as HTML5!
With the recent security problems and the inability of many to update their phones due to manufacturer and carrier incompetence I was hoping Google would make things a bit more standardized and pull some control back from them.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
Black screen for a bunch of seconds = slow, cheap phone, or faulty phone, or you're hovering over the presence detect and it's blanking the screen because it thinks it's your ear near the phone during a call and doesn't want you pressing buttons with it by accident.
a) Why would you open a voicemail in a web browser? That's a stupendous security risk.
I don't see it as any worse than webmail or listening to music on Soundcloud. What's the threat model?
b) What is your carrier doing to deliver voicemail by anything other than their voicemail service?
Probably storing the voicemails as audio files and making them available to people who want to check voicemail on a device other than their phone, for convenience. Some will even perform speech recognition to let the subscriber get the gist of the message before deciding whether to listen.
Choice
Then the manufacturer ought to preinstall the app in the data partition where the user can make a "choice" to delete it. After a factory reset, Google Play Store would reinstall it the next time it sees Wi-Fi.
That's why you buy phones that permit you to root them... including full bootloader access.
If I am buying a phone in person, why aren't sales associates trained on which phones have "full bootloader access"? If I am buying a phone online, how can I accurately gauge the size, weight, display quality, and touch screen responsiveness of a device through the Internet?
I think the complaint is that it should never have been installed in the system partition in the first place. Instead, it should have been installed in the user partition at the factory and placed on a list of apps to automatically reinstall when the user first connects to Wi-Fi after a reset.
The trouble is that Android permissions are historically too coarse-grained to let a manifest distinguish "application can query call state" from "application can query device ID".
Google Voice?
Redirecting voicemail to Google Voice.
This changes absolutely nothing. We are not talking about core Android, but Google specific apps. These are already only and uniquely updated by the play store, even if they come preinstalled. These apps are not in AOSP. The change will make them optional to install. That's it. All of Android's security issues remains just the same.
a) Why would you open a voicemail in a web browser? That's a stupendous security risk. And it would be an audio player, surely, not a browser?
b) What is your carrier doing to deliver voicemail by anything other than their voicemail service?
Delivering voicemail is voicemail service, right? So why do they provide voicemail service with something other than their voicemail service? They should only provide voicemail service, not voicemail service.
Hoping you don't take that personally.
In my case, dumpbhone user, I can go to the carrier's website (from a PC) and listen to voice messages there. For the giggle I even tested dialing my own number (from the phone), landing on the "answering machine" and I could record shit there that showed up as a wav file on the website.
As for a) well browsers have historically been able to open .txt files (they are out there on the web), pictures : which I do regularly for clean viewing and zooming, but naive website did/do link to them, some image sharing services even do as one of the options ; full on media player is what they happen to do now. .mp4 file : firefox is a competent player for it, without using a quirky plug-in (it would have used a plug-in years ago. With an .avi file it prompts me to activate a plug-in, which I decline to do.). The extremely minimal controls are tasteful for once.
I did a quick test of an
It happens to play mp3 from the built-in player too ; Google Chrome is known to not play them, for licensing or political reason.
Security risk is nil, as this just opens and plays a media file. Doesn't even use the network. (yes in theory a crafted file may exploit an exploit in the decoder)
Opening crap in the browser is an interesting approach. If I find myself on an OSX or Windows etc. system that is either really blank, or is loaded with crapware (including from adobe, microsoft, apple etc.) or I don't even want to think about unfamiliar software (Metro version of windows media player?) then I can open some of the local files in Mozilla Firefox, if available.
This is Slashdot, dude, of course I didn't RTFA. My point was to extend the summary - they may not be mandatory in an initial install anymore, but I already have a phone with this crap on it - in other words, the "included bloatware" has already been included. I'd like an easy way to remove it. And I'm far from alone. Look at the reviews on the play store for things like the HP printer service or half of the things which start with "S ". People give 1 star reviews because they hate these unremovable applications.
Personally, I've gone with the Titanium backup route, and I've deleted things using an apk terminal, but I'm a standard deviation or two above the mean android user, who just wants to unclutter the applications list. Those are scary, complicated things for Mom to do.
Just my $0.55 (US inflation, 1774-2008, for $0.02)
As I understand it: First, people blame Google for taking until Lollipop to get this right when bloatware was becoming a problem since Gingerbread. Second, even if the functionality were not part of the operating system, people blame manufacturers and carriers for not providing a single app, installed in /system with appropriate system permissions, to do the same thing after a factory reset.
Whether implemented in the OS or in a manufacturer's customization, this functionality could have reduced /system to fewer than a half dozen apps and the libraries that they use actually need to be present prior to the first Internet connection. These are launcher, settings, and app store on tablets, and those plus dialer and SMS on phones.
You genuinely cannot come up with the idea that maybe you should do some research on the internet first and then head to the store?
I did that once. I researched phones, and once I settled on a phone to try, it turned out that zero out of four stores near me carried it.
Or head to the store, try out some units and if the sales person can't answer your question then do some research on the internet and go back afterwards?
This could take days of back-and-forth travel. Or are days of back-and-forth travel part of the expected experience of buying a phone?