[comm_it]

Surely this is more of a provider issue than a manufacturer?

I could be wrong, I live in the UK and I've never had any specific apps come installed on my phone. Nothing except a network's app to check your balance/plan usage, which is easily uninstalled.

[jimworm]

This particular HTC Desire was bought in Hong Kong.

Things I don't use, don't get updates for and can't uninstall: Entertainment, EXpresso, Finance, Football, Footprints, Friend Stream, Games, Horse Racing, Info Easy Reader, Invest Pro (for CSL only), Magic Smoke Wallpapers, Musicholic, MyNet, Peep, Plurk, Smart Traveller, Social Network, Stocks, Studio On Demand.

If any knowledgeable person knows if the above names are actually useful tie-ins for things I actually do use, please speak up here.

All these apps supposedly take up 0.0B of space. Perhaps some of that magical space could be used to give me Android > 2.2, and give HTC a reputation for caring for their customers.

[sabret00the]

I live in the UK too and if you buy a HTC it comes pre-loaded with Sense and other apps like Adobe Reader, Email, etc. Now these apps can be useful, that goes without question. However then there's apps that aren't useful like Peep. Now given that Twitter comes pre-installed, why do you need HTC's Twitter app? At one point HTC were shipping Facebook for Sense and Facebook for Android. What sense does that make?

As for the SIM Toolkit. I'm now sure how that gets on there, but it appears to be there even after flashing a custom ROM.

[gruturo]

The SAT (SIM Application Toolkit) is... surprise, on the SIM card itself. It won't go away when flashing a new ROM - it will appear in any SAT-aware phone you stick the SIM into - even a 10 year old feature phone. It's mainly a relic of the noughties and dumbphones, think of it as a simple menu wrapper system which can compose and fire off Short Messages and USSD (xx#) codes on your behalf, so you don't have to remember that 101# is "check my credit" (varies by operator and country, there's no standard). They have some useful stuff (menus and shortcuts to check your balance or control functions like voice mail or sms-to-fax ), lots of less useful stuff (news, sports, weather etc.) and of course sleazier operators love to include menu entries which will fire off non-free SMS or subscribe you to crap without you realizing it.

[comm_it]

You're referring to their UI suite, Sense. Peep and those other apps are HTC products, and part of their own (customised) Android experience.

I think there's a difference between a manufacturer's own UI and corresponding apps, and the sort of crap that gets shovelled onto the American handsets.

Edit: Actually I've just checked and my phone does have Adobe Reader! Didn't even notice that there... Oops.