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Root Moto Devour - List of removable APKs/ODEXs

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d.wats

Newbie
Hi all! I've been browsing the Devour section of the forums deciding whether or not to root it or just wait and get a new phone. Long story short, I rooted it.

The only issue I've run into so far is finding a list of APKs/ODEXs I can remove safely. So this thread is to compile a list of apps you can and cannot safely remove.

Safely removed:
QuickOffice.apk
(Quick Office)

com.vzw.vvm.android.apk
(Visual Voice Mail)

VCastVideos.apk
(VCast Video Client)

VCastMusic.apk
(VCast Music Client)

VZNav.apk
(VZ Navigator)

TtsService.odex
TtsService.apk
(Text-to-Speech)

News-release.odex
News-release.apk
(News Widget)

VpnServices.odex
VpnServices.apk
(Virtual Private Network)

HelpCenter-release.odex
HelpCenter-release.apk
(Help Center)

MusicSync.odex
MusicSync.apk
(Vcast music sync)

DrmProvider.odex
DrmProvider.apk
(Most likely important if you have DRM protected music)

VSuiteApp.odex
VSuiteApp.apk
(Remove these after you have removed everything else, phone will need to restart twice before it calms down.)

(update 2)
SocialMessaging-release.odex
SocialMessaging-release.apk
(Not sure what these are for yet. Nothing breaks upon removal though.)

SocialShare-release.odex
SocialShare-release.apk
(Once again, not sure what these are for. Nothing breaks upon removal.)

(update 3)
BlurHome.odex
BlurHome.apk
(Phone's home screen. This can be removed IF you have another home screen installed. ex: ADW.Launcher for 1.6.)

Don't Know:
BlurSNMessagingEngine-release.odex
BlurSNMessagingEngine-release.apk

BlurEmailEngine-release.odex
BlurEmailEngine-release.apk

BlurUpdater-release.odex
BlurUpdater-release.apk

MotoPhonePortal.odex
MotoPhonePortal.apk

megamaid-release.odex
megamaid-release.apk
Do not remove:
blur-services-release.odex
blur-services-release.apk
(Removing this breaks contacts/texts. This also creates an annoying error when placing/deleting widgets off the home screen.)

ImProvider.apk
(Breaks market)
If you have any input on what you can and cannot remove, please let us know!



Edit - 8/4/2010: Identified apps, made list more readable.

Update - 8/4/2010: Trial and error and a little snooping around through other phone forum's APK/odex lists.

Update - 8/6/2010: More Trial and error. Removed all the MotoBlur apps, killed my phone and reinstalled. Accidentally removed an app so now I have to go download it.

Update - 8/7/2010: More T&E. Update on Blur apks.
 
Thank you for this. Rooted Overclocked and mostly bloat free now. Also, after removing these google maps somehow got messed up and I had to uninstall and reinstall. I only had to reboot the phone once after removing the VSuite stuff and all was good. Good work sir.
 
JamisonMP said:
Thank you for this. Rooted Overclocked and mostly bloat free now. Also, after removing these google maps somehow got messed up and I had to uninstall and reinstall. I only had to reboot the phone once after removing the VSuite stuff and all was good. Good work sir.
Click to expand...

it was my assumption that overclocking was only possible with some sort of special kernal cooked into the rom, i know underclocking is possible without. is that incorrect and can we oc? or is that something thatll come with custom roms?
 
phirefaux said:
it was my assumption that overclocking was only possible with some sort of special kernal cooked into the rom, i know underclocking is possible without. is that incorrect and can we oc? or is that something thatll come with custom roms?
Click to expand...

Apparently I was mistaken. I was using SetCPU to underclock but the phone is already running at 600mhz.
 
JamisonMP said:
Thank you for this. Rooted Overclocked and mostly bloat free now. Also, after removing these google maps somehow got messed up and I had to uninstall and reinstall. I only had to reboot the phone once after removing the VSuite stuff and all was good. Good work sir.
Click to expand...

Thanks! I had some troubles with Google Maps, but after a restart it seemed to have been resolved.


My next step will be removing MotoBlur components and seeing if the phone is still stable. As far as I can tell currently there are no successful removals of the Blur APKs.
 
d.wats said:
Thanks! I had some troubles with Google Maps, but after a restart it seemed to have been resolved.


My next step will be removing MotoBlur components and seeing if the phone is still stable. As far as I can tell currently there are no successful removals of the Blur APKs.
Click to expand...

I've yet to see any reports of anyone getting rid of blur without consequences. Truth be told we desperately need a custom rom for this phone. I and many others feel the OS is the only downfall to this device. Things like task killers and being able to root and remove bloat ware just make it tolerable.
 
JamisonMP said:
I've yet to see any reports of anyone getting rid of blur without consequences. Truth be told we desperately need a custom rom for this phone. I and many others feel the OS is the only downfall to this device. Things like task killers and being able to root and remove bloat ware just make it tolerable.
Click to expand...

I imagine by not having and of the blur widgets on the home screen and not having any accounts in it besides the actual blur account, it's probably not using too much in the way of memory. I could be wrong, but right now my phone currently has 90-100mb of free RAM at all times. The phone has 256mb total. I'd like to be able to run it free of blur and find out though.

I'm afraid since the Devour doesn't seem overly popular it may not end up getting a ROM for a long time, if ever. I've gone to other forums asking about these things and most people laugh and tell me to buy a new handset.

You have to be careful with task killers as they can end up killing performance and battery life by ending processes the OS needs to have active. I've had Advanced Task killer installed for about 2 months now and recently I went through and made sure things that always come back on after you kill tasks are added to the ignore list. Otherwise your phone will restart them as soon as they're closed, using up precious CPU cycles and battery life. Once I was sure I had all the apps that are on non-stop in the ignore list I noticed the phone ran smoothly for longer and the battery has lasted much longer. So far the phone has been off the charger for a day and the battery is still above 80% as far as I can tell with the little battery meter and the battery profile is on performance.

I also got my hands on a nice little program called 'Autostarts'. This allows you to select which apps come on at start up as well as during certain events. For instance when the 'Call state changes' MobileIM would turn on. This allowed me to shorten start up time noticeably and over all the phone seems to run more smoothly.
 
List updated.

I got brave today and removed MotoBlur from the phone. Most of the blue APKs removed didn't seem to have any ill effect on the phone. Removing BlurHome.apk removed the home screen and made navigating the phone impossible. So I reinstalled all the apks but made a mistake in my move commands and ended up placing blur-services-release.apk in a directory that didn't exist. I couldn't navigate to it or retrieve it. So now I am forced to download a copy from the interwebs.

Even with the phone spitting out errors when I try to manage the widgets, they can still be added, moved, deleted from the home screen. Everything else seems to work fine. I am up to 95-105mb free in memory.

elRYN.png
 
List Updated.

Error mentioned in my last post was due to the blur-services-release.apk not being installed. This apk seems to handle the contacts and possibly widgets to an extent. Because it broke contacts it also broke texting.

BlurHome.apk can be removed if you have an alternate home screen such as ADW.Launcher (Adw.launcher (donut) for Android in Productivity).
 
I removed the vcastmusic and vcastvideo apks but I forgot to make a backup of them. Could anyone upload a backup of the original verizon apks? This will be handy if anyone needs to reinstall for any warranty issues.
 
After I removed BlurHome my Happenings widget started FC'ing, but the app still works? MotoBlur is ******ed. Also, any way to get rid of MobileIM yet? 74mb free RAM is much better than the usual 16-24mb, but I'm always itching for more headroom.
 
Confusingboat said:
After I removed BlurHome my Happenings widget started FC'ing, but the app still works? MotoBlur is ******ed. Also, any way to get rid of MobileIM yet? 74mb free RAM is much better than the usual 16-24mb, but I'm always itching for more headroom.
Click to expand...

With an alternate home screen I had no troubles after BlurHome was removed. Removing MotoBlur altogether isn't possible as far as I know yet.

I haven't been able to remove MobileIM. But I haven't really spent much time going through the APKs lately.

I have anywhere between 85-95mb of RAM free most of the time.

My devour has been restarting randomly, even with the battery shimmed up with paper to keep it from disconnecting. I may have to call Verizon and threaten to drop their service or something so I can get a different phone. The devour is really busting my balls.
 
When I go to add the Happenings widget (using the latest ADW.Launcher btw), I hit 'Done' and then it FCs. I'll do some more digging when I get home because that's where I have my backup files located.

On the plus side, I have successfully removed MobileIM. I've really only tested texting, but everything else seems to work fine as well -- no errors yet.

MobileIM = com.verizon.handset.mim.apk

EDIT: Happenings widget works fine now that I have BlurHome reinstalled. It doesn't have to be running as the home app, just as a service.
 
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