Android "Junkware", Just Like The iPhone

The Droid X comes loaded with several nonstandard applications for Google’s Android, most of which cannot be removed. Among the phone’s so-called junkware is a Blockbuster video app and a demo for an Electronic Arts game called Need for Speed: Shift. The software from the struggling movie retail chain includes a store locator and a section to download mobile movies from Blockbuster’s catalog. This app cannot be uninstalled from the phone’s software library using any traditional means. Users can delete it from the home screen, but it lives on — permanently part of the software embedded on the device.

link: ‘Junkware’ comes standard on Verizon, T-Mobile smart phones | Technology | Los Angeles Times

Where to start. There is always a way to uninstall with Android but Mark doesn’t want to point that out so he just says the “app cannot be uninstalled from the phone’s software library using any traditional means“. Also there are apps on the iPhone that you can not uninstall using traditional means or any other way. Are those apps junkware? Later on Mark adds this…

The EA racing game, which provides limited functionality and a large button on the introduction screen urging players to buy the full version, can be removed.

Mark seems to forget that the EA game is a demo so it has, shocker, limited functionality. Just like every demo for every game ever made. Even free versions of games for the iPhone that also have a paid version have limited functionality. And EA must be a evil company for putting a button in there demo app for people to buy the full game because that never happens in iPhone apps.