South Koreans will soon be able to uninstall bloatware from their phones, the government has decided. According to new guidelines, starting from April – the industry will be forced to allow users to remove unnecessary pre-loaded applications to reduce inconvenience.
“The move aims to rectify an abnormal practice that causes inconvenience to smartphone users and causes unfair competition among industry players,” said the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning, in a press release.
Currently users in Korea (and other countries, for that matter) get phones with a ton of pre-installed bloatware, provided by handset makers, mobile operators and Google. For instance, SK Telecom’s Samsung Galaxy S4 has a total of 80 apps pre-installed, including 25 apps loaded by the telco, 39 by Samsung and 16 by Google. When the new guidelines kick in, at least half of those apps can be deleted.
Yeah, we wish a rule like this is implemented with carriers and handset makers all around the world. Dealing with bloatware is everything but fun…
[Via: ZDNet]