For a lot of people, buying smartphones through carriers is still preferable over going the unlocked route. In addition to typically better financing options, most carriers always have some deal going on to help offset the cost of new devices. Unfortunately, as great as these two things are, carrier-branded phones are also plagued by pre-installed apps that nobody wants or asked for.
In a recent post on its official blog, T-Mobile's parent company, Deutsche Telekom, announced that it's now giving its subscribers the option to choose which apps they want and don't want on their phone from day one.
Deutsche Telekom says that its customers "will no longer receive preinstalled apps and presets on your Android smartphone," and laid out a five-step process for how this will work. It reads as follows:
- You use your Telekom SIM and start the device. After switching on the smartphone for the first time, you will go through the manufacturer's initial setup.
- Later on, you'll see our recommended telecom applications either during setup or afterwards (depending on the smartphone model).
- Select the applications you want to install.
- Immediately after completing the setup process (which may also include a reboot) welcomes you our new telecom welcome moment. There you will be asked, among other things, if you want to receive notifications and automatic updates to installed apps.
- The selected applications of Telekom and our partners can now be found on your home screen.
In addition to giving users the freedom of choosing which pre-installed apps they want, Deutsche Telekom also says that future firmware updates will be handled by manufacturers — potentially resulting in much faster turnaround times when new versions of Android are released.
It's unclear at this time if T-Mobile will gain similar features, but I wouldn't be surprised if they get added with the next Un-Carrier movement.
Until then, is this something you'd like to see your wireless provider adopt?
