While checking my “Data saver” setting on my Fairphone 4, I stumbled across some weird chinese apps. All having “friDay” written in the title. So far so good, but now the suspicious part.
They only appear in the Data Saver setting when activating “show system apps”. They do not appear in the settings menu under “Apps” or somewhere else in any settings. When searching on the Internet, I couldnt find anything but one of these apps in the Google play store. Here it is: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gohappy.mobileapp
Has anyone else found those apps somewhere on an Android phone? I have never installed any app like that. And does anyone know if its something malicious, or how I Gould get rid of these apps?
So it might possibly be some kind of bloatware? Would be nice to know. Because I can find one of those apps in the google play store. But the button shows “install” so it must be something else I guess?
Those apps are made by a Taiwanese provider, a country the FP4 is also sold in. I suspect it’s the same as with the Orange and Telekom apps that come preloaded but disabled with the stock OS and get activated if you use one of those providers.
No idea if the Taiwanese apps should be in the general FPOS release, you’d have to contactsupport to get that confirmed
That report has been opened by the person that also created the thread I mentioned above. I’m missing a bit of research on their part there, just because they are meant for a Taiwanese audience doesn’t automatically make them bloatware.
While I do agree that most carrier apps are absolutely useless, depending on the network at least same of them can be necessary to access all the network’s functionality.
Depending on the market people might also expect them to exist on their phones, I personally have no idea what services are popular in Taiwan
Thank you.
I’ll try to translate it back to German, my native language (and that of my phone).
Einstellungen - Apps & Benachrichtigungen - Erweitert - Spezieller App-Zugriff - Zugriff auf alle Dateien
3 dots - System-Apps anzeigen
But I think it would be a better way to select “display all ### apps” (ALLE ### APPS ANZEIGEN). 3 dots remains the same: display system apps.
Fortunately no such app on my Android 11 Fairphone 4.
I really hope those apps turn out to be innocent and not active. Unknown, untrusted and not manually installed apps on my phone make me feel uneasy. I’m considering getting an alternative, open OS like Calyx…
Deepl translates the completely chinese-titled app as
Living from the heart
Live from the heart
(G…gle translates it to “far away heart life”)
(whatever this might mean… )
The other 4 apps (starting with “friDay”) are translated as
Video & Audio
Wealth Management+
Shopping
Music
(which fits more or less the icons…)
Hi,
You can remove the FriDay App if you don’t need it for shopping. FriDay App is only a internet shopping App.
Subsidiary company of FET (Far-EasTone Telecomm) company is the agent of Fairphone4 in Taiwan ROC.
FriDay shopping App is owned by the subsidiary company of FET.
I would love to remove them, especially if they’re a commercial shopping app. But how? FriDay does not appear among the installed, inactive or system apps…
Like the Telekom app or the Orange app store they are disabled and only get activated if you use the specific network provider.
If you want them completely removed from your phone, you’ll either have to root it (but messing with system partitions that severely will break updates) or switch to one of the available custom ROMs.
)