Major mobile carries in the U.S. have been bombarded with criticisms in the online community after removing some pre-loaded apps in Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge devices and replacing them with their native apps.
Verizon Wireless, Sprint, T-Mobile and AT&T all received the same critical rants from fans for treating Samsung's new flagship devices with a stringent 'app diet.' Based on some phones already out in consumer hands, the carriers installed their own apps.
Among the four major carriers, Sprint has been the most lax removing only the Download Booster app which integrates Wi-Fi and LTE connections to improve download and upload speeds while deactivating the Wi-Fi calling as the default setting. Download Booster is downloadable still from the Google Play Store.
T-Mobile removed the Quick Connect and S-Finder from the dropdown menu. The carrier also axed the ability for users to disable the background lights of the capacitive buttons.
AT&T takes a notch further by removing four apps, including the Download Booster, Simple Sharing, Smart Manager, and Microsoft's OneDrive. Simple Sharing app allows users to share massive files. The Smart Manager app is developed by Samsung to control battery and storage usage. The OneDrive app gives users 100GB of free cloud memory storage.
Verizon Wireless meanwhile is the most offensive of all stripping off a total of five apps. Verizon axed the Smart Manager and Microsoft's unlocked versions of apps, like OneDrive, OneNote, Office Mobile and Skype. The Microsoft apps nevertheless are still downloadable from Google Play Store, but the OneDrive available here will only carry 15GB of space. The Smart Manager has been totally unavailable from the store.
When the South Korean tech giant launched the galaxy S6 and S6 Edge at the MWC 2015, Samsung has informed it has reduced the number of pre-loaded apps.
As of now, the carriers have not responded to fan comments yet.
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