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The Desire on Orange, the facts on forced apps.
Those of us lucky to have received a Desire from Orange directly, or through one of their many retail outlets have discovered two things;
1. The phone is a sexy piece of awesome.
2. Orange have seen fit to install their own version of Sense UI, including many of their own applications.
These things have the following issues:
1. The phone is a sexy piece of awesome.
-Loss of friends through insistance on showing them your new phone every 30 seconds, all day, every day.
2. Orange have seen fit to install their own version of Sense UI, including many of their own applications.
This needs be broken down into two seperate sets of problems.
2a. Updates to Android will always come to stock Android phones first (Nexus One) and the rest much later. Since Orange themselves have a different software version to the unbranded versions, you are at the mercy of Orange as far as updates go. So, you could be waiting for a long time.
2b. (or the really long point)
The HTC Desire comes with 512MB of internal memory. Which, compaired with some phones, isn't all that much. Thankfully, most apps in the Market are quite small.
However, not all of the 512MB is available to you. The vast majority of that memory is taken up with the Operating System, various stock apps and the Sense UI, leaving you with around 140MB of space for you to install whatever you please on it.
From what i'm able to gather, the forced Orange apps and guff remove an additional 54MB from the 140MB originally available space (and that isn't including GTalk, but more on that later), giving you, the loving and loyal Orange Desire owner (drumroll please) 86MB free.
Of course, this isn't a problem. You can just pop into 'Settings', click on 'Applications', then 'Manage Applications' find the installed Orange apps and delete them...
...no, wait. You CAN'T DELETE THEM?!
Yep. The horrible realisation that over a third of the available memory has been taken hostage by your network has no doubt hit you by now. So you're left staring at these marvels of modern mobile programming:
*Orange Messenger, a rather rubbish MSN style chat client. This cannot be deleted.
*Uno game demo. This cannot be deleted.
*Monopoly game demo. This cannot be deleted.
*Midnight Bowling game demo. This cannot be deleted.
*Orange Maps, a rather rubbish Google maps style app. This cannot be deleted.
*App Shop, a very rubbish Orange Marketplace style app. This cannot be deleted.
*an icon for a Game Store, that links you to the same rubbish Orange Marketplace style app. This cannot be deleted.
*an icon for a Ringtone Store, that links you to the same rubbish Orange Marketplace style app. This, *shock horror*, cannot be deleted.
Because Orange are pushing their own Messenger application, they've taken away GTalk. Okay, i'm moderatley annoyed that I can't get rid of the Orange one, i'll just hop on the Market and download GTalk.
...no, wait. I CAN'T.
That's right, GTalk is nowhere to be found on the Android Market. Wonderful. Not only this, but it turns out they haven't removed it at all. In fact, they've just hidden it. And while it stays in the background hidden, it's files and storage are eating up memory. So while it's running in the background, it's using up system resources and there is nothing you can do about it (even using an appkiller doesn't work, it finds a way to restart itself).
Of course, you don't have to be at the mercy of Orange. You can flash a generic version of Sense UI onto the phone, ridding you of this nework torture. Of course, this comes with it's own hefty price tag. It voids your warranty and since the process is quite complex for most, you do run a small risk of bricking your Desire.
But the question is, why should you have to? Would Orange think about commiting this sin to an iPhone? Would they risk ******* off the mighty Apple? No, of course they wouldn't. So, I decided to contact everyone involved to see what they had to say about it.
1. Phonecall to Orange: Didn't care. Suggested I return the phone within my seven days if I wasn't happy. This isn't really an option, I got offered a contract to die for.
2. Email to Google: Haven't responded. I wanted to alert them to Orange denying users access to basic Android applications, since I believe the removal of choice goes against the basic principles of their OS in the first place.
3. Email to HTC. An answer, but hardly the one I was wanting. I wanted to let them know that people would be (and wrongly) angry with them, as it would potentially paint HTC in a negative light and maybe even disuade some from ever buying one of their phones again (well, it might, some people enjoy being angry). I wanted them to stand up for themselves and not allow network to butcher their products as they see fit. What I got in reply was this:
(*the names have been changed to protect the innocent)Dear David Gravypockets*,
Thank you for contacting us.
In regards to desire I can help you with that. I am happy to hear that you are pleased with the phone, however with the orange applications on the phone there is nothing we can really do but to say to email this email to orange to see if they can offer you any other alternatives other than the ones they already have. I trust that this resolves your query, please do not hesitate to contact us again if required.
Thank you for contacting HTC.
Best regards, Alison Ghost-Crabstick* HTC
I'm suggesting anyone and everyone unhappy to do the same. Let everyone know that we don't enjoy the removal of the freedom of choice, for our phones to be butchered, capacity kidnapped and for us all to have to think twice about if we have the space to store apps.
Who knows, if enough people complain, maybe Orange will release a firmware that allows the removal of these horrid things (we can dream, right?).