Android 14 allows uninstalling bloatware apps

Manufacturers of Android devices often cram their devices with all kinds of apps that you as a user are not waiting for. Android 14 promises to make it possible to remove this bloatware.

What is Bloatware?

It’s like love with Android phones: you often get more than what you asked for. Manufacturers of cheap Chinese devices in particular have a hand in this, in order to still be able to make a profit given the wafer-thin margins. Large companies often pay a considerable amount per user to have apps pre-installed. For example, Facebook is worth about € 200 per user.

Among computer users, apps and other software installed unsolicited on the PCs and phones they buy are known as bloatware. Bloated is an English word that can roughly be translated as: bloated, fringe, lavish, full of meaningless additions. Especially since many of those programs take up a huge amount of space in the internal memory, many users are annoyed by them.

Another drawback of bloatware is that this software often collects data from you. Data is the new gold, so this is very profitable. That is also the reason why it is best to remove (the often pre-installed) Facebook Messenger from your phone. This app is notorious for collecting data.

Android 14 does away with bloatware

It has become known from prereleases of Android 14 that Google has finally decided to do something about this. It is now possible to remove this pre-installed software from your phone. Good news, because now there is finally plenty of space available for your own programs and of course your photos, videos and favorite series that you have downloaded.

You can also be so sure that you don’t have all kinds of spyware and other bad software on your phone.

At least, the feature has been found in the operating system. So basically Google could enable this feature. Still, there are reasons to believe that, perhaps, Google won’t do this after all.

Will Android 14 really be able to remove bloatware?

Whether this will actually be activated remains to be seen, of course, because the manufacturers will of course scream bloody murder. Their lucrative business model is about to die. So there will probably be some pressure on Google from that side not to make it too easy, to remove their beautiful and of course oh so necessary creations from their phone. All in the interest of the user, of course.

Sometimes pre-installed apps are still necessary

There are also some cases where phones come with special hardware, which makes it necessary to install apps from manufacturers. A good example is the Cat 62a phone’s FLIR app, which you need to take infrared images. The premium Samsung phones, such as the Samsung S22 Ultra, have health functions, and the Samsung Knox security system also needs special operating software.

On the other hand, Samsung is a good candidate to take care of. As it turns out, the version of Android 13 for Samsung Galaxy S23, One UI 5.1, contains almost 27 GB of software in total. This is about as much as Windows 11 takes up on a PC and seems a bit much for an OS alone.