Do new unlocked phones here have pre-installed apps which cannot be deleted?

[JimmyJ]

My previous Androids have all been purchased in the USA thru carriers with a wireless postpaid phone contract.

Those are always locked until the time length of the contract is fulfilled.

 

They come with ~ 30 preinstalled apps including Facebook, Google apps, etc., which can never be deleted, even after the phone is unlocked.

 

When I buy a phone here not thru a carrier, I assume it will be unlocked.

 

Will it have preinstalled apps which cannot be deleted?

[sometimewoodworker]

16 hours ago, JimmyJ said:

When I buy a phone here not thru a carrier, I assume it will be unlocked.

 

Will it have preinstalled apps which cannot be deleted?

My experience is that the phone SWMBO bought through AIS was a completely normal unlocked phone. The moderate discount was linked to the required, mid to high, AIS contract. There were no locked apps the phone was not locked to AIS

 

It is certainly possible that if you buy a different make of phone or through a different carrier the experience may be different, though I don’t think that it’s likely. 
 

The USA has a drastically different sales model, the phones initial cost is amalgamated into the contract (with a small percentage paid up front) so locked phones from carriers are normal. Here braking loans and defaulting on contacts has far fewer consequences, so reasonably common, so the sales model is very different.

 

but. TIT YMMV

[JimmyJ]

2 hours ago, sometimewoodworker said:

My experience is that the phone SWMBO bought through AIS was a completely normal unlocked phone. The moderate discount was linked to the required, mid to high, AIS contract. There were no locked apps the phone was not locked to AIS

 

It is certainly possible that if you buy a different make of phone or through a different carrier the experience may be different, though I don’t think that it’s likely. 
 

The USA has a drastically different sales model, the phones initial cost is amalgamated into the contract (with a small percentage paid up front) so locked phones from carriers are normal. Here braking loans and defaulting on contacts has far fewer consequences, so reasonably common, so the sales model is very different.

 

but. TIT YMMV

Are there preinstalled apps which cannot be deleted?

[sometimewoodworker]

25 minutes ago, JimmyJ said:

Are there preinstalled apps which cannot be deleted?

Only the ones that are unable to uninstall on any phone.

There are no apps installed by default that are any different from anyone else. And as I said nothing that could not be deleted by any other user.
 

Again my experience is limited to a single phone purchase that had about a 10% discount from most other places.

 

The only point is that it is an iPhone, so it’s certainly possible that android phones from a carrier could be different, since neither of us are interested in those we don’t have information about them, however as I said it’s unlikely that they would be crippled.

[KhunBENQ]

21 hours ago, JimmyJ said:

When I buy a phone here not thru a carrier, I assume it will be unlocked

EDIT: misread!
Yes usually phones from the shop or internet are unlocked!

 

Most phones out of the box are full of bloatware (useless, unwanted) applications. Samsung is quite bad (who the heck needs "Samsung Internet" browser).

Many of them can not be uninstalled by regular means. Deactivated at best.

 

"Regular means": there is a way to get rid of them (completely invisible) with "ADB" (Android debugger) SW on PC and developer mode and USB debugging on the phone enabled. It's not rocket science but also not for IT dummies (command line stuff).

 

Do not follow the "root it" advice! Will give you real headaches and not easy peasy.

 

[Sheryl]

My phones (Samsung) were all unlocked but also all had apps which could not be uninstalled, only disabled. Quiet a few of them in fact.

[lopburi3]

36 minutes ago, Sheryl said:

My phones (Samsung) were all unlocked but also all had apps which could not be uninstalled, only disabled. Quiet a few of them in fact.

Indeed and not just Samsung - have had about 3 brands and all had apps that I did not want (most) but could not be removed - expect this helps pay the bills.  As have no real need for such phones returned to my Nokia 3310 (real model - lots of clones) where don't have to worry about data/battery issues and have good phone volume.

[topt]

10 hours ago, JimmyJ said:

Are there preinstalled apps which cannot be deleted?

Yes. Usually quite a lot.

 

8 hours ago, KhunBENQ said:

Do not follow the "root it" advice! Will give you real headaches and not easy peasy.

Depends on the phone and how good you are at understanding and then following instructions - not directed at you by the way 

 

The main thing you need to be aware of is that most banking apps are unlikely to work if you do this.

[soi3eddie]

I've bought Samsung Galaxy S5, S7, S9 and S20 here in Bangkok. All from either Samsung or Powerbuy. None of them were locked and they only had apps that were standard for Galaxy and mostly could not be deleted. There was no carrier bloatware as these phones were not bought through AIS, DTAC or TRUE etc.   

 

[sometimewoodworker]

So it looks like the iPhone Experience is significantly different from the Android one. I there are certainly a few apps like the Settings and Safari that can’t be deleted 

 

all the apps under can be deleted, I’ve only found 5 that I don’t want or don’t use

 

• Activity
• Apple Books⁴
• Calculator
• Calendar
• Compass
• Contacts²
• FaceTime³
• Files
• Find My Friends (iOS 12 only)

• Home
• iTunes Store
• Mail
• Maps⁴
• Measure
• Music⁴
• News (where available)
• Notes
• Podcasts⁴

• Reminders
• Stocks
• Tips
• TV (where available)
• Videos
• Voice Memos
• Watch app⁵
• Weather

[Lemsta69]

4 hours ago, topt said:

Yes. Usually quite a lot.

 

Depends on the phone and how good you are at understanding and then following instructions - not directed at you by the way 

 

The main thing you need to be aware of is that most banking apps are unlikely to work if you do this.

but rooting is so much fun. it's like a box of chocolates, you never know if you'll get a working phone or a brick ????

[KhunBENQ]

9 hours ago, Lemsta69 said:

but rooting is so much fun. it's like a box of chocolates, you never know if you'll get a working phone or a brick ????

Should have tried my old phone. But just given away

[JimmyJ]

What we commonly label "Phones" - Android and Iphones - are not phones, they are Tracking Devices.

Included is the ability to make and receive phone calls.

 

My phones have always been Androids, purchased thru USA carriers.

 

I vastly underestimated the number of unremovable apps - there are 64 on my Android.

This includes 4 Facebook apps, Youtube, Chrome, 10 apps with the word "Google" in its name and many others of theirs with different names.

 

Includes 5 Bloatware apps with the manufacturers name on it, and 2 from the former USA carrier.

 

I use 2 Google apps sometimes as I haven't found suitable open source replacements, although while writing this post I found a new front end for one to eliminate tracking - will see how that works.

 

2 Google apps I probably wouldn't remove if I could, as the merchant apps I've downloaded which rely on GFS for Location would not work/ only partially work.

 

I don't use any of the other 65 apps which use storage space, other than the widget for the Weather app on my Home page - this reminds me to try to find a replacement.

 

I read a post once that stated this situation does not exist on the Asian unlocked phones, and took it seriously. 

Very disappointed that in actuality the same situation - or a similar one -  exists on non-carrier unlocked phones.

 

I guess it's time for "Oh well...".

 

 

 

 

[impulse]

On 4/4/2022 at 10:59 PM, JimmyJ said:

Are there preinstalled apps which cannot be deleted?

If you buy an unlocked Samsung phone, you're going to get a lot of Samsung apps that you pretty much have to root the phone to delete.  Same with pretty much any brand.

 

[sometimewoodworker]

7 hours ago, impulse said:

If you buy an unlocked Samsung phone, you're going to get a lot of Samsung apps that you pretty much have to root the phone to delete.  Same with pretty much any brand.

 

Other than Apple, where there are very few that can’t be deleted, almost certainly correct.

[JimmyJ]

It's my understanding that Applestore is the only place that iphones accept apps from.

 

Almost all apps I use now I wouldn't be able to use.

[topt]

On 4/6/2022 at 12:55 PM, JimmyJ said:

I read a post once that stated this situation does not exist on the Asian unlocked phones, and took it seriously. 

Very disappointed that in actuality the same situation - or a similar one -  exists on non-carrier unlocked phones.

As an example Xiaomi, which have on paper a great range, communicate almost nonstop with wherever as well as the Google/Alphabet stuff. After 3 months with a new phone I rooted it even though I lost any warranty. 

I still need a firewall to stop stuff.........

[sometimewoodworker]

On 4/7/2022 at 2:31 PM, JimmyJ said:

It's my understanding that Applestore is the only place that iphones accept apps from.

 

Almost all apps I use now I wouldn't be able to use.

Completely correct, there are extremely few apps that exist in the same format on both android and iOS. 
 

There is sometimes a way to be able to use apps that do not came from the Apple App Store, though you probably won’t be able to both keep them and get the regular security and system updates that make the iPhones have a useful life of roughly double to triple  that of an Android phone. An example is that the iPhone 6s (September 2015) and later started on iOS 9 and is still getting the current iOS 15 (6 generations)

 

While the Samsung Galaxy A5 (2017) · Released 2017, · started on Android 6.0.1, and goes up to Android 8.0 (3 generations) that is 4 generations behind today. 

 

So yes you can seldom use the same apps however The Apple App Store has 1.96 million apps available so one the vast majority of cases there are apps which duplicate the functions of android ones.

 

[mtls2005]

On 4/6/2022 at 12:55 PM, JimmyJ said:

I read a post once that stated this situation does not exist on the Asian unlocked phones, and took it seriously. 

 

So all this was based on a post you read once?

 

Might have led with that.

 

Most Android phones here are sold unlocked and run the manufacturer's own STOCK release for Thailand. Some phones have a lot of extra stuff, Samsung for instance. Other phones have less stuff, say like a Pixel 6/6A or Android One phone.

 

There are probably solutions out there for you: De-Googled hardware/software, De-Googled ROMs, even slim ROMs with Open GApps (Nano, Pico).

 

But you'll also give up some functionality. Many/most finserv apps won't work on rooted phones. And custom ROMs often require a bit of work to keep updated. I've been running Lineage/Stock GApps on a couple of older devices (Samsung tablet, Xiaomi Mi A1) for a few years without problems.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Everyman]

This problem doesn’t exist for iphones, there really aren’t many undeletable apps. The exception is Apple Maps which sucks in Thailand. 

 

Currently, the oldest iphone that’s still getting OS updates was released 7 years ago. 

 

Anyway..if you don’t want bloatware that’s your ticket. Don’t worry about storage, SD cards, etc.  just subscribe to cloud storage for $1USD a month you get an extra 50GB that integrates pretty seamlessly and you can back up from that if anything happens.

 

I have a picture of a guy who stole my phone in Cambodia because he took a picture of himself with it and it uploaded the photo to icloud automatically!

 

Ive heard Pixel phones don’t have much bloatware.  

[KhunLA]

Don't know if mentioned, but if you can't delete them, you can usually 'disable' them, delete any info and or updates.  Choose which apps you want to auto start.  Quite easy to manage your apps.

 

I'm a Xiaomi / POCO  fan, and use very few of the pre-installed apps, GPS, Gmap, Glens and the camera is about all.  Rest are deleted or disabled.