Earlier this year we’d reported that a Chinese Consumer Rights Protection committee was suing the likes of Samsung and Oppo for the massive amount of bloatware on their devices. Today, Samsung has announced that they will issue patches that will allow Chinese customers to delete pre-installed applications from the Galaxy Note 3.
“Chinese consumers using Samsung’s Galaxy phones can now delete applications that were pre-installed because Samsung Electronics plans to provide software patches so things get done from next month,” Samsung said.
The move begins with the “N9008S” variant of the Galaxy Note 3 which was targeted at the Chinese committee. The specific device in question has 44 preinstalled applications of which 24 were critically required for functioning of the handset. Samsung has also claimed that they will gradually expand the program to include the Galaxy S6. The issue arrises from the fact that the bloatware drastically reduces the amount of built in storage on the phone. Consumers will have to head over to Samsung’s after sales centers to install the patches. The consumer rights group states that they have no plans to drop the lawsuit against Samsung till the time they expand the program to include more devices. In what is clearly a consumer centric move, we hope that Samsung takes the onus to expand the move globally without requiring further law suits.
[Via – The Korea Times]