Comment by embedding-shape
7 hours ago
Not sure what timescale you're referring to when you're talking about "how bad the market got" and "today", but back around 2012 I got my first and last Samsung smartphone, must have been a Galaxy 3 or something, that had all of those problematic things too.
It seems like this starting to happen as soon as apps were installable on phones, even iPhones came (and still comes) with a ton of apps you cannot remove regardless of how little you use them. Android, because of the whole OEM story, of course is much worse, but I don't feel like any of what you share is new, been going on for decades at this point.
And operators preloading questionable stuff is a much older practice than post-iPhone smartphones. If you had a feature phone in the 2000's, the operator would have customised it one way or another. The iPhone was revolutionary in how much Apple forced the network operators to relinquish control.
I can remember Verizon being sued for forcing device makers to disable the ability to transfer files from feature phones to computers over Bluetooth, because they charged a per file fee to transfer files with their own proprietary software.
I can't remember if it was Samsung or something, but one of the providers shipped Android tablets with a custom-but-default keyboard which sent ALL your keystrokes back to the provider. That was a big nail in the Android coffin for me.
Remember the days of Facebook being preinstalled on Android devices with root permissions and being non removable?
You couldn't even revoke permission to access the camera and Mic. It had permission to do literally anything, and you couldn't change it or remove it.
You can delete almost all apps on iOS except the obviously core apps that are necessary for it to function.
Thanks to the EU! They really fixed a lot of things about the iPhone, a shame not every fix went everywhere like core app removals did though.
You can now. You couldn't do this in the early versions of iOS.
On early versions of Android, you had to give an application every permission it wanted, or you couldn't install it at all.
You can. I’ve removed Apple Music and Apple Maps (seriously, who uses that?) but apple makes extra sure most things are more annoying to use without maps. Calendar app with an address? Default to opening in Apple Maps which is missing so error message (twice). Find my? Also open in apple maps with missing app error message. Even with Google Maps set as default systemwide.
> even iPhones came (and still comes) with a ton of apps you cannot remove regardless of how little you use them
You see, the user you replied to spoke in the present tense, and is addressing the “(and still comes with)” portion of the original comment.
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Apple changed that years ago, what apps can’t you remove from an iPhone?
You can't remove the Phone app from an iPad in iPadOS 26. Even when the iPad in question has no cellular functionality. The best you can do is remove the icon, but you get a dialog telling you it won't be removed.
Which is stupid as I don't want my iPad to be getting every voice mail and imessage and so on that my phone does. They are different devices and serve different purposes. My iPad is totally a media consumption device and I have no interest in it being integrated into my phone's communication functions.
I own both devices, and I turn phone call and text forwarding off in settings on my phone, and shut down iMessage on the iPad. Pretty easy.
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