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Comment by wpietri | Hacker News Reader

Does anybody understand the economic point of making apps nonremovable? From the point of view of a vendor paying for access, presumably their goal is to spark interest and shift default choices. So I get why LinkedIn would pay to be on the phone when it leaves the factory. But if somebody doesn't want it, what do they gain by preventing removal?

To me it seems kinda like DRM: I'm sure some executives get woodies at the thought of having power over users. But I really doubt that it's an economically rational activity.

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It's all about data collection and metrics. Given how bad many of them are, I suspect many of the authors of the preloaded apps don't actually care if the user ever interacts with them. It's trivial to uninstall a 'normal' app, but disabling it (to the extent possible.. some of them are pretty nastily embedded) is something that most users likely aren't even aware is possible.

There probably should be some apps marked non-removable, because they would break core functionality of the phone, and even if they are made re-installable via Play Store [many of them aren't], would generate tons of complaints and support calls from confused users who uninstalled by mistake.

I'm thinking of: dialer app, SMS app, contacts app, settings app.

The problem seems to be that OEMs mark apps as non-removable when they don't fit that category. And even google does this. [eg. Looking on my phone I was not able to remove Google News, only "disable" it.]

And also on Android, you can install multiple dialers, multiple SMS apps, etc., so maybe you should be able to get rid of the stock one if you have a replacement.

Android mostly fixed this ages ago. You can "disable" non removable apps which makes them go away from the app list and hopefully prevents them running in the background.

They're still on your phone taking up space, though.

for better or worse, they are on the read-only partition, meaning removing them would change the checksum and result in the system partition failing signature validation at boot. Disabling is the best we will get as long as this practice continues.

I can see this working if checksums are calculated per-item instead of as a group.

They are calculated both ways.

But if an OEM does this to a lot of apps, that adds up and it's a lot of disk space the customer paid for, purchased, and cannot use.

I apologize for being blunt, but yours seems like a very lame technical excuse to justify existing behavior, at cost to customer experience. They could just as well put it somewhere where it's (1) still signed and (2) doesn't affect the signature of the base OS.

And even ignoring any potential checksum issues, uninstalling that kind of apps consequently only frees up space on the system partition, where it is of little value to the average user.

Thanks, I needed to deal with preinstalled fb apps on my phone

That is not at all fixing the problem. The problem is disk space. There are cost conscious markets (the same places where a microSD slot is mandatory -- so Google has already decided they are not relevant for its devices) that care a lot about disk space. Huge numbers of users in those markets.

Thats why I say mostly. I totally understand wanting them entirely gone but for most users you can do the next best thing and the space is not a huge issue.

There are a lot of 8GB phones out there, where space certainly is a huge issue. (Or have things improved since Oreo?)

Even with a microSD card, not all apps support being "moved" to SD.

Hm, if a phone is to support a factory reset feature at all, everything it's bundled with needs to be there somewhere in read-only memory.

And everything I've read says that disabling an app and removing updates removes it from everywhere _except_ read-only memory.

I don't think there's any other way to do this at all, unless you want to give up on having a factory reset feature entirely. I think the only problem is that Android doesn't just call it "uninstall" and hide it better.

One option is to require an internet connection for the factory reset process.

One could imagine a setup where the system is rebooted into some kind of safe mode where only manufacturer-signed packages are executed, all other packages are deleted, and then any uninstalled original packages are re-downloaded from a manufacturer designated server, or even peer-to-peer to save internet bandwidth.

Considering the rare use of the factory reset process, and the large cost associated with exabytes of flash memory across all devices worldwide, this seems a worthy tradeoff.

"So, you can pay us $20,000 to have your app preinstalled, or you can pay us $40,000 to have your app preinstalled and the end user can't remove it"

Most likely its so you can't just buy a subsidized device for cheap and wipe it clean.

Google and apple manage to do it.

I don't want a subsidized phone not does the average person. The frustrations I have to help people with when they go into that shitty version is always met with "why do they do they, why do I have two contact apps?"

The interesting thing I always found with Windows phones was how easy it was to remove any and all bloatware on their phones.

Don't the One Plus and Android One phones come pretty clean with only a few Google apps on them?

Yeah, and they start in the $300+ range. The others are paid for unremovable bloatware, which lets them come in at a lower price point.

The Xiaomi Android One line does manage to price in the $150 range without bloatware, and I'm not sure how.

Chinese spyware that doesn't even show as an "app"

You have any proof whatsoever for that or just a general uninformed guess?

I have an A1 and have logged it's network requests all day for fun. There's absolutely nothing remotely resembling "spyware". Compared to prolific unremovable bloat than many premium phones have it's an excellent phone. Ended up buying another for safekeeping if something ever goes wrong with it.

Android One, monthly security updates, official bootlock unloader, some of the best LineageOS support around. Compared to nearly everything else on the market (besides Pixels or Nokias) it's an absolute joy to actually have control over my phone.

Not proof, but my Xiaomi A3 (Android One) European version has a couple of China Mobile packages and what I suspect is China Telecom.

It also has com.wapi.wapicertmanage, WAPI as in World Association of Professional Investigators! No idea what it does but from the name, it sounds it's security related.

Do these belong on an Android One phone? Do these fit with the impression that most people seem to have about Android One?

Hmm, looks like whatever that WAPI package is, it's not just on Xiaomi devices, I see it mentioned as bloatware on a OnePlus 7 Pro[1]

1: https://forum.xda-developers.com/oneplus-7-pro/how-to/debloa...

I don't know whether it's actually Chinese (OnePlus is by the way), not that it matters anyway. It has no business being on my phone and doesn't match with what most people seem to think Android One is.

The WAPI you're looking for is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WLAN_Authentication_and_Privac.... Which, AFAICT, would allow the phone to connect to some Chinese wi-fi APs that were manufactured+configured to use the WAPI encryption standards.

You know how sometimes, cell ISPs ban certain baseband firmwares from connecting to their network, such that you have to upgrade your phone's firmware before it can connect? Now what happens if you live in some college dorm that has only WAPI-configured wi-fi APs? Guess your phone's a brick until you can find wi-fi somewhere else!

In other words, this is kind of a crucial package for a phone you're going to be using in China.

(But also, it's government-mandated that phones released in China have WAPI support.)

Thanks, that makes much more sense. I only looked at the domain name matching the package name. I'd still like to remove it but it feels much less worrying.

The problem was that android makers were cooking these apps into the core OS build. Without root you couldn't disable them. An initially it was to allow for custom needs to be implemented, but they of course took advantage.

Google added a disable feature. Funny thing is you can disable the disable feature for certain apps.

No. First objectively a non-removable Youtube (/Google Search/Play Store/Play Services/Chrome/Drive/Files/Gboard/Gmail/Maps/Photos/Daydream...) app is bloatware, even if made by Google.

Second, the manufacturer is still allowed to put some apps, especially background system apps. I'm not sure what the standard is but it seems to be about user experience rather than security/privacy/user freedom/space.

Third, I suspect a lot of the above fit a common description of spyware. They collect my data without my consent or at best with some fine print.

Android One is to Google what TouchWiz (or whatever it's called) is to Samsung.

> One Plus and Android One phones come pretty clean

OnePlus came with malware not too long ago, so I'm going to answer that with an emphatic no. They are better than some HTC phones I've seen, but that's not a high bar to meet.

> Does anybody understand the economic point of making apps nonremovable?

It wouldn't surprise me if there were some profit sharing or kickbacks going on as a result of the surveillance. LinkedIn has an ad network with a Mobile focus. They better they can track you, the more valuable you are to them.

IIRC it's actually a technical limitation. Pre-installed apps are installed on the system partition, which is read-only. If they installed them on the user partition, they wouldn't survive a later factory reset. That's why you can remove them if you root the phone.

They could of course fix this limitation, but I guess the incentive isn't there for them to do so.

That's a win win as far as I'm concerned. When I uninstall it, it's gone. If I have to factory reset, I don't have worry about uninstalling it again. I don't know or care why bloat gets preinstalled & can't be removed. I care that there's something on my phone that doesn't need to be there & I don't want it there.

User tries to delete app and launches it instead, #gotem.

"Power over users" is perhaps the oldest economically-rational activity.

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