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Comment by xzxz | Hacker News Reader

I used to choose Motorola devices for a long time but since 2 years when I bought Edge 30 Fusion I started to notice they automatically (without my knowledge) add 3 stupid apps or games about two times a month :/ There is no way to stop it. My kids phones are stuffed with this sh*t.

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On some phones this is done by something like AppCloud, which you can usually uninstall from the user partition using ADB/Universal Android Debloater.

Or: buy another brand and not jump hoops.

Definitely, it's more that is worth trying for people who have a phone already. E.g. on Samsung, you can remove most of the bloatware.

A chinese one? My xiaomi required debloating, which left me without the "apps" menu in settings. I am not happy about having to do that. Side note: I have to use either intents or adb to administrate the apps.

All the "best phones" for most of us are bloated tracking devices.

Motorola put the malware apps into the “nondisable” list. You can’t remove them even with ADB PM commands. I was fucking mad that my RAZR couldn't be fully debloated.

See also: various firmware builds for Moto phones like https://dumps.tadiphone.dev/dumps/motorola/aito/-/tree/user-...

Motorola's history is so unfortunate.

They were a great brand, cool phones, one of early Android players.

After being bought out by Google, Motorola had some of the best devices out there with stock android, especially in the budget segment (and loved among android devs).They had one of the best smartwatches in the game at the time - Moto 360 (2014!!).

Then, after dropping the Nexus 6, Google stripped the patents and sold them to Lenovo. For a while it was ok, even dropping the relatively innovative Moto Z which had all the cool "modular" addons, played with it for a bit and seemed cool.

And then, things seemed to start taking a turn for the worse as Lenovo kept enshitiffying it more and more, using the brand name as a wedge in the market in which they are basically forgotten. They have the Razr brand which is cool, but the segment that was their best (budget phones) is now ruined with adware so they can extract every bit of value from it.

Such a sad ending for a company that was so early in the space.

I have exactly the same feelings.

FWIW, the worst thing I can say about the Moto Edge 50 Neo (a midrange phone) from a year ago is that it had "sponsored" apps pre-installed. They could be uninstalled (not just deactivated) the usual way and never came back.

> Moto 360

... I was so mad every time Motorola screwed the pooch in this era.

I was a first-gen Moto X user... on Verizon. I didn't get the Lolipop update forever and a day. I was a first-gen Moto Hint owner. We didn't get the wake word update, we got told to buy the Hint 2. And then finally, I was a first-gen Moto 360 owner. We didn't even get Wear OS updates at all. Not WearOS 2, not even WearOS 1.6. Every single first-gen product got immediately dropped for second-gen shit, and we got abandoned.

You are in luck: LineageOS supports many Motorola devices, including the Edge 30.

In the past I often tend to replace stock Android with LineageOS but in today's world with so many attack vectors like for example malware in supply chains etc. I choose to stay with stock OS. I also have my bank apps and lot of my clients data/credentials stored on my accounts.

How do you imagine that protects you? If anything I'm inclined to trust the LineageOS supply chain more than the OEM on account of being a smaller target, having less bloat, and being 100% open from start to finish.

For a particularly sensitive context I'd want to build the ROM myself on an appropriately secured machine running one of the major distros.

Financial apps like banking ones sometimes refuse to work on rooted phones and you have to follow if you want to run them.

I just have no time and knowledge to build ROM myself. 100% open projects also suffer supply chain attacks.

Well then you're in luck because many of the ROM projects provide step by step build instructions. It's almost entirely automated thus quite straightforward; the primary hurdle is having a capable enough system. Unfortunately given current RAM prices you'll need a system worth as much as a cheap car to properly optimize some of the components.

I'd suggest not using apps that fail to respect your autonomy.

Honestly LineageOS is probably a more secure root than the typical random android OEM; unless you're dealing with Samsung or Google.

Sentence reads better without the subordinate clause.

For Samsung phones, depending when the phone was released, you may be getting security updates months after they are provided by Google.

> There is no way to stop it.

There are ways. All the apps that install this crap can be disabled through Android's app manager, no fancy method required. (Of course updates can bring them back... But "luckily" Motorola isn't too keen on providing those for their products).

Some examples of the apps to look for:

- App Box

- Games

- MotoApps

- Moto App Manager

- Live lock screen

The active adware apps depends on your region and career. In some region Motorola doesn't push adware at all.

Personally by just disabling those (and similar sounding crap) I've never had adware sneakily installed.

For Moto G or lower tiers Edge I can begrudgingly accept that it's part of the deal... But I would be livid if they did this to my $1500 phone, which is why I refuse to risk getting a razr. Whether you want to fight your phone maker and keep using their product is up to you.

Let's hope that the grapheneos partnership plays off in our favor next year!

Strange, I've never gotten any moto apps on my cheap Moto G. I don't sign into any of their crap, but I don't recall doing anything else....

How old is your Moto G?

Anything in the last few years has the moto app manager that force loads LinkedIn etc.

Due to cheap and cheerful with long lasting battery - I still buy Moto G - but setup offline and disable all these apps using https://github.com/Universal-Debloater-Alliance/universal-an...

2023 I think

I tried to disable some of them but then, (not even) after OS update (sometimes after reboot) I noticed that they are active again.

I got a prompt about trying new apps every week or something similar. The wording, the moment it prompted me were clearly designed for people to just say "ok" and then wonder how apps were installing regularly without any action. I got caught myself, disabled it but still got new app installs later. I killed the whole thing and have been free since. But definitely felt like a scam. And the apps suck.

This is exactly what I noticed and was disappointed about

They even force you to select a bunch of apps during out-of-box setup on some Motorola phones and it mandates they automatically download post-setup. You can't say "no", you straight up have to let the phone queue up and let it pull all the APKs down for a bunch of shitty preloaded games and Netflix and crap, load them in, then get to waste fifteen minutes removing them again. :\

Luckily there is a mobile phone OS and hardware that isn't produced by the world's largest advertising company, and furthermore doesn't allow two different corporations to be involved in the core OS of the device.

You're right but we can't easily get Huawei devices in North America.

I thought we were talking about non-adversarial-tracking devices.

Apple isn't the largest advertising company, but it's a pretty big one. The only other candidates I know of are aftermarket Linux distros, but they have their own problems.

Unfortunately, that company also polices what kinds of apps you’re allowed to install on your hardware.

No, they only allow one corporation to be involved, which is not necessarily an improvement.

I hope you are not referring to the company that is pushing AI ads through their system settings, pushing Creator Studio subscription ads through the formerly non-shareware productivity tools, and pushing movie ads through their wallet?

Seriously, get a Pixel and install GrapheneOS, or maybe a Fairphone with LineageOS.

"Seriously, get a Pixel and install..."

Ah, the Google tax. They can turn the lock of that door (bootloader) when they choose to do so.

But they haven't yet, and if you refuse to give Google money directly there's always the secondhand market.

You'd still be walking around as a free advertiser for their stuff, simply by owning Google-branded hardware. And of course the hypocrisy of having a Google phone to avoid Google spying is palpable.

I doubt people notice that sort of thing. Maybe whether you have an iPhone or an Android at most. Avoiding Google spying isn't the point of GrapheneOS anyway

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