Windows 10 comes with crap even in Pro version these days (Candy Crush etc.), so it was just because nobody cared enough to create that crap for Windows Phone.

I'm sure there was plenty of crap available. Didn't MS pay developers cash for any garbage they shoveled in just to get the "We have XXXX aps available" count up?

The real "problem" was nobody wanted to pay Microsoft for the privilege of having their crap preinstalled.

These aren't preinstalled though. It places a tile in the default setup for it, and the app gets installed if you click on it. If you delete the tile instead, the app is never even installed.

At least the Nexus phones I've had also never came with crap ware. This is yet another reason why I would only ever by a Android phone from Google. Of course the main reason are the longer update cycles that might even delay arrival of security updates. I really wish Google had gone the exact same route as Apple and only shipped Android phones themselves. To me the collaboration with random manufacturers also weakened the Nexus brand. I have zero brand loyalty to Samsung, LG or HTC. I wanted a Google phone. My iPhone doesn't say "Foxconn" on it, so why did my Nexus say "LG" and the next one "Samsung"?! I'm always surprised that these concerns apparently aren't shared by the market and people are happily buying Samsung phones with crap on it and unnecessary changes to Android that just result in getting updates super late.

In that Google is a marketing entity perhaps it's simply exercising one of the circa 2002 Spolsky doctrines linked to yesterday (https://www.gwern.net/Complement)? As far as Goggle's concerned the Androids are commodities that exist to run marketing-related software. FWIW I share your desires and wishes.

OEMs have always made better phones than Google themselves by improving and enhancing Android. Many improvements to Android came from Samsung, HTC and Motorola - the OEMs. Post 5.0, Google has only ever made improvements to Android to benefit its own hardware and ecosystem. For example, the Galaxy Nexus had no MicroSD slot even though the Galaxy phone it was based on did. Even now, Samsung is offering a phone with a headphone jack whereas Google has made their last two phones without, in a completely anti-consumer move.

Today's "Samsung crap" is tomorrow's "Brand-new Android feature that you need to enable Google tracking to use"

Android One phones are like this. My Nokia 8 Sirocco came with only one non-stock app (Nokia Support).

Before the program cancellation,there were talks on making this happen. They didn't do it, but considering it was preload apps or cancellation, that just goees to show how desperate of a move preloadsare in general.

Source : I was part of a team whose app was getting primed up for a preload on WP8.

Many Android phones don't have "crap" installed on them. This is a phone manufacturer issue and not an Android phone.

My LG has LG software preloaded and t-mobile software pre loaded. it just takes up space and would be fine, but it is annoying. One of the LG pieces of software (i thin it is a back up thing) does not work anymore, but still exists. An silly things like the t-mobile permanent unlock your phone app. My phone has been paid for for like a year and if i click the app and request a permanent, or temp unlock it says i am not eligible, but i cannot uninstall the app.

I have heard the argument about being able to hide the apps, but it is not the same. This is the first android phone i have had where i didnt root it and install a new android version. Just got tired of that (lack of security updates). So i am stuck with crapware.

It's both. Why does Android have undeletable apps anyway?

> Why does Android have undeletable apps anyway?

It was explained only zillion times, but I will try one more:

In android, you have storage in two partitions: /system and /data.

/system is read-only, this is where anything that is shipped with phone is stored. Outside of system updates, it is not being touched.

/data is, where user data, installed applications, configuration, etc. is stored.

To factory reset the phone, you just wipe the /data. No separate partition for factory reset is necessary, because /system due to its immutability doubles as one. Anything you configure/change/etc is stored on /data. If you disable any bundled app, whether through gui or adb, the info that you disabled it is written into /data.

Once you want to sell your phone on craiglist, you wipe /data and the buyer gets exactly the same software you originally got.

There is also secondary use of the immutability: android system is distributed as partition image, not as a file archive. That means, that the physical fs layout is same for all devices of the same SKU, can be signed (dm-verity), and then verified at boot, whether the filesystem was modified or not. This is being used for ensuring secure boot, and unsealing secrets in trusted environment.

What you're saying is that Android has undeletable apps because Android was created in such a way that it allows undeletable apps. Which is circular logic.

And the issue here is pretty clearly that users have to resort to adb to disable these apps. Why does Android force this? There is no reason, it could easily be built into the Android GUI.

> And the issue here is pretty clearly that users have to resort to adb to disable these apps

No, you can disable (not delete or uninstall) nondeletable (system) apps on Android without adb. adb also lets you “uninstall” them for a given user (but not from the device), which makes them less visible to the user than disabled apps, but it's not clear to me that it does anything substantively different, since neither disabled nor uninstalled-for-current-user apps run.

> Why does Android force this? There is no reason, it could easily be built into the Android GUI.

The only difference I am aware of between disabling through the GUI and uninstalling for a particular user with adb is that the former allows you to reenable through the UI if you later choose to, whereas the latter removes it from the All Apps list in Settings, making it invisible from the UI and impossible to enable.

Requiring the latter to require the user to use the same tool necessary to reverse the process makes it less likely that users will accidentally do something that the same user can't reverse if they change their mind.

If you are so much bothered by Android design, adjust your POV slightly: consider /system to be recovery partition (you cannot delete anything from any recovery partion of any system, so Android is no exception here) that shares data blocks with main system, created at boot in RAM. Because that it effectively is.

You don't have to resort to ADB to disable these apps for the most part; You can do it in Settings. For some apps you cannot do that in GUI - for Settings itself, for example, so the users don't shoot themselves in the foot. Unfortunately, some manufacturers abuse this and mark as undisable-able apps, that they shouldn't. Over ADB, they can't disable it, so it works for any app, including Settings.

I'm assuming it's to avoid a situation where Grandma accidentally deletes her web browser and the Play Store and doesn't know how to unbrick her phone.

It doesn't have undeletable apps, since adb lets you delete anything (although the exact semantics of "delete" will be different for apps that are installed on the system partition - but not in a way that matters to end users).

It has apps that cannot be installed from the phone UI. Which kinda makes sense, since you don't want people randomly uninstalling, say, the app store, and then complaining that their phone is bricked. OTOH, someone who knows how to do this via adb can be presumed to know what they're doing.

Well those phones aren’t running ios or windows....

Windows Phone didn't survive in the market long enough to start adding crapware. With their < 1% market share (not exaggerating), it's not like app makers were knocking down MS' doors to include their apps on WP devices.

AT&T variants usually came with crapware. You could uninstall most/all of it though. AT&T Android phones are of course far worse though.