It's been called spam, bloatware, crap, carrier garbage, junk icons and much more. They are those pesky little icons you get when you first fire up a new device or load a new OS. Your carrier pushes various shortcuts that link to downloads for games, apps and other carrier junk. On my BlackBerry Bold 9900 I have icons for Bejweled, Need for Speed Shift, PAC-MAN, AT&T Code Scanner, The Weather Channel and others that all landed on my device when the service books were sent when first installing my OS.
Now normally you can simply hide these icons (highlight the icon, choose Menu then Hide Icon) and they won't show again -- however on the latest leaked OS I installed (7.0.0.353) the icons magically reappear at will. I've never had this happen before and it's nothing less than frustrating, but there is a simple solution. Since you can't fully remove the icons, the best bet is to create a junk folder for all of them and then hide the entire folder. This will keep the icons out of sight and out of mind regardless of whether they are individually hidden or not. To do this, follow these simple steps (keep in mind the menu items may vary by OS)
- Press Menu then choose Add Folder
- Name your folder Junk (or whatever you choose)
- Highlight the bloatware icon, press Menu then Move to Folder
- Choose your Junk folder
- After you do this for all of your bloatware, highlight the Junk folder then press Menu and choose Hide Icon
That's it! Your junk folder is now hidden as well as all of the items it contains, so while they'll technically still be there, they are now hidden so you won't have to see them and they won't get in the way.
If you have any BlackBerry tips of your own you think should be featured in the blogs, send them along to tips(at)crackberry.com