Bloatware might be easier to get rid of with Android 5.0 Lollipop

With Android 5.0 Lollipop, getting rid of bloatware and uninstalling applications from carriers might become easier than before. The Android team from Google has revealed that carriers who will be selling smartphones running on Android 5.0 Lollipop will have the option to get their apps on the phones through the Google Play Store. Carriers usually install what we call bloatware on their own, and getting rid of bloatware is made almost impossible for Android users unless they want to root their devices.

With the new Android OS, carriers may choose to have bloatware installed when you first boot your phone, directly from the Google Play Store. That would mean that you, as a user, might have the option to uninstall bloatware applications through Google Play without having to root your device. That would be a great step forward because many have been complaining about bloatware and invoking the fact that they shouldn’t be forced to keep apps that they don’t use or don’t like. While some bloatware is actually useful, such as different calendar apps, cloud storage apps, theme stores, backup apps and such, there are people around who call them bloatware because they choose to use different applications with the same functions or don’t actually use them at all.

If carriers and manufacturers will opt for the Google Play Store variant for installing bloatware on a new phone, users will be able to access the data partition they are stored on and delete them. The thing with this strategy is that carriers and manufacturers can choose not to take advantage of the Google Play Store and keep to their traditional methods of installing bloatware. Since nobody can force carriers into making their bloatware easier to remove and if they do, users won’t be forced into using them – or staring at them pointlessly. That means that probably most carriers and manufacturers will ignore the Google Play Store option, because if their bloatware isn’t on the phones they make or supply, then developing and putting out those apps would be futile in the first place. Even so, we hope that companies will take advantage of this option in Android 5.0 Lollipop and make bloatware easier to remove, but that remains to be seen.