This might be a bit of a rabbit hole. My OnePlus has a relatively clean Android but comes with a few apps like Calculator, Notes, or Chrome that don't seem to be removable. They're also not core functionality. So I wonder how easy is it to draw the line between these and the crap that many phones come with.

Also stuff like Play services or the Google Store are somewhat replaceable. How could these be categorized?

So what if someone wants to remove a non-core functionality calculator?

Let them.

Oh, I'm not against rules that enforce good behavior.

I wouldn’t. Why is the knee-jerk reaction to solve problems (especially trivial ones like this) with more red tape and bureaucracy?

Remember that HN is a bubble. We might care about bloatware, but maybe millions of regular users don’t (or even find some of the bloat useful).

> We might care about bloatware, but maybe millions of regular users don’t (or even find some of the bloat useful).

Users don't care about technical details as "bloatware" one bit. That's true.

They do care about their phones running slower and having a much worse battery life though (compared to iPhones with background app refresh turned off).

it wouldn't be a knee-jerk reaction given how long this has been an issue, and there is little to no bureaucracy or legislation involved other than telling companies what not to do with their consumer's devices. Giving users the right to delete applications is technically straight forward and involves zero additional bureaucrats. Honestly the only knee-jerk thing about this is describing freedom-enhancing measures in the interest of users with the absolutely meaningless 'red tape' buzzword.

And I don't think this is a bubble issue either. People being frustrated with having applications fill up their menus or screens and memory is an everyday issue that everyone complains about.