Following the ban on Chinese apps and the social media outrage calling for a boycott of Chinese products, smartphone makers had been struggling on multiple fronts. Firstly, the disrupted supply chain has meant that devices have been in short supply and users have been vociferously asking to remove the banned Chinese apps from being pre-installed on the phones.
Realme, which is set to announce a new phone – Realme 6i has stated that in compliance with the GOI directive Realme 6i would not come with any of these apps preinstalled. It’s CEO Madhav Sheth took to Twitter to announce the decision.
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Your Data Privacy is very important for us, and with "Dare to Leap" spirit, we have taken specific actions. pic.twitter.com/7GtVM5tOA1July 23, 2020
The post further reads that the “Clean up storage” useful in deleting cache and temporary files from the phone will also not be present. To remind Clean Master app comes baked into the Realme OS as a “Clean up storage” feature and it cannot be easily uninstalled.
The post further clarified that the banned apps present on the Realme phones, already in the wild, can be uninstalled like any regular app. It will also release a software patch early next month to remove the cache cleaner feature.
Follow up statement on concerns raised, and general updates. We are listening! https://t.co/wzDdhZBR0a pic.twitter.com/DJRJAICbu6July 16, 2020
Earlier, even Poco faced backlash when the apps were found to be pre-installed on the recently launched Poco M2 Pro. The phone was launched in the first week of July, while these apps were banned on June 29. The company had to later release a statement saying since the firmware was already installed, these apps were present on the newly launched phone. However, they can be easily uninstalled. It is worth noting that the Clean Master app comes in as a core feature on all Xiaomi’s devices as well.
Though the post also states that the company is “evaluating the cleaner app issue,” it is unclear if Poco or Xiaomi is planning to release any patch to remove the said app from the phones.
Seeing the charged sentiments, it is good for Realme to come out upfront to tackle the issue around these apps. However, the buck doesn’t stop at removing the “banned” applications, the smartphone makers still need to do a lot to ensure user privacy and data security. Well, that's a topic that probably calls for a separate and detailed report altogether.
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