Samsung's ever updating apps

I have found that Samsung phones are great: except for two things. One is that their external volume setting is too low (got around that by using a headset) and the other is the constant un-asked for app updates.

This has only become a problem of late as my phone SD expansion card got fried - oh, perhaps that is a third problem! This happens if you don't use a genuine Samsung SD card - so all my photos are over-loading the phone's on-board memory.

When the card first died, I went hunting for bloatware to ditch so I could keep the phone operational while waiting for a new expansion card. Unfortunately, Samsung comes with quite a bit of bloatware preinstsalled, and you can't actually remove it, or even disable it. You can 'force stop' on it, then tap the dropdown menu and 'restore factory settings' which gets rid of the updates. As a result, I have now gone back to factory settings for Evernote, Samsung Music, all the gaming kit and anything else that doesn't seem to stop the phone working.

However, that is not enough. Then you have to go and ensure that none of these will then autoupdate when the next push comes out of Google Playstore. Go in to each piece of kit and tap auto-update to off. Then tap auto-update off altogether. Yes, it will be a pain for the next android update, but it is better than being swamped by bloatware.

You would think that would do it, wouldn't you? But no. When you find that flaming Evernote has yet again added another 200Mb because it has updated, even though everything should be turned off, you will find out that you also have to go into the Galaxy Apps Store and do the same there.

Not the most user-friendly, but at least it stops you undoing updates 15 times (yes, it took me 15 times of experimentation to work out how to stop the updates). At last it seems to have stopped. Possibly.

Watch this space.


Sam