Android crapware - Greed at the expense of reputation and user experience

PC Pro's Mike Jennings blows off steam about a problem that we PC users have known about for years but which is now making its way onto Android handsets - crapware, bloatware and shovelware.

We're all aware of the problems of crapware on PCs (you smug Mac users can continue to be smug ...). The OEMs are paid money to install performance sucking junk onto PCs before consumers ever get their hands on them. Fortunately this stuff's pretty easy to get rid of using a tool like CCleaner.

But now network carriers are shoveling steaming piles of crapware onto Android handsets. Why? Because they get paid to do so, and Google allows them to do it (isn't that Android 'freedom' a wonderful thing?). Jennings lists just some of the crapware he found installed on his HTC Desire HD:

It's not restricted to Sony Ericsson handsets, either. HTC's often held up as the paragon of Android quality - alongside Samsung - but my own Desire HD is riddled with stuff that I simply don't want: 3Mobile-TV, 3Musik and Planet3 were all installed alongside third-party apps such as Amazon MP3, Bebo, Bejeweled Deluxe and a demo of EA's Sims 3.

Someone's been busy shoveling that onto there.

The solution - rooting. Now if you're reading this then chances are that you're either capable of rooting an Android handset, or know how to find out how to root an Android handset. But spare a thought for those folks who not only wouldn't have a clue about how to root, but don't even know you can do such a thing. For these users, the crapware is going to be on the handset forever.

The Jennings delivers a hard blow to Android:

... this greed continues, and comes at the expense of Android's reputation and, more importantly, the tarnished experience that users will have with their new phones - after all, this sort of thing doesn't happen on iOS.

No, it doesn't.