mikewsmith – Member
It’s entirely possible just get a non branded phone from someone like carphonewharehouse and you can still get the deal on contract etc just non of the crap. alternatively note down the network settings and flash the phone back to standard.

My s3 has minimal branding and is unlocked from day 1.

It’s not case of Android taking from Ios but the networks demanding some way to enhance & make money

I know it’s possible, I’ve got a Galaxy Nexus. Point is that normal people just go to a network and order a Desire, an S3 or whatever they’ve seen advertised and when it turns up it has loads of Orange/Vodaphone/EE whatever crap which you can’t uninstall plus you have to wait ages for any updates! It gives Android a very cheap and shitty user experience IMHO.

The Desire was particularly brilliant as it only left you with 70 mb free for apps thanks to orange’s useless crapware which mostly duplicated other stuff already on the phone (maps, app store, messaging, etc).

bruneep – ;-D
Just download a stock firmware (non branded) and flash to the phone using odin. I bought a T mobile/orange phone off ebay. Now its unbranded.

You can, but you shouldn’t have to. Besides, you can’t always (locked bootloaders, tricky flash procedures on some phones etc).

I’m as big an android fanboy as you’ll find, but Apple really gets it right here IMHO.

I downloaded the upgrade yesterday, I’m still searching around the phone to see what’s changed..
SG3 on 4.1.2 now.

Anyone got a simple ” this bits changed ” lowdown??

A couple of things you should see are the multi window control (Open settings\Dsiplay, tick/untick Multi Window) and music player tab on headphone insert.

careful if you use a car dock

unbranded phone here upgraded to Jellybean before Christmas

main problem is the old audio out and charge facility via USB has been disabled so your car dock wont work
well it will work as far as holding the phone but you cant charge the fecker or listen to your banging tunes thro car stereo

pretty annoying and a known fault

Samsung are “working on it”

🙁

Point is that normal people just go to a network and order a Desire, an S3 or whatever they’ve seen advertised and when it turns up it has loads of Orange/Vodaphone/EE whatever crap which you can’t uninstall plus you have to wait ages for any updates! It gives Android a very cheap and shitty user experience IMHO.

I have to agree with you, I was recently explained what the point of getting just a sim card was… basically you can buy the phone that you want and then get the card to connect to a network. Its far cheaper becuase you’re not paying for the mark up the the network puts on the actual mobile phone.

I got mines here but there are lots of options available with other networks. Hope this helps 🙂

You can of course delete, disable or freeze bloatware apps without gaining root access, then rearrange all the network provided apps to the back of your app drawer where you’ll never have to see them again, it’s what I do on getting a new phone and have never had any problems with memory etc.

I tend to have shortcuts to eurosport, BBC iPlayer, maps and satnav on my home screen with live widgets for weather, Twitter, Facebook etc on there too. To use my phone you wouldn’t know it had come from ‘3’ as all their crap has been moved, deleted, disabled etc.

updated my S2 last week via kies and its been nothing but trouble since

constantly hanging, and restarts itself every few days 🙁