A true test of a consumer electronics brand’s strength and fidelity to the customer and not pure profit is their ability to withstand the siren call of junking up their products with crapware/bloatware. For some devices the bounties paid by second tier software providers is the difference between turning a PC or a phone from a loss leader to a profit engine. Does Apple do that? Or Google? Nope. But HTC and Sprint did with my EVO, junking it up with a foolish NASCAR and NFL widget more pernicious and tenacious than a toenail fungus. It is amazing how any app or widget on the phone associated with the handset maker (HTC) or the network provider (Sprint) is invariably a P.O.S.
“But bloatware isn’t a feature in all smartphones. AT&T hasn’t piled extraneous software onto Apple’s iPhone. Motorola’s Droid phone ships with just the core applications. Google and T-Mobile resisted the bloatware impulse with the Nexus One.”
But not the rest of the gang. Put the user first and at least make this stuff easy to remove. Forever. Please
via Bloatware Creeps Into Android Phones | Gadget Lab | Wired.com.
But then what will the developers who create bloatware-removal applications do? Have you not seen The Lion King David? It’s the circle of life…. 🙂
That is my biggest criticism of the Android and Evo thus far. You have to download another app to effectively add and remove apps — it’s not default (part of the bloatware scam)? Still, I’m in love so far with my Evo. Just bought mine a couple days ago: http://www.attentionmax.com/blog/2010/07/my-new-htc-evo-smartphone.php
Btw, what’s the best add-on app manager?