Totally **bleep** about New Crap Ware Verizon is Automatically Loading

[BambamNJ]

I am really **bleep**. First it was Microsoft and now It's Verizon.

If anyone has recently updated their Droid X Firmware, you may or may not have noticed that you now have a new application.

Madden NFL 11. How did this get on your phone you ask? Well Verizon has taken it upon themselves to force you to have this. That's right they are sneak loading applications onto your phone by piggy backing this stuff onto your firmware updates.

Do they ask if you want this Game on your phone? No

I bought this phone, it's mine, I own it. I use Verizon as my Cell Phone Service Provider. I am sick and tired of these companies ramming crap down our throats. I should be the one determining what is taking up space on my phone. Not Verizon. I understand they need to update firmware so my phone runs the way it should on their network, but shoving Games or other apps that have nothing to do with the operation of my phone is not what I want from my SP. You want to offer me applications fine, but dammit give me the option of loading it or not loading it.

Oh and before you all wonder why I am so upset.. YOU CAN'T DELETE THIS CRAP!!!!

That's right, not only are they forcing you to take this application, they decided to load it in such a way, that you have to be a hacker to get the **bleep** crap off of your phone. So now you have another application cluttering up your apps list, taking up space on your phone, and you have no way of removing it.

If Verizon doesn't stop this and give us a way of removing the crap they have already loaded, I will be seriously looking to move to another SP once my contract period is up, and I don't just mean my cell phone. I will go back to Comcast for all  my other services too.

Nuff Said

[4x4van]

Old news.  No different than Amazon MP3, Blockbuster, City ID, Latitude, VZ Navigator...While I agree that I should be able to delete them, the amount of space they take up on the phone is negligible, and it's really not a big deal to simply ignore those icons in my applications list.

[LoydroidX]

...sigh... Happy Holidays.

[gerio]

(Long sigh)....

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BambamNJ wrote:

I am really **bleep**. First it was Microsoft and now It's Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, US Cellular, Cellular South, among others

There. Fixed that for you. You are welcome. Man, I've been wearing out that one lately. 

If anyone has recently updated their Droid X Firmware, you may or may not have noticed that you now have a new application.

Madden NFL 11. How did this get on your phone you ask? Well Verizon has taken it upon themselves to force you to have this. That's right they are sneak loading applications onto your phone by piggy backing this stuff onto your firmware updates.

Do they ask if you want this Game on your phone? No

Anyone that keeps up with the goings-on at all knew it was coming. Better watch McDonald's, they might be forcing mustard on your hamburger

I bought this phone, it's mine, I own it. I use Verizon as my Cell Phone Service Provider. I am sick and tired of these companies ramming crap down our throats. I should be the one determining what is taking up space on my phone. Not Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, US Cellular, Cellular South, among others. I understand they need to update firmware so my phone runs the way it should on their network, but shoving Games or other apps that have nothing to do with the operation of my phone is not what I want from my SP. You want to offer me applications fine, but dammit give me the option of loading it or not loading it.

Man, oh man, I had to fix it again!! And it's technically installed on your phone, not loaded until you run it (That's not going help anything here, is it?).

Oh and before you all wonder why I am so upset.. YOU CAN'T DELETE THIS CRAP!!!!

There's nothing to wonder about at all. Trust me, the 99% of us that aren't bothered by this can smell posts of this nature coming a mile away. It's like seeing the same TV show over and over. We all know how it goes and the ending.

That's right, not only are they forcing you to take this application, they decided to load it in such a way, that you have to be a hacker to get the **bleep** crap off of your phone. So now you have another application cluttering up your apps list, taking up space on your phone, and you have no way of removing it.

If Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, US Cellular, Cellular South, among others don't stop this and give us a way of removing the crap they have already loaded, I will be seriously looking to move to another SP once my contract period is up, and I don't just mean my cell phone. I will go back to Comcast for all  my other services too.

Nuff Said

ARGGHH! Thank goodness for copy & paste. Oh, well. Be sure to copy and paste this post so you can use it when you get that other phone and find that carrier(s) doing the same thing (Didn't know Comcast had mobile phone service, Oh, I get it....) Unfortunately, I can't be at those other forums assisting you as I was here with this one. Sorry.

All in a day's work...

Geri O

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[crb79]

Seriously, this argument is getting old.  Could the OP really not look down a couple of topics and see this has been talked about?

THIS IS A PEER TO PEER SUPPORT FORUMS!  Sure VZW staff attempt to help from time to time, but their activity here is right around 1% of the total posts.  So if you're trying to make a point, you'd have similar luck yelling your frustrations out your front door.

With that said, forced programs are nothing new to cellphones.  Remember the good old Vcast music/video program that you could never remove on older phones.  With smartphones come more possibilities.

[Wildman]

I 1000% agree (Thats not a typo) that this subject is getting so pointless, everything that you buy today has items added that isn't being used by all users but it is time to except that this isn't a single situation practice, if so many that allows things like this to bother them needs to consider investing there energy into things more important thing happening in the world, we have poverty, hunger and disease going on and people are complaining about a app the you don't want..... REALLY?  You have nothing more important to worry about...  Now we really know why or world is the way it is, **bleep** THOSE UNWANTED APPS!!!

[vishnukumar7]

some kind of mind bending stuff...

[gerio]

Yeah!

What he said!

)

Geri O

[Ann154]

In all honesty, I much rather have the applications Verizon and others load on the phone then AT&T's policy of locking out the ability to install third party applications from sources other than the Google Market.

I mean seriously how is one expected to install applications that backed up to your phone in case the latest update from the Market goes wonky on your phone. Or if you are part of beta test, I really don't want to have to connect to my computer fire up the "sideloader wonder machine"and get the application installed to test it out.

Sorry for the mini rant, but I am just getting tired of being in the "Trust Market". I want to know how terrible the new coverage is so I port back to the cell carrier I have had for the last eight plus years. ;-D

[ARossetter]

I'm going to be devil's advocate on the side of the OP, just this once.

As our very highly Kudo'ed post above indicates, all the major companies preload phones with crap. It sucks, and there's nothing that we can do about it. However, there are a couple of nagging points here:

- They do it because they can, and those that complain are told that they don't understand the way the world works.

- Some of Verizon's bloatware is designed to deceive the novice phone user.

The first point might be considered moot. Yeah, it's annoying that there's all these application stubs lying around that just take up space. (Especially that **bleep** Blockbuster app.. Big Red, you DO know that Blockbuster is going to cease to exist as a company in the very near future, right?) If more people complained to the point where this started to affect the companies' respective bottom lines, those apps would disappear quickly. However, the second point to me is the main cause for concern.

Most of us know that on the Android platform, there exists an application called "Google Maps", which has the ability to provide free Turn-by-turn navigation. This is not pre-installed on most (Verizon) Android devices, but is easy enough to get on the market. However, Verizon's supplied "VZ Navigator" has a stub pre-installed (and is a permanent part of my Car Dock app; I can't change the default navigation application!), which is a slightly inferior navigation package that costs a meager $10.00 a month.

Wait a minute.

I've said this before in the Fascinate forums and I'll say it again: Shame on Verizon for attempting to deceive customers into paying $10.00 a month for something that is available freely. There's really no excuse for this, and before I get the whole "Sprint, T-Mob, AT&T, etc do this too", that's simply not correct in this case. Sprint's Telenav is free (AND Maps is installed on their Android phones by default), and T-Mob and AT&T use good ol fashioned Google Maps exclusively.

Before I start becoming the flamebait, I would like to state that I AGREE WITH ALL OF YOU regarding how annoying posts of this type are. I just ask that you consider that not all of the arguments are totally and completely unfounded.

Oh, and Ann, you CAN sideload apps on AT&T. You just need to use adb to do it.

- Andy

[Ann154]

But Andy, I don't want to have to do that! I want to do the way I do NOW with Verizon. At work, on the road (not while driving, of course!), I don't carry my laptop with me! That's what this phone is for. AT&T is blocking an essential part of the whole open source that is Android OS.

Okay all carriers are doing similar things with the preinstalled applications. I can ignore those, especially now that I have LauncherPro. A bunch of them are hiding away and I never see them anymore.

[ARossetter]

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Ann154 wrote:
But Andy, I don't want to have to do that! I want to do the way I do NOW with Verizon. At work, on the road (not while driving, of course!), I don't carry my laptop with me! That's what this phone is for. AT&T is blocking an essential part of the whole open source that is Android OS.

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Ah, but saying that Android is Open Source is kinda misleading.

While it's true that Android is open source, all manufacturers place their own proprietary launchers and locked bootloaders on top of the OS, which, while the OS itself remains open, the device is closed. For instance, the Droid X is an Android phone, but it's not open source, because of MotoBLUR. The Fascinate has Touchwiz, etc etc etc. If it were really as open as people were led to believe, we wouldn't have to resort to hacking our phones in order to put AOSP on our devices. Along this line though, this is why I've mentioned in previous threads that we need a PURE Android experience device (Think Nexus One or Nexus S) on Verizon. This would instantly satisfy EVERYONE who complains about the bloatware, lack of updates, etc.

AT&T claims they are protecting people by only allowing them to download apps from safe places (they still allow you to use the Android Market!), and in many ways, they're right. AT&T doesn't want to deal with the backlash of "THIS APP IS SENDING MY PERSONAL INFO TO CHINA WAAAA" which could potentially one day come about from a single malicious app (as Android's market share grows, so will attacks on people using those phones). While I agree with you that it's an annoyance, you don't really hear this argument much when it comes to the iPhone.

Once again, I promise I'm not trying to Troll this thread, and I am not trying to upset anybody. Just being a voice for the other side. And I also use LauncherPro for the same reason.  

- Andy

[crb79]

Andy:  The issue is that this is simply beating a dead horse.  Every couple of days since July the horse gets pulled out of the closet by someone who is surprised that the phone has bloatware. 

As for Blockbuster going under, that won't happen entirely.  Businesses like that simply go into bankruptcy and restructure.  If Blockbuster were to go mail-order & streaming only they could compete with Netflix, and they could completely level Gamefly.  Their app and business model for the app are awesome.  The problem is they have out-priced themselves.  Not many are going to pay $5+ to watch a movie on their phone.  Maybe if they had a $20/month unlimited viewing the app would be worth-while.

The Android OS is indeed open source.  The companies who make the phones however are not providing open source equipment.  Google has released open source phones, but you don't get any of the equipment discounts that carriers provide.

[dirkbonn]

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crb79 wrote:

The Android OS is indeed open source.  The companies who make the phones however are not providing open source equipment.  Google has released open source phones, but you don't get any of the equipment discounts that carriers provide.

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Exactly...... well said.  (See how much those pesky uninstallable apps save you)

[B33]

Its That little thing called Money they Know we got it an they want it and they get in every wich way from the gas that takes us places an heats our homes to food we eat an cloths we wear. Its the same thing here with the apps there's going To Be people that Will want what"s preinstalled On there Devices  an will pay for it.! Because they like the games and that kind of Thing. And there will be ones that Dont Give a Darn About what on there: Just as long the Device still Works as did when they Bought it:   And Then There's the Developers And Other People that pute these Preinstalled Apps on our Devices They're Are not Going to Pic an Choose Who is going to get it:  like For Instance bobby hes going Get madden 11  But Sue Wont get it:   It Just Dont work like that And we all should no that. They Are there for Reason For Fun Enjoyment:  And ones have said you remove Them U Void Warrenty!   So as is Goes Weather we like it or Not This is How Society Works In Our Lives an The Devices We Use.

[BambamNJ]

Some of these replys make me laugh. "learn your phone, "all the providers load apps", "tired of these posts".

Well guys here's my response to some of those comments.

I know my phone, but I have a life so I don't have a PHD in Cell phone operation and firmware hacking, and even if I did that still wouldn't make what these providers are doing right.

Ever heard of the phrase, Just because everyone is doing it doesn't make it right? I don't care that every provider out there might be loading crapware onto their phone. If I see something going on that I don't think is right I'm going to voice my disagreement. I don't ever plan to be a sheep and just follow the heard off the cliff. If you don't like my post then you don't have to read it.

Tired of these post... Hmmmm perhaps that means something. Maybe just maybe if so many people are complaining about this type of crap, there might just be something to this. Oh but no you guys who belong to the just accept it and move on crowd wouldn't acknowledge that would you. You would just prefer we a shut up and go along with the flow. Well you just keep posting your "there's nothing we can do about it " comments. Good thing people like you weren't in charge some 2000 years ago or we would all still be living under British rule.

The fact is this type of practice is wrong and these companies need to know that We the People do not appreciate these practices. Maybe there is no other providers right now who don't do this,but you know what, maybe just maybe one of these providers will pick up on the fact that there a group of us out here who don't appreciate this type of activity, and perhaps change their ways.

I am all for the market system. I believe we live in the greatest country in the world because of our free market system. I also feel that companies need to act will honor and respect for their customers. I don't believe this company is going to make any more money by forcing nuisance software on their customers rather then just offering the software download as an option or at a minimum allowing those that don't want it to be able to remove it from their phone.

So you for those who posted here and would rather I not complain about such thing, I can tell you to not waste your fingers typing out all the reasons I should just accept it and move on. It's not going to happen. Sorry.

[crb79]

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BambamNJ wrote:

.....

 Good thing people like you weren't in charge some 2000 years ago or we would all still be living under British rule.

......

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I'm lost here, what exactly did the British rule 2000 years ago?  Seeing that England didn't become Britain until 1707 I'm guessing your statement is meaningless.

This is a PEER TO PEER, ie user to user help forum.  So when you pitch a fit about something that you aren't satisfied with, you're just Preaching to the Choir!  Yes it sucks, but this isn't the PLACE to complain.  Complain and use your freedom to choose by not buying the product, or pick up the phone and call your VZW store/regional office.

VZW offered a product, and you bought it, heck you even agreed to a contract.  Sure if you paid a full $600 for your phone I see your point, but I'm betting that is less than 0.5% of the purchases.

If you don't like my response, don't read it.  And if you don't read your contract, DON'T SIGN IT.

[gerio]

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crb79 wrote:

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BambamNJ wrote:

.....

 Good thing people like you weren't in charge some 2000 years ago or we would all still be living under British rule.

......

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I'm lost here, what exactly did the British rule 2000 years ago?  Seeing that England didn't become Britain until 1707 I'm guessing your statement is meaningless.

This is a PEER TO PEER, ie user to user help forum.  So when you pitch a fit about something that you aren't satisfied with, you're just Preaching to the Choir!  Yes it sucks, but this isn't the PLACE to complain.  Complain and use your freedom to choose by not buying the product, or pick up the phone and call your VZW store/regional office.

VZW offered a product, and you bought it, heck you even agreed to a contract.  Sure if you paid a full $600 for your phone I see your point, but I'm betting that is less than 0.5% of the purchases.

If you don't like my response, don't read it.  And if you don't read your contract, DON'T SIGN IT.

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Ouch, CRB, I'm one of the less than 0.5%...

Seriously, that was the only way to get an X at the time. But after 15 minutes with the phone, I had to have it. So I paid full pop. And I haven't regretted it for a second.

Oh, yeah, and I saw the pre-installed apps on the phone, I thought "harumph" to myself for, oh, about a half-second, then forgot about it. 

But I was really happy when I was eligible for a new phone on another line and I could get another X for $199.00 after the rebate... (And yes, I did!)

Take care, 

Geri O

[mobius0322]

Should we bring up the dreaded "R" word?(rymes with boot?)

[Wildman]

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mobius0322 wrote:

Should we bring up the dreaded "R" word?(rymes with boot?)

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I wouldnt because I really would see that opening a whole new can of worms and probally a new arguement... do I really have to say how pointless this is becoming.

[ARossetter]

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Wildman wrote:

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mobius0322 wrote:

Should we bring up the dreaded "R" word?(rymes with boot?)

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I wouldnt because I really would see that opening a whole new can of worms and probally a new arguement... do I really I have to say how pointless this is becoming.

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Second the pointlessness of this thread. It's kinda gone downhill in the past 12 hours or so. 😕

Regarding that dreaded 'R' word, it's also a ToS violation on these boards to mention it. Welcome to China!

- Andy