Because money.
and the most delicious kind of money of all: dark money! ooooh it’s so good because the sources of the dark money offer you a lot of it, and they specifically ask you not to ask questions, which is so good for you because these bloatware programs make your device sell worse and provides no value as a sales platform because it turns out that billboards and radio spots are, surprisingly, the most effective form of advertising.
but! you have a sense of solidarity. you have faith that by never offering a phone without bloatware, your entire industry will ensure that all phones won’t have bloatware. you rest easy at night knowing your phone won’t sell poorly, at the end of the day, because every phone is like this. your contributions to a surveillance and propaganda machine that should punish you in the market because won’t because all your peers are your allies in this.
and it gets better! every time someone else’s phone gets more bloatware and more dark money attached, then everyone else appears comparatively better, allowing them to get worse. ooooh you love it so much when you get to take more dark money. and all it costs you are several thousand lives far away from your big mansion. you don’t even have to see the suffering
you have to be careful what packages you remove, some can softlock your device.
For the same reason we have every fucking other problem in the world right now.
Capitalism.
You cannot align incentives towards growing the wealth of a microscopic yet astronomically lecherous group of monsters and expect society to not just crumble under the weight.
It’s 2024 though?
Yep, time zones. Some places are in 2025 already and the US is stuck in 1940.
Because it’s profitable to include.
Why would companies care as much about the minor brand value decrease in the eyes of more technical users when they can make more money right now by making things shittier?
Because people keep buying Xiaomi and Samsung shit that’s loaded with crap (at least over here, I understand this varies massively by region).
Base Android is also loaded with crap, directly from Google. Android is the worst mobile operating system, with the exception of all the others.
Base Android (AOSP) is not, what you probably mean is Google Android.
Look at GrapheneOS, that is a usable, privacy-focused Android without bloat.
Almost none of the devices are shipped with anything but Google’s Android, and manufacturers don’t provide you alternative versions of Android
I guess we just have a simple task - to make sure that all android phones are running base android.
How do u propose that could be done?
At least Samsung phones are only bloated with Samsung apps, which in most part you can uninstall or disable. Although it’s still fucking stupid that when you buy a new phone you need to do a lot of maintenance just to make your phone work as it should, and not slow down because of shitty apps.
Many budget phones get paid money to install other apps by default, this can be useful for you so you get more hardware for the money
fixing phones is the biggest scam ever. once you open the phone you are always going to have problems with the phone. they are not made to be opened and repaired.
As much as I hate this saying, it sounds like a skill issue
I’ve done repairs on all my phones. New buttons, screens, batteries, ports, etc. I’ve never caused an unforeseen new issue by doing so.
