WARNING: Here be dragons. I don't work for SE but was surprised that my Arc S came with some apps that you cannot remove without rooting your device. Seeing as internal memory space is already a bit limited I decided to root so I could run the wonderful Titanium Backup app and remove the stuff I had no interest in. I'm posting this in case others wish to do the same but I accept no liability if you remove something important and your phone crashes or won't boot. If you do screw it up then you should be able to use the PC Companion tool to restore the stock image.
FWIW I have an Xperia Arc S running the .42 firmware image.
- Root your phone using the Xperia 2011 Easy Rooting Toolkit v3.0 (zergRush Exploit). Full details can be found here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1320350 It's very easy and happens so quickly you'll wonder if it did anything at all.
- After restarting your device you can check it's rooted by seeing if you now have Superuser and Terminal Emulator apps in your app drawer.
- Next download Titanium Backup from the Market. There is a free version available.
- Fire up Titanium Backup and tap the Backup/Restore button at the top of the screen. You will be greeted with a long list of apps. To remove an app simply tap it and choose Un-install but I urge you to use the Backup option first to back it up to your SD card!. Here is the list of apps that I removed from my phone:
- Adobe Flash (I don't bother with web sites that require Flash)
- Adobe Reader (reading PDFs on my device isn't something I do)
- Anonymous Usage Stats (I don't need to send stuff to SE)
- Chinese Keyboard (I'm not Chinese)
- Crash Monitor (phone is fine without it)
- Data Monitor (I use a separate O2 UK app for monitoring data)
- devicemonitor (phone is fine without it)
- Email (I use gmail exclusively)
- FOTA Kill (sounds like something the CIA want on your phone *cough*)
- Friends games & applications (I'd really rather not know)
- Friends music & videos (ack, a friend of mine posts a 100 YouTube videos on FaceBook a day - drives me nuts)
- FUN&downloads (if you say so!)
- Home screen tips (a widget that gives you Android tips)
- Lets Golf (no, let's not)
- Magic Smoke Wallpapers (goodbye battery)
- Music Visualization Wallpapers (goodbye battery)
- OfficeSuite (I use Google Docs instead)
- POBox Touch (something to do with the Japanese keyboard)
- QC SEMC Service (some quality control app? Removing it hasn't done any harm)
- R2R Client (Ready To Run - not sure what it is but phone is fine without it)
- Retail Demo (I don't work in a phone shop)
- Sakura (Chinese keyboard skin)
- SecureClockService (this might be DRM related - which I avoid like the plague - and removing it has done me no harm)
- Setup guide (I'm cool with not having this)
- SIM Toolkit (I don't even have an icon for this anyway)
- Sony Ericsson Sync (deprecated by Sony anyway)
- Sony Ericsson Sync client wizard (ditto)
- Street View (never use it)
- Support (I use this forum!)
- Talk (I hate Google Talk as it can drain your battery if you don't disable it)
- TrackID (I use Shazam)
- Update center (removing this will disable OTA updates but I use PC Companion for updates)
- Wisepilot (I use Google Maps)
- Woody (Chinese Keyboard skin)
- Xperia Hot Shots (No thanks)
Your mileage may vary but I went from 320MB or storage to 420MB. Any my device feels snappier and I bet my battery life is better without running extra services.
There is a more comprehensive list to be found here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1089470
Exercise caution and if you're not sure then you can use the Freeze option in Titanium Backup to stop the app from running without deleting it.
REMEMBER TO BACK THESE APPS UP BEFORE YOU USE THE UN-INSTALL OPTION!
