Smartphone Apps, Have you Disabled or Uninstalled Any on Your Phone?

SeaBreeze

Endlessly Groovin'
Location
USA
I'm on my first smartphone, a Moto E5 Play. I went in to see if I could get a keyboard on it that had larger and easier to use keys, but only wanted to use something that was already in the phone, didn't see an easy change. But I don't text, I might if it was easier to tap a letter and get the right one.

Anyhoo, I believe there were just a little over 30 apps already on the phone when I bought it. Now there are 43, so I'm thinking apps are being installed without my permission. I've only installed 3 apps since I've had the phone.

I don't even know what some of these apps are for, or if I would ever use them, I'd like to just disable or uninstall ones I will never use. I really only just use the phone for simple things. I don't want any photos or info on my phone to go anywhere else online unless I upload something myself, like a photo to the forum.

Some apps I'm wondering about and thinking might be spam are:

CQA Test
Drive
Native Drop Box Agent
Google Zhuyin Input
Google Japanese Input
Google Korean Input
Google Pinyin Input
 

Hi SeaBreeze, you can "Force Stop" on any Apps on
your phone and most can be "Uninstalled", go to
"Settings", then "Apps", then you need to open them
all one at a time, I do this quite regularly and Force Stop
on most, or "Disable" on the ones that I know that I don't
want and will never use.

You can force stop on all of them and they will come back,
when you touch the icon for one on the screen that one will
wake up, also when an update in installed that wakes them up,
I used to go through them all regularly, another thisng you can
do is don't allow notifications, they wake them up too.

As for a larger keyboard, you need to allow the screen to rotate
and when you need to type, look at the screen in "Landscape",
I have to do this to get a larger screen.

Another move is to go into high battery saving mode complete
with the "Black Screen", this limits the Apps that you have available,
but you can add them, you do lose some functions, but you can
switch it off to get the full range of functions, I use this when the
updates start draining the battery quickly.

As for those that you have listed, I think that you can delete them,
except maybe drive that can be used as a navigator, but the others
especially the Google ones might not allow you to uninstall them.

Good Luck.

Mike.
 
I wish I could help, but I am only facile with iPhones and their operating systems. I find the android OS confusing. One thing that seems ubiquitous cross-platform is that updating the OS will sometimes automatically load additional code that will show up on your phone as a new app or widget. Have you been prompted to update since you've had the phone?
 

Thanks Mike for your advice. Ronni, I have updated the phone's security a couple of times already when prompted. I didn't pay attention to when the new apps appeared. I shut it off and put it away just like I did with my old Tracfone, so I don't look around on it very much.
 
I've uninstalled or disabled a few apps, both on my Android phone and tablet.

Breaking News: Speaking of Google Play and YouTube. News laws have passed in the USA and now even though I'm going to be once more over 60+ years old, I've lost access to Google Play Games which are 18+ PEGI and some videos comes up with "Age Verification Required"

This is ludicrous, as my emails are all verified and my birthday is there in full on all of them. Sincerely, I'm fed up of this. Why are we treated this way in the UK?

Any if you going through this recently? Showed up about a few days ago...
 
I bought a very basic Fischer Price kinda baby phone paid off for $130.00. I pay $27.00 a month for service.

I get text, google, email, phone and all sorts of other bells and whistles I'll never use. It really is a minimalist phone made by Alcatel but it is all I need. I mainly use it to keep track of my adult daughters...when and where to meet for giving them rides to school and work...etc.
 
The Only reason I keep a cell phone is to have a means of communication when away from the house...in case we have car trouble or one of the kids needs to call us. I disabled most of the "apps", but had to reactivate Google Play because I started getting endless U/Tube videos. I keep Maps, Location and Weather activated, but have little or no use for the other stuff.
 
Another thing that you can do besides my suggestions above,
is to clear the history, if you use the internet on the phone and
the Apps that you use are all there, at the bottom of the screen
there is an icon, on the opposite corner from the back arrow,
touch there and all the apps that you have used are there, clear
them all off the screen, either by sliding them off up the way or
touching the "Clear All" button, one like it, these App's icons,
drain the battery b y being there.

Mike.
 
I have 85 apps on my phone. I always buy the Google phones so I do not have the "bloatware" that come with phones by other manufacturers. There are a lot of apps that I rarely use (such as photo scan) but come in very handy for those rare occasions that I do need them.
 
I have a Samsung Z Flip 3, I believe I deleted as many apps as I can, many of the remaining apps have no uninstall feature so I'm not sure how to delete them. I did force-stop a lot of them.
 


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