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Absolute minimum required to remove AT&T crap

ZDroid1

ZDroid1

Android Enthusiast
Two questions actually:

1) I would simply like to remove all the AT&T crapware from the phone, not just visually, but I simply don't want them to be running in the background.

What is the absolute minimum required amount of work to achieve that? Rooting, flashing, etc? I don't want to do anything that is not absolutely needed to achieve that objective.

2) Rooting and flashing.. are they reversible? If I need to exchange the phone for whatever reason in the future (for a refurbished one, etc), is AT&T going to refuse to deal with me because it's rooted or whatever, and is it possible to return it to its original factory settings?
 
You need to root your device to be able to uninstall the AT&T bloatware. Very straightforward to root and do the installation.

I also do believe the rooting process is irreversible.
 
At the suggestion of others here, I bought Titanium Backup, rooted the phone, and then did Titanium's "freeze" on the AT&T apps. It basically makes them disappear, and not run in the background, until you "defrost" them.

Been working great, so far.

T
 
dontshakepandas said:
It is absolutely reversible, and extremely easy to do as well. I've done it, and if you can follow directions, you can too.
Click to expand...

When you reverse it, the AT&T crap reinstalls itself somehow??

What instructions did you use? I found a lot of material on the Web and can't decide what to use.
 
I deleted the AT&T stuff completely, but freezing them in Titanium backup as mentioned above will work as well. The .apk files are also available online.

The instructions I used were using the android SDK method. You just install the SDK on your computer, make sure that you have all the drivers for your phone, and then type the following.
adb shell
su
rm -r /system/app/Superuser.apk
rm -r /system/xbin/busybox
rm -r /system/bin/su

That doesn't remove any data or reset to factory, it just removes the root. You can also use Odin3 to get back to completely factory. You can find information about that here.

[STOCK ROM] Odin3 One-Click Downloader - xda-developers
 
Are there any definitive measurements of the battery/speed gains from removing the AT&T crapware?

If someone has measured this somewhat methodically/scientifically, and the gain is significant enough, it might be the one reason for me to root (although having to pay for Titanium Backup in order to do it safely sucks).
 
I just didn't want them in my App Drawer

:)

Plus, some keep constantly running in the background, and there's not a SINGLE one I need.

T
 
sremick said:
Are there any definitive measurements of the battery/speed gains from removing the AT&T crapware?

If someone has measured this somewhat methodically/scientifically, and the gain is significant enough, it might be the one reason for me to root (although having to pay for Titanium Backup in order to do it safely sucks).
Click to expand...

You don't have to pay to use titanium backup for that. My AT&T stuff is gone and I use the free version. It won't back up the apk for system files, but why would you ever need it? If you want to take it back to AT&t use Odin3 to go back to stock, otherwise why would you want to put that crap back on your phone?

It is hard to measure the battery/speed gains, but I would estimate they aren't significant. I got rid of them for a combination of the small speed/battery gains, just not wanting them on my phone, and to avoid the associated charges that come with using that bloatware (in case a family member or friend decides it would be fun to try it out).
 
It really is astounding to me that a cell phone service provider would do this.

For them to add bloatware on phones is understandable because they want people to use it.

But for them to make it so the user can't remove it is just really annoying. OK at&t, we see your software. Thanks. But we don't want it.

But then, on top of all that, they make it run in the background AT ALL TIMES, unstoppable! Does at&t give a sh#t about its customers? It's beyond absurd.
 
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