• After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.

Are these safe to delete?

T

toedragger

Newbie
Hello,

I have a newly rooted HTC One V with ICS 4.0.3. I would like to delete some of the apps that were pre-loaded onto the phone that I never use. The following is a list of the apps (in my app folder) but I would like confirmation that they are safe to remove in case I brick it.

Adobe Reader
Cyberon Voice
Downloads
Flash Player
FM Radio
Friend Stream
HTC Hub
Latitude
Maps
Navigation
Places
Play Books
Play Movies
Play Music
Polaris Office
Google Search
Setup
Show Me
SIM Toolkit
Tasks
Transfer
TuneIn Radio
Voice Recorder
Weather
Wi-Fi Hotspot

If any of these are un-safe to delete, or are actually useful apps that I should hang onto, please let me know. Thank you so much!
 
I’m not rooted (yet), but if I was and had that pantload of apps, I would move some or most of them to the SD card, where they’re out of the way but still available for use. Especially Maps, a terrific but gigantic app that doesn’t need to be hogging the memory.
 
You do know that system apps live in a different storage partition, so removing them doesn't give you any more space? Though in some cases you've probably received updates, which do take up space. Can you simply hide apps from the app drawer? For small, harmless stuff like Downloads that's probably the best solution.

Dave's advice is good - freeze first, and leave it like that for a while to be sure there is no side-effect. And let me add "always take a nandroid backup (recovery backup) before changing anything in /system" - mess up badly and you can be unable to boot, in which case a nandroid backup will save your skin. And "badly" can mean "one trivial, innocuous-looking change which turned out not to be".

You'll find that Latitude, Maps and Navigation are just different entry points into one app, Maps, so you can't uninstall one without uninstalling the others (I'd love to be able to remove Latitude, but can't for that reason). If you ever do a factory reset for any reason you probably want "Setup" to still be on the phone afterwards (factory reset just wipes user apps, settings and data - it doesn't undo system changes you have made).

One thing to watch is that there can be inter-dependencies between apps. I've not used Sense for 2 years, so don't know what these are like in the current version, but when I first rooted I froze a few unwanted things, one of which was Flickr. The result was that I lost part of the "People" app - I could no longer get to some parts of it, because when I tried to get past some social tab it would always crash (even though what I wanted to do was nothing to do with social networking, the in-app navigation went past it and that was enough). That's why freezing is safer than deleting.
 
dvhttn said:
"Freeze" them first (using Titanium Backup parlance). That way if there's a problem then you can get them back easily.

Dave
Click to expand...
This.

Deleting apps can cause unforeseen problems and force closes. Freeze the apps first. I also wouldn't delete any of the Google apps. Maps, navigation, search, etc. are really useful apps.

Also, some of those apps have functionality beyond just being a standalone app. Flash player, for example, allows you to display and work with flash in your browser. You probably want to keep that. Not opening an app doesn't mean that you never use it.
 
Thanks for the responses....lots of useful info here. I will freeze the apps first and see what effect it has first. If I want to move some apps to the SD card as jefboyardee suggested, how can i do that?

Also, as I was browsing through the apps in Titanium Backup...I saw App House 1.1 Do you know what this is?
 
If they are system apps you cannot just move to sd.

You may be able to move some of them if you convert to user app first, using Titanium. This is "messing with system", so nandroid first. But remember that this saves no space whatsoever as system apps are in a different storage partition from user apps.
 
I only moved apps that I installed through the Store using Link2SD. IS there a way to automatically install to the SD card...would be very convenient.

Also, how can I tell if they are system files?
 
Pre-installed apps are generally on /system.

When using Link2sd do you use a ext partition on your card, or just force Google style move to sd?

The default install location is a hidden setting. If Spare Parts works with ICS you should be able to use that to change it.
 
Hadron said:
When using Link2sd do you use a ext partition on your card, or just force Google style move to sd?
Click to expand...

I do not have a partition on my SDcard. Should I?

When I backup with Titanium, where is it stored?

I believe spare parts is compatible with ICS...ill check it out
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom