[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.