Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Samsung bloatware

Here is an example of some bloatware that came on my Samsung Droid Charge:

The application is "City ID" and notice that it cannot be stopped, uninstalled, or otherwise manipulated in any way.  This alone makes me want to unlock my phone.

This programs job is to periodically get in your way by asking if you want to pay a fee to lookup the area code of a call if the caller is not in your address book.  That is not a terrible idea, but you can do this for free by entering the area code into Google.  Now, it would certainly be nice to have it do this automatically for you, but it is not worth paying for.  And it certainly shouldn't pop-up when you get a call and ask you to pay.

I wonder how many people bought this program just to get it out of the way when they receive calls.  This is a pretty classic example of OEM malware.  Write a program that gets in the way then charge you to get rid of it.  Thumbs down to Samsung and thumbs up to Apple.

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