South Korea directive allows Android users to remove preinstalled apps
The picture above illustrates the term coined as “bloatware,” or basically the apps that manufacturers and carriers load onto your phone that you cannot get rid of. Unlike the apps you download from the market, these apps cannot be uninstalled. This is something that has annoyed probably anyone that has ever owned an Android phone, and has only gotten considerably worse as time passed. My first Android phone in 2009 had five apps I could not uninstall (until I rooted the phone) that drove me nuts. The last phone I got from Verizon about a year ago had twenty three apps they put on it that I would never ever use, and couldn’t remove. Google did introduce a few features over the years in newer versions of the operating system to help with the issue, allowing you to hide apps you didn’t want to see, or even disable them so they aren’t working in the background. However that still leaves them installed on your phone and taking up precious space for other apps that you would actually like to install and use.
So the great news coming out of South Korea today gives us hope this could end, and makes me pray regulators in other countries come to the same conclusion. That conclusion, straight from the Ministry itself was that preinstalled apps are an “inconvenience” to users and cause “unfair competition” between operators and carriers. It took five years, but at least someone in a position of power somewhere finally noticed what the users did since day one. There are some apps like those relating to Wi-Fi, user settings, NFC, or the app store that carriers will not be forced to remove. However those core services are likely not the ones that irritate users as much as the likes of Zappos, NFL Network, or the carrier tied services that proliferate the app drawer as well as cost money monthly and basically are duplicates of the better free services already available.
Ben Johnson
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