How do I remove apps from the phones MAIN Memory

[Wanglese]

Have a Galaxy Ace, and as people would be aware, memory is tight. 

 I'm not going to use ThinkFree Office, for example, and there is simply no way to move the app to the SD card.

Since it's locked into main memory, it uses a whopping 14Meg if upgraded, and 8.6Meg as factory default, I'd like to eliminate it.

Advice would be appreciated.

[jokiin]

have you got app2sd (I think that's the app name) on it?

[Wanglese]

I had it, but APP2SD only does what Gingerbread does anyway, it seems, and it can't move "Factory" apps to the SD card.

I read  soemwhere about "rooting" the Phone (cause after all it's a linus like OS), which gives root access and allows you to remove useless stuff. Have to look for root access to Gingerbread.

[Wanglese]

OK, a bit of running around, and some old memory of Unix sorted it>

Beware: anyone who does this may void warranty if you screw up.

1: I got SuperOne Click from XDA Developers, then  followed the instructions to allow "root" access to the phone. -note, the phone rebooted which was OK anyway.

NOTE: FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS ON XDA. I"M NOT GOING TO REPEAT THEM HERE

2: I got  ES File Explorer from the Android Market

3: Now the bit to remember, is that just because you have root access, you don't neccesarily have write access to the "root" of your android phone.  You have to grant ti, and the apps in the root have particular rw settings.  So I gave access to the root (did this in ES File Explorer - it's under settings.

4: browsed to system/app and got rid of the office app I didn't want, wnt back to the home screen, and LO! it was gone.

Freed up a bunch of memory.

5: to put things back in safe mode, I unmounted the / file system so it was not longer writable (in ES file Explorer settings, unselected "Root Explorer" functions,  and then "unrooted" the phone for  Superoneclick.  (I'm a tad paranoid with the new phone.

Anyone who does it, or leaves their phone rooted does so at their own risk.

[JeniSkunk]

This another method, for Rooted devices:

I found this howto on the Addictive Tips blog - How To Remove / Uninstall Android System Apps

The app used in the howto, on Android Market - Super Manager

edit: fix formatting

Jenifur Charne

[looktall]

this would be so much easier if telstra didn't insist on pre-installing apps as system apps on new phones.

one of the best examples is there are two twitter apps (peep and twitter) that come pre-installed on new phones (in my case desires s and sensation) and both of them are installed as system apps and therefore require the phone to be rooted in order to remove them.

telstra should either stop loading up their phones with bloatware or install them as regular apps to allow the users the right to uninstall apps that they don't want on their phones.

[JeniSkunk]

The problem is that everyone in the foodchain, above us, is slapping their locked down blanded bloatware on the phones we use, well before we get to see the phones.

Google does it with its garbage like Maps, Music, YouTube, ect. Auto-restarting unwanted garbage.

Manufactures do it with resource hogs like Sense (HTC), Pure Breeze (Samsung), TouchWiz (Samsung), MotoBlur (Motorola), and the Emotion Widgets (Huawei). We want the performance from our phones, not boat anchors dragging performance and resources down further.

And then telcos add to it with monolithic bloatware such as TelstraOne. Wrapping a bunch of URLs around a widget and a webpage, is absolute pure wrongness.

Jenifur Charne

[Gameboy]

"Google does it with its garbage like Maps, Music, YouTube, ect. Auto-restarting unwanted garbage."

Is that a joke?  

This is why you buy a Google Android handset, so that you can use all of the Google services with your Google account.  I'm not saying that Google Music is the best app, nothing works as seemless as Googles own Apps on a Android handset.

Now the Telstra preloaded carp, that's worth rooting for.....

[JeniSkunk]

Not a joke.

On Froyo, and earlier, Force Killed junk like the stuff I mentioned, is like some goddamned zombie.

It refuses to stay dead.

The OS and apps, repeatedly ressurects the garbage.

Combine that with the miniscule amount of RAM in Froyo and earlier devices, and this becomes a source of utter frustration.

You are forced to wait while the OS decides which zombie to kick out of memory when you need to do stuff.

Now add that behaviour to the uselessly tiny amount of ROM space these devices have, when you're trying to claw back every available byte of storage for what apps you actually want, by moving whatever you can to SD card.

And these unwanted, auto-restarting, pieces of utter garbage are baked into ROM, wasting precious space.

Having these zombies apps ressurect themselves, and have to be killed, all the time, chews battery and CPU.

Is it any wonder you want this junk to simply be GONE?

Jenifur Charne

[Wanglese]

If you look around the web, you will find solutions to put alternative rom paks on.  Careful, you may brick your device, or at least void warranty.

[JeniSkunk]

Wanglese, your suggestion is only good, if there are viable custom ROMs to put on your device.
Viable ROMs being available is not always the case.

Whereas forcibly stripping the garbage out is always available.

Jenifur Charne