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Has anyone had success with debloating their phones? (reddthat.com)

submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Hey all!

I have been playing around with Universal Android Debloater a bit after getting my new S24+ but was wondering to see if there is a noticeable change when getting rid of things like Bixby, AR apps, and mobile carrier bloat (I hate you, Verizon).

Has anyone noticed an increase to battery life or snappiness or is it simply placebo? I never use the apps such as Samsung Smart Call because I use Google's alternative so having it there would cause SOME sort of power/battery usage, no? I am only touching the "recommended" apps but scared to remove too many things to not completely wreak my install. I don't wanna select something to have it crash and make things completely unusable.

https://github.com/Universal-Debloater-Alliance/universal-android-debloater-next-generation

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago

I always debloat my phone, the difference is too massive to ignore.

My last 2 phones were a Galaxy S9 and a Galaxy S10, and I really found the samsungs to be insufferable at first, but with a strong debloat removing a bunch of 'features' nobody asked for and redundant apps, as well as changing the launcher (I use novalauncher, but rootless is also great and also FOSS) had a notable effect on the feel of the phone. I recall that some of the "features" specifically slow down responsiveness to button pushes because for example it ends up waiting on a home button press to see if you're going to do a double or triple press.

If you mess it up too much, a factory restore will undo everything you did anyway, so don't worry too much about it.

I've used the same technique on a number of different phones as well. My dad loves his LG phones, but it comes with a bunch of stuff he didn't want, so we were able to disable it. His latest phones are rugged china phones, and he swears by them, especially once we were able to get rid of a bunch of stuff they added that you really don't need.