So I recently got a cheap LG X Style phone, and it comes with Android 6.0.1. It only comes with 4 GB of internal storage, but "no problem," I thought, "I have an extra 32 GB SD card laying around I can put in it." Well, I was right about being able to put it in. As for being able to actually use it, that's another story. Most of the storage space is used up by the system and built-in apps. There are a few games I like to play for a few minutes on a daily basis, but they each use up between 600MB-1 GB for all their assets and whatnot. Now, this version of android pretends to move apps to the SD card (for the 1 or 2 that actually allow it), but it's only moving like a few kilobytes or single digit MB, so it might as well be disabled entirely. With these 3 games installed and many of the built-in apps disabled, I can forget installing anything else ever again, or ever being able to update any of these games when they require a new update from the Play Store, as even though the download is only a few MB, they claim to need hundreds more in free space to install.
Which brings me to this point: why does every Android app need hundreds of MB of storage? The Facebook app and that shitty messenger app can take up 300-500 EACH. Just the YouTube executable runs at about 180 MB, that's not counting any cached/buffered videos or user data or anything like that.
I know that root can bypass these limitations, but this phone and this version of the Android OS itself are so locked down, that there will NEVER be a root for it. And tell me why in the name of Christ do we need a goddamn exploit just to root the damn thing? There should be a backdoor or something that informs you that you will void your warranty or some shit, and just leave it at that. Instead, we get different layers of security (security for them, not the user) from Google, the phone manufacturer, and to top it all off, even the service carrier you have even adds their own security measures to make sure you don't enable any features they disabled.
Smartphones should be just like a personal computer, where you can do pretty much whatever you want with the OS you have installed on YOUR hardware, and the user bears any responsibility for what they do to/with it.
Which brings me to this point: why does every Android app need hundreds of MB of storage? The Facebook app and that shitty messenger app can take up 300-500 EACH. Just the YouTube executable runs at about 180 MB, that's not counting any cached/buffered videos or user data or anything like that.
I know that root can bypass these limitations, but this phone and this version of the Android OS itself are so locked down, that there will NEVER be a root for it. And tell me why in the name of Christ do we need a goddamn exploit just to root the damn thing? There should be a backdoor or something that informs you that you will void your warranty or some shit, and just leave it at that. Instead, we get different layers of security (security for them, not the user) from Google, the phone manufacturer, and to top it all off, even the service carrier you have even adds their own security measures to make sure you don't enable any features they disabled.
Smartphones should be just like a personal computer, where you can do pretty much whatever you want with the OS you have installed on YOUR hardware, and the user bears any responsibility for what they do to/with it.
