[HOW TO] Remove bloatware

[fwaggle]

Question: Can this be done using a free terminal editor like pTerminal and su? I tried last night, but I got an error when remounting system as read/write. At the moment I am not sure if it is something I did or some sort of weakness in pTerminal.

I did this just fine without any purchased Apps - I used "Android Terminal Emulator" by Jack Palevich. I downloaded the exploid files on my desktop, and extracted them over USB to the android, then did everything on the android with 100% free tools.

Rooting the phone worked first shot once I realized my dumbass was turning GPS on/off instead of WiFi on/off.

One caveat I did notice was that the android terminal emulator (like ConnectBot) doesn't seem to accept backspaces from swype, so I have to switch to the multi-touch keyboard before I do anything shell/ssh related, unless I don't make any mistakes

Also, coming from a UNIX-like OS background, I don't think sync does entirely what you think it does. sync just commits any delayed I/O to disk (synchronizes what's in memory to what's physically on the disk), which for what we're doing here probably just amounts to flushing any caches. It wasn't necessary for me to do it to have the apps not show up next time in the App list (given that android's primary target for disk I/O is solid state, and android phones aren't exactly swimming with RAM compared to a Linux PC, I'm not even sure if it'd bother to cache - if it doesn't cache I'm pretty sure sync will do virtually nothing at all in this situation), though I suppose it can't hurt.

Thanks for the thread though - I probably wouldn't have bothered rooting if there were a way to uninstall this crapware (like I have to do with my XP desktop every time I do a factory restore).

 

[topdj]

I rooted and used file explorer, I then just renamed 6 or 7 bloatwares to BAK
I now notice a longer battery life

 

[csantoro85]

So I deleted a few of them instead of renaming them. So I re-added them now, but they are not showing up in the Root Explorer when I go to switch them from .apk to .bak. Anyone have any ideas of how to fix this?

 

[richjacksonkc]

..hope this isn't a repeat but it should really be edited into that second post...

I guess that people are breaking the market when they uninstall gtalk and gtalkservice so be aware of this issue.. don't know if it breaks 3rd party market apps like appbrain, or just the stock market...

 

[bcollins33]

Broken Android Market

After removing some apps the Android app market would not work until I reinstalled them all.

Any way around this?

 

[bitter]

For some reason, I can't get the Blockbuster.apk to disappear. I tried renaming it to .bak and it's still there. I want to get rid of Kindle too, but I don't know what the .apk is called.

Can anyone help?

 

[mythbuster]

For some reason, I can't get the Blockbuster.apk to disappear. I tried renaming it to .bak and it's still there. I want to get rid of Kindle too, but I don't know what the .apk is called.

Can anyone help?

Had the same issue with the Blockbuster app - after powering off and back on it disappeared. To remove the Kindle app, you need to rename (or delete) /data/app/com.amazon.kindle.apk as well as /system/app/redding-7648-signed-zipped.apk.

 

[ccomengee86]

I'm trying to remove all the bloatware, but there are .apk files AND .odex files.

What are .odex files?

 

[fwaggle]

.odex are optimized versions of the dalvik executable that's inside the .apk. All it does is speed up execution a tiny bit, but I don't believe they're executable in and of themselves (the .apk is used for that, I believe the OS just sees if a matching .odex file exists and uses that instead of pulling the .dex out of the .apk).

You can probably rename them to .odex.bak or something similar, and rename the .apk to .bak, or I believe you can leave them alone if you like (I didn't rename any .odex files removing the crapware from either my 2.1 X or my 2.2, and I seem to have gotten the desired effect both times).

Hope that helps.

 

[cgrimm9]

can someone point out a list of items I should rename in the system app folder. I did what was told in the first page of this thread and my system was slower quadrent score was 945 renamed them back and got a quadrent score of 1458 I am on 2.2 froyo on droid x i hear people are getting well into the 2000 score can anyone tell me the list to get this fast thank you.

 

[ccomengee86]

It's just numbers. Higher numbers does not mean your phone is running faster than 'stock' phones.

 

[jdcbolt03]

any one fugure out how to get rid of the vz navigator on 2.2?

Droid x rooted leaked froyo!!!
I'm an addict dancedroid

 

[fwaggle]

can someone point out a list of items I should rename in the system app folder. I did what was told in the first page of this thread and my system was slower quadrent score was 945 renamed them back and got a quadrent score of 1458 I am on 2.2 froyo on droid x i hear people are getting well into the 2000 score can anyone tell me the list to get this fast thank you.

You can get huge Quadrant scores by turning on stagefright, but it'll break playback of recorded HD videos, and who knows what else in the 2.2 image isn't quite ready for stagefright yet.

With the possible exception of flash (which I perceived as a little smoother with stagefright, but I may have been imagining it), there's very little real-world difference to be seen with stagefright enabled, and it breaks some rather fundamental use of your camera so it's not worth it just for the 2k+ quadrant e-penis growth.

AFAIK renaming APKs doesn't improve scores at all unless you rename something rather important (blur-related?) which could possibly lead to instability.

All-in-all, just rename the crap that annoys you in the apps drawer, don't touch anything blur related, and disregard benchmark scores completely.

any one fugure out how to get rid of the vz navigator on 2.2?

Rename com.vznavigator.DROIDX.apk.

 

[jdcbolt03]

any one fugure out how to get rid of the vz navigator on 2.2?

Rename com.vznavigator.DROIDX.apk.[/QUOTE]

ahh!!! appreciate it i must have just looked right past it haha

 

[bharkin]

How do I get rid of Lattitude?