I bought an unlocked phone directly from the manufacturer and still didn’t get the choice.
Inserting a SIM card wiped the phone and provisioned it, installing all sorts of carrier-provided apps with system-level permissions.
As far as I’ve found, there’s a few possible solutions:
Unlock the bootloader and install a custom ROM that doesn’t automatically install carrier-provided apps. (Warning: This will blow the E-fuse on Samsung devices, disabling biometrics and other features provided by their proprietary HSM).
Manually disable the apps after they’re forcibly installed for you. Install adb on a computer and use pm disable-user--user 0 the.app.package on every app you don’t want. If your OEM ROM is particularly scummy, it might go out of its way to periodically re-enable some of them, though.
Find a SIM card for a carrier that doesn’t install any apps, then insert that into a fresh phone and hope that the phone doesn’t adopt the new carrier’s apps (or wipe the phone) when you insert your actual SIM.
I bought an unlocked phone directly from the manufacturer and still didn’t get the choice.
Inserting a SIM card wiped the phone and provisioned it, installing all sorts of carrier-provided apps with system-level permissions.
As far as I’ve found, there’s a few possible solutions:
Unlock the bootloader and install a custom ROM that doesn’t automatically install carrier-provided apps. (Warning: This will blow the E-fuse on Samsung devices, disabling biometrics and other features provided by their proprietary HSM).
Manually disable the apps after they’re forcibly installed for you. Install
adbon a computer and usepm disable-user --user 0 the.app.packageon every app you don’t want. If your OEM ROM is particularly scummy, it might go out of its way to periodically re-enable some of them, though.Find a SIM card for a carrier that doesn’t install any apps, then insert that into a fresh phone and hope that the phone doesn’t adopt the new carrier’s apps (or wipe the phone) when you insert your actual SIM.
Wait, inserting the SIM card WIPED the phone!? That’s insane!