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kiwigander

231 posts

Master Geek


#99158 13-Mar-2012 23:09
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Five days ago I bought an Alcatel One Touch 918D as an emergency replacement for my crashed and unresettable Vodafone NZ HTC Magic.  I got the 918D at Dick Smith in Sydney - the Magic died on the flight over.  Long story - can elaborate if anyone's interested.

Anyway, today while trying to update some apps I kept getting "insufficient space" error messages.  So I tried to uninstall a lot of apps I didn't recognise or knew I'd never use.  A lot of them seem to be core apps and can't be uninstalled.  Why a pinball game has to be core, search me.  Uninstalling updates did free up a bit of room.

One app that can't be uninstalled is the one in the following picture.



(Edit: The phone is running Android 2.3.5 - coincidence?)

It's got the following permissions.

Your personal information: read contact data, write contact data
Network communication: full Internet access
Your accounts: contacts data in Google accounts, Google mail, use the authentication credentials of an account
Storage: modify/delete SD card contents
Phone calls: read phone state and memory
System tools: modify global system settings, prevent phone from sleeping, write subscribed feeds

So many apps seem to have such extensive permissions that I don't know whether the above are OK, dangerous or uninterpretable.

Can anyone explain this mystery app to me?  Thank you in advance.

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stevenz
2802 posts

Uber Geek


  #595040 14-Mar-2012 12:45
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Pretty sure it's an instant messaging app. It is an "official" app as it's in the Chinese Samsung firmware releases as well. Short of rooting the phone and freezing/uninstalling it, there's not much you can do about it.






kiwigander

231 posts

Master Geek


  #595058 14-Mar-2012 13:36
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Thank you for that. 

I'm not sure whether I want to bother rooting the phone; it'll depend on whether I keep running out of space.

With respect to rooting (why did they have to choose that abbreviation!), Google yields a lot of pages that look dodgy.  Is there a site whose information or guidance you would trust?  I don't want to turn a brand new phone into a brick.

stevenz
2802 posts

Uber Geek


  #595077 14-Mar-2012 14:06
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They didn't choose it, Android is based on a Unix derived (Linux) architecture which has always had the primary administrator account as "root", hence gaining admin access is "rooting" the device.

XDA or Rootzwiki, or androidnz.net would be my preferred choices. The first 2 are largely populated with cretins but XDA in particular is pretty much the home of Android hackery on the interweb.

Try this thread: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1486583

Looks like it might be a bit hit & miss for that model.




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