My New HTC Evo Smartphone Is Victim Of Bloatware Innards

It’s been a love fest with my new HTC Evo. It’s still a love fest! However, Priya Ganapati at Wired correctly calls out the annoying bloatware that has crept into Android phones, including my Evo.

According to Wikipedia: Software bloat is a term used to describe the tendency of newer computer programs to have a larger installation footprint, or have many unnecessary features that are not used by end users, or just generally use more system resources than necessary, while offering little or no benefit to its users. Bloatware is all the useless, pre-installed garbage — free-trial software — people expect to delete when purchasing a typical Windows-based PC (not a Mac).

I, too wondered, why the hell does my phone come with lame pre-installed, built-in apps like Sprint’s Nascar app, Sprint Football, Sprint TV and Sprint Navigation? The Android Market app is makes it easy to delete apps you downloaded yourself, but I’m having great difficulty getting rid of the pre-installed apps that are taking up valuable memory. They’re visually obtrusive and their permanence is offensive. Sprint’s own forums and others describe a hack (software rooting solution), which risks screwing up the operating system and voiding the warranty.

Ganapati at Wired quotes Keith Nowak, spokesman for HTC: “It’s different from phone to phone and operator to operator. But in general, the apps are put there to meet the operator’s business and revenue needs.”

Hey Sprint, you’ve been doing much better lately, especially in customer service, but this is not cool. Time to call my dedicated Sprint rep. There better be a solution.

I’m not alone. David Churbuck and many, many others share my sentiment.

(Bacon Explosion Photo Credit: William Boncher)

Published by Max Kalehoff

Father, sailor and marketing executive.

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4 Comments

  1. A valid gripe! I wonder how much revenue they get at the cost of irritating their customers?

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