Early this month, a consumer rights lobby group in Shanghai China went to court to challenge the decision by companies like Samsung to include applications in smartphones that users are not able to do away with despite them taking extra space that could be put to good use. Chinese smartphone maker OPPO was named as a respondent in the case alongside Samsung. While we are yet to know what plans OPPO has with regards to this besides defending itself in court, Samsung has already revealed to Korean media that it will soon be rolling out an update to grant users the freedom they longed for.
Users of the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 (model N9008S) in China will be able to uninstall any of the 44 applications which come pre-installed on the device. This will be possible in a month’s time after Samsung rolls out an update. For users who are deeply irritated and can’t wait to do away with anything that they don’t need but can’t remove at the moment, visiting Samsung service centres in their localities will sort out their issues. Those centres have access to the patches Samsung has released for that specific purpose.
Even as such plans are in motion, the lobby group that filed the lawsuit has no plans of dropping it.
Probably after this Samsung, OPPO and every other Android OEM (they are the ones who are notorious for this) will be able to take a step back and reconsider the kind of things they push down users’ throats believing they are value add-ons yet they are just things they’ll never ever use. Even if they use such applications and services regularly, we believe it should ultimately be a user decision on what stays on a device and what shouldn’t. For non-core apps and services, there should be no reason whatsoever why a user is restricted from removing them.
Source: Korea Times
