Android is struggling to keep its market share in the United States, as Apple continues to take over in the market. But, despite Android as a whole losing ground, Google Pixel phones are becoming a bigger slice of the US market.
Counterpoint Research reports that, in Q2 2023, US smartphone shipments dropped by 24% year-over-year. That includes both iPhones and Android phones, and virtually every brand saw a drop in shipments. Samsung saw US shipments drop by 37% while Motorola saw a 17% drop. TCL saw the biggest decline at just shy of 70% year-over-year, and even Apple saw a 6% drop.
Apps you can’t delete? Gotta be Samsung?
I used to have a Samsung Galaxy S6, I rooted it so I could remove the facebook app… turned out they built a custom circuit in a little chip that permanently breaks NFC if you rooted it. Ridiculous.
Why would you even bother doing this instead of simply permanently disabling it using the built in features?
Some apps can’t even be disabled (including via adb).
Such as?
I found not being able to remove the app frustrating, and wanted to go further than disable it. My thinking was, it’s my phone, I want it setup my way, and I don’t want bloat… especially facebook bloat on the phone.
Once it’s disabled it may as well be not there.
If it’s anything like any of my Samsung phones I’ve had, Facebook isn’t actually installed - the icon is just a stub. Opening it takes you to the store to download the actual app. Might be different where you are or if you bought a carrier phone though, I only ever buy outright from manufacturers or stores, never carrier.
Pixels have about 25-30 Google apps that you can’t delete.
Yep, I hate it so much
You can adb disable them. Not the same as a full removal, if you wipe/reset the phone they come back, but for most purposes they’re effectively gone. Do a backup first, if you remove one too many or the wrong one, and other apps might start crashing.
At that point just use a custom os like Lineage or something
just…disable it after deleting updates!