More help needed for this confused old luddite

so I got this sony m4 as my first mobile phone. Its from vodaphone and full of preloaded crap that I can’t get rid of. I believe you can put them back to factory spec by “jailbreaking” it altho there may be a chance this is simply “bricking” it 😉

I bought the phone from them and have a sim only deal. I have to stay on vodaphone for the Scottish coverage

Any sorted one of these phones? any advice? Does anyone reputable “jailbreak” phones?

I would say if you haven’t done this before or anything similar, then leave it. You can brick your phone by loading a new Bootloader and ROM, also it will invalidate your warranty.

Just take it to a local phone accessories/repair shop – they’ll probably charge you £20 or so and take a few minutes.

One local guy said he doesn’t jailbreak them. NO intention of doing it muyself

Not worried about warrenty

I’d probably leave it in your position. Even if you pay someone to do it I’m not sure it’s a good idea for most users, as you’re effectively removing a layer of security from the phone.

Delete the apps you can and remove the rest from the home screen.

One local guy said he doesn’t jailbreak them.

Just like no video rental shop in the 80s did adult films… 😉

Unless they’re an authorised repair centre for the manufacturer they wouldn’t have any reason to be covert about it.

It’s not “jailbreaking,” it’s not a fruit-based product. The term you seek is “rooting.”

You can brick your phone by loading a new Bootloader and ROM, also it will invalidate your warranty.

Whilst technically true, it’s very difficult to permanently brick a modern Android device. You’d basically have to try to intentionally kill it.

Type this code in the phone dialler, tell me what it says:

*#*#7378423#*#*

Don’t forget to tune into next weeks edition of “Explaining Technology to Old People” where we will explore such technical terms as “dialling”, “text messaging” and “playing Snake* on the cludgie”

*not a euphemism.

Someone just beat me. “Jailbreaking” is the apple term. You want to “root” it, i.e. gain root access to the phone.

However, you might be able to do a factory reset without doing that.

I thought this was going to be a post about cellphones that could be, er, accommodated within body cavities.

I think that says more about you than us. (-:

Cougar – is that serious or are you having me on?

I can’t find a way of doing a factory reset

Factory reset in this case is unlikely to remove all the bloat apps, it will just set it back to its out of the box state.

One to be aware of when rooting, some applications check for it and won’t run if the phone has been “tampered” with.

Admittedly it’s been a year or so since I had an Android Phone but I couldn’t use any of my banking apps or Sky (weirdly, apparently Virgin apps are the same) as they won’t run on rooted devices. Not sure if that has changed or if people have found a way around it.

Rooting can break something called an e-fuse if the device has something like the Samsung Knox technology. If that happens, then you could have problems.

To be honest, I’d just not bother with it. Rooting undermines the app isolation (such as it is with Android) that provides much of your security, so I generally recommend that people don’t do it. That’s quite apart from possibly breaking something if you mess it up.

You may be able to get rid of the vendor apps using adb, but (and here’s where I start being vague because I can’t remember) the vendor apps are likely to be on the base ROM, so may be reloaded by madic even if you got rid of them.

Or something.

Anyway, just don’t root it. It’s not really worth it.

I think most financial/banking apps wont run on rooted devices as it’s a potential security risk.

Rooting will probably void any warranty also.

Factory reset option is probably buried in a menu somewhere, it varies from device to device, as mentioned, a factory reset will just remove all user apps, accounts, data and customizations, it won’t remove the preinstalled apps.

Theres some info here on what to do, however it looks like it doesn’t free up much space, you might be better off just disabling the apps in app manager, and hiding thier icons.

http://hacking.elboulangero.com/2016/06/10/sony-xperia-m4-aqua-unbloating.html

Type this code in the phone dialler, tell me what it says:

*#*#7378423#*#* It’s good, but it’s no BOOBIES

Rooting is half good, I had a barely useable Galaxy s3 a few years ago that I rooted and it worked for another year with no issues, loads faster and more storage space.

But!

No banking apps, no Sky Go, and some others that I cant remember.

If you’re not a huge user of banking or sky apps, then research and have a go, if you are, new phone time.

Ta chaps especially perchy – I need those tips dude!

First mobile phone? What, like ever?

That’s pretty impressive. And I thought I was a luddite 😆

If you can’t delete the apps, go into Settings > Apps and find the annoying bloatware. You can then click Disable and it will dissappear from the launcher. It’s still on the phone, but you don’t have to look at it and it won’t try and update it.

Think that’s only on recent versions of Android though.

eta link
https://www.howtogeek.com/115533/how-to-disable-or-uninstall-android-bloatware/

Yup – first ever bought last summer. I only got it because we were going to France and would need to book places to stay

Chapeau!

ta retro

its all very confusing. I had thought I did my research properly but ended up with this phone full of bloatware

Rootcloak enables you to run a lot of apps that otherwise wouldn’t work due to a rooted phone. There are the odd ones it doesn’t help with.

Don’t forget to tune into next weeks edition of “Explaining Technology to Old People” where we will explore such technical terms as “dialling”, “text messaging” and “playing Snake* on the cludgie”

*not a euphemism.
I work with someone with this level of expertise – just wondering what he’s going to either forget and leave behind in one of the cars is entertaining enough, trying to show him how to use the software on the mobies we’ve been given instead of paperwork is a whole other level of challenging.
We keep him around for entertainment and the cake his wife makes us! 😀

Cougar – Moderator 
Whilst technically true, it’s very difficult to permanently brick a modern Android device. You’d basically have to try to intentionally kill it.

Did it to mine flashing a ROM I’d swear was the right one but utterly bricked, no power and wouldn’t even be talked to via cable from any of the fancy tools. Though apparently there might have been a special service cable that might have got it into the initial boot loader enough to try a reflash.

Anyway – watch out with rooting as some apps might refuse to work rooted, e.g. banking apps (Barclays in particular).