Removing bloatware

[Richard Jones]

Hi All - I'm a silver surfer who is new here and looking for advice!

I am a very light smartphone user (on 3 PAYG - £10 credit lasts me about 18 months.......) My phone is a basic Huawei Y360 I got cheap on a Vodafone deal and is now unlocked and on 3. As with a lot of these things, my device is smothered with bloatware which takes up almost all the storage and complains constantly about lack of capacity if I try to install any apps I want. In addition, despite adding a micro SD card, I find it impossible to transfer embedded apps across to the SD. I've managed to set the phone in 'developer mode' but not been able to get any further. Naturally I don't want to screw up the device! I could just buy a new phone but would probably be faced with the same situation again. Besides, I'm of that generation that would rather 'repair' than 'replace' and with my phone usage, paying out shed loads for a new phone would really go against the grain!!

Can anyone point me to a good tutorial that gives step by step instructions on how to either a) move embedded apps, b) delete any and all unnecessary apps (and indicates which should be left alone)?

Failing that, I'm up for a go at flashing a new ROM - if I can find the instructions to do it.

I'm a Linux user so am used to downloading and installing software but have never had experience of Android so any tips would be welcome!

Thanks in advance,

Rich

 

[Richard Jones]

Pre installed bloatware would usually be on the /system partition, which isn't accessible to the user anyway. Removing it wouldn't free up any storage. Try SD Maid from Google Play to see where your storage space is being filled and go from there. SD Maid can free up some space by deleting cache too.

'Apps-to-SD' hasn't been a thing for a long time now and i'd be surprised if there were any working implementation of that in existence. Move anything you can to the SD to free up space on Internal Storage, as it's the latter where a lot of App Data ends up. Pictures, Audio and Video are better off on the SD. Any folders that Apps write to should stay on Internal Storage. (The 'Android' folder, for example).

Hi Dirk - and thanks for taking the time to reply.
I've tried out SD Maid and it does do as you say but the main issue still remains - i.e. installed apps can't be moved or deleted and even apps that I install can't always be moved to the SD. So I'm thinking that flashing a new ROM might be the way to go. However ........

I've researched across the 'net for solutions and it seems that there isn't a custom ROM available for my model (Huawei Y360-U31) which is an old phone (hence cheap....!!) but nevertheless is more than adequate for my general needs. I found a reference to this - CyanogenMOD 12.1 / Android 5.1.1 Lollipop For Huawei Y3 (Y360-U61) which is slightly newer but runs on 4.4.2 KitKat, the same as mine. I'm wondering if this might flash ok? Failing that, there are stock ROM's available for my model so, would a stock Android ROM come in a more 'basic' version? I'm thinking that most of the 'bloatware' would probably be added by the carrier's developers (in this case Vodafone) so perhaps a stock (lighter) version would be the way to go?

Looking at some of the 'guides' to flashing is very daunting to a newbie and fraught with problems if you get it wrong! Is there a more 'user-friendly' set of instructions that you know of? I can view the drive on my pc (Linux Mint O/S) so it may be possible to 'wipe' the o/s from there - or would this be an absolute no-no and render the phone u/s?

Thanks once again for your time

Rich