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Comment by clumsysmurf | Hacker News Reader

Mossberg said in a recent review "Premium devices shouldn't be vehicles for carrier come-ons".

http://www.theverge.com/2016/3/8/11176606/walt-mossberg-sams...

I can't imagine spending $700-$800 USD for a device and then having to uninstall junk.

I have no love for carrier or manufacturer bloatware, and Android devices are worse than iOS for both. But I have to say that iOS isn't immune - I have a folder full of Apple apps that I don't use and can't even disable on my iPad (Health, Watch, Maps, Find Friends, Tips, etc etc etc)

I thought I was the only one with an unused builtin app folder hidden on my last screen! For the life of me, I don't understand why Apple won't let you remove the Tips app, of all things...

It probably sends somebody 'tips' about you ;-)

They don't want to field the support calls from people who delete Safari.

I think that Nexus devices even has less pre-installed apps than iPhones. Standard Android OEMs devices are still full of all sorts of preloaded crap though.

This makes me want to see Google finally take Pixel/Nexus seriously and push its own SOC & terminals.

For the most part, devices sold by google directly have a pretty decent start point for apps. Though not everyone prefers the google apps for things, they're generally better than most of the other carrier/vendor apps out there.

I'm currently using an OPO, but will probably go back with Nexus for my next phone...

Some premium devices can be bought as "Google Experience" devices (similar to how laptops bought from the MSFT store will have zero pre-installed vendor software).

Samsung however is very bad at this and they have replaced pretty much every core Android feature with their own most of which cannot be uninstalled easily or at all.

So if you really want a clean OS e.g. without Samsung Mail, Browser (which is the most insecure version of Chrome I've seen in a long long time) Keyboard and the other 10,000 Samsung services you have to flash it with an AOSP based ROM.

LG, Motorola, HTC and others usually offer GE devices when you buy it directly from them or trough the Google store.

Sadly, as of January 2015, "Google Play Edition" variants stopped being sold altogether. The last phones sold before the closure of this program were the HTC M8 and the Galaxy S4 (which now are obviously about 3 generations behind).

As Chen notes, flashing is a very difficult process for "non-techies" and actually near impossible for carrier variants of flagship phones due to bootloader restrictions.

> I can't imagine spending $700-$800 USD for a device and then having to uninstall junk.

Erm, so you've never bought any computer then? Phones are just like every other computer - buy for the hardware, ignore whatever junk software the manufacturer loaded, and install your own environment as the very first thing you do. If one is too lazy to do basic setup, they shouldn't be surprised that companies will continue to herd the weak-willed for their own gain.

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