The iPhone, just like any other smartphone made by major phone manufacturers, comes with a large number of pre-installed apps that are very rarely opened or used by the owners. In the case of the iPhone, these apps are located in special folders or somewhere on the smartphone’s screen.
Last week, Google announced that Android users soon be able to remove the pre-installed apps. It looks like Apple thought that Google’s decision was pragmatic so they decided to allow iPhone users to delete those obsolete apps as well.
Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, recently hinted that there is a stong possibility that iPhone users could uninstall all the unwanted default apps. Cook warned, however, that deleting some apps could strongly affect the device’s performance since a large number of the default apps are linked to some important processes of the phone.
The company is currently working on a way for detecting the apps that do not have any such connection. It sounds like an easy task, but considering the amount of processes a complex operating system like the iOS is running in the background, the programmers at Apple will surely have a hard time making these changes.
As Tim Cook declared that this function was long discussed by Apple programmers, and after seeing that people were eager for this option, the company decided that it was about time they looked into it.
The iPhone comes with a bundle of pre-installed apps that are rarely used by the device’s owners, such as the Safari web browser, Stocks, Tips, Mail, or the Apple Watch app. Users reported that these apps along with some others are taking up precious amounts of storage space. Considering that the low-end version of the iPhone is equipped with only 16GB of storage space, every MB counts.
Tim Cook didn’t announce the date on which users will be allowed to uninstall the pre-installed apps. However, Cook declared that new details on the subject will come out soon.
What is certain is that the iOS 9 will not give its users the ability to delete the junk apps. But Apple promised that their new operating system will be smaller in size and that it will save more battery life than it’s predecessor.
Complaints about the iOS 9 erupted when beta testers found that the digital assistant Siri remained on regardless of the efforts of the users to close it. This issue has lead to some privacy concerns, but Tim Cook said that when the app is idle it does not have access to any information, since all of it is stored on the user’s device and is not sent back to the company servers.
Photo Credits pixabay
