I'm putting this out here hoping Google, both the engine and the company find it.
I'm also going to link to it and post it elsewhere. (Go hit the "+" on this for my would you? href="http://slashdot.org/submission/1428768/Are-Sprints-preinstalled-spware-apps-criminal
The HTC EVO is arguably the best phone on the market today as far as tech specs are concerned. Indeed, it can make an iPhone cry. The problem is, it has horrible battery life.
This is not HTC's fault (not solely anyways).
Have you ever bought a new Windows computer and it's almost unusable due to craplets? Sprint has successfully introduced the craplet to a Linux based OS.
Now that the brief introduction is aside, it's time to get to the geeky core.
The real problem with the EVO is simply Tying. The crap software the user's don't necessarily want, report back to servers regularly, and don't even provide useful services to the user on a regular basis drain the batter in such a manner the inclusion of these programs at minimum should count as a civil liability against Sprint. Why does Sprint feel the need to install this much spyware? Why can't they install a single snooper app that keeps track of where I'm at at all times and resell the data instead of installing four of five of their own plus letting Amazon put one on? Sure it's a low life thing to do, but at least only one application doing it would use less battery life than half a dozen.
On to the hacking, this is why I blame Sprint, not HTC or Google.
I jail broke mine for the single purpose of removing bloatware. This was NOT good enough. Turns out simple jail breaking doesn't work, the section of onboard memory that contains this crap ware is locked hard-core (I blame HTC for this) so not even simple rooting allows you to get rid of the crap from here. I wound up installing a really old version of Android plus a couple of other hacks to get rid of the garbage, I'm sure there's easier ways to do it than what I did, but Froyo 2.2 came on mine and they had just recently started packaging Froyo on my phone when I got it so online how-to's were sparse at best. Afterward I re-upgraded to 2.2.
Result?
My phone that used to barely make it 8 hours stock with all the extra radio's etc turned off now can make it 32 on standby, easy.
Ethics aside there's some serious civil liability here.
Sprint should be required to report what every one of these protected area programs gathers and reports about the users. Especially Amazon MP3 which isn't even a Sprint app.
I have actually stood in a Sprint store, told their sales people I hacked my phone and it gets 32 hour standby. They ask which after market battery I bought. They don't believe me when I tell them I'm still using the factory battery and why it last so much more. They sort of advise me to use ATK under their breath. This is much better than that.
It would be bad enough just installing the craplets. Installing craplets that a user can't uninstall without hacking is worse. Installing craplets that you can't even get out with simple rooting is akin to criminal.
I'm wondering how the SlashDot community can let this slide.
Note to my LJ peeps - I wrote this here, I'm going to cross-post it to SlashDot. I may piss my carrier off enough that they come after me for posting this, but I really don't care.
If you stumble across this article with a search engine please respond with OpenID if you don't have an LJ account. Sure I've enabled anonymous replies, but if you're not using your name you're not really being heard.
The HTC EVO is arguably the best phone on the market today as far as tech specs are concerned. Indeed, it can make an iPhone cry. The problem is, it has horrible battery life.
This is not HTC's fault (not solely anyways).
Have you ever bought a new Windows computer and it's almost unusable due to craplets? Sprint has successfully introduced the craplet to a Linux based OS.
Now that the brief introduction is aside, it's time to get to the geeky core.
The real problem with the EVO is simply Tying. The crap software the user's don't necessarily want, report back to servers regularly, and don't even provide useful services to the user on a regular basis drain the batter in such a manner the inclusion of these programs at minimum should count as a civil liability against Sprint. Why does Sprint feel the need to install this much spyware? Why can't they install a single snooper app that keeps track of where I'm at at all times and resell the data instead of installing four of five of their own plus letting Amazon put one on? Sure it's a low life thing to do, but at least only one application doing it would use less battery life than half a dozen.
On to the hacking, this is why I blame Sprint, not HTC or Google.
I jail broke mine for the single purpose of removing bloatware. This was NOT good enough. Turns out simple jail breaking doesn't work, the section of onboard memory that contains this crap ware is locked hard-core (I blame HTC for this) so not even simple rooting allows you to get rid of the crap from here. I wound up installing a really old version of Android plus a couple of other hacks to get rid of the garbage, I'm sure there's easier ways to do it than what I did, but Froyo 2.2 came on mine and they had just recently started packaging Froyo on my phone when I got it so online how-to's were sparse at best. Afterward I re-upgraded to 2.2.
Result?
My phone that used to barely make it 8 hours stock with all the extra radio's etc turned off now can make it 32 on standby, easy.
Ethics aside there's some serious civil liability here.
Sprint should be required to report what every one of these protected area programs gathers and reports about the users. Especially Amazon MP3 which isn't even a Sprint app.
I have actually stood in a Sprint store, told their sales people I hacked my phone and it gets 32 hour standby. They ask which after market battery I bought. They don't believe me when I tell them I'm still using the factory battery and why it last so much more. They sort of advise me to use ATK under their breath. This is much better than that.
It would be bad enough just installing the craplets. Installing craplets that a user can't uninstall without hacking is worse. Installing craplets that you can't even get out with simple rooting is akin to criminal.
I'm wondering how the SlashDot community can let this slide.
Note to my LJ peeps - I wrote this here, I'm going to cross-post it to SlashDot. I may piss my carrier off enough that they come after me for posting this, but I really don't care.
If you stumble across this article with a search engine please respond with OpenID if you don't have an LJ account. Sure I've enabled anonymous replies, but if you're not using your name you're not really being heard.