I can be a loyal mobile phone user, but I’m a realist as well. Shortly after my lament about the Nokia E71x‘s lack of screen real estate, I scoured Craigslist and purchased a used ATT Tilt phone for an absolute steal. Since Friday, I’ve been playing with this baby and while I’m getting reacquainted with using a stylus again, it’s very refreshing to be able to touch my screen to get around to stuff.
The awful part about dealing with ATT’s phone is the huge amount of uninstallable demo applications that are put on this phone. Twice, I performed a hard reset on this phone and I couldn’t figure out a way to remove the applications. Then, I turned to my good friend, Google, and Google did NOT disappoint me. It turns out that after a hard reset, the stock version of Windows Mobile 6.1 is installed on the phone. Then, shortly afterwards, a customization tool from ATT is run which then installs the abominations that are called demos from ATT’s partners. Thanks to the internet, I now have a craplet free phone and this post is my way of condensing the material I found online about removing the bloatware or demo applications (like Xpressmail, Blackberry connect, the silly games, ATT navigator, etc).
1) Grab 2 styluses. You’ll find out later, trust me. Now is not the time to argue with me. 🙂
2) Perform a hard reset of your HTC phone. First, make sure you’ve performed a backup of your phone’s contents. If you don’t have a microSD card, you can save the backup file to your phone and then, copy that file to your computer for safe keeping.
3) Access the hard reset option by touching the Windows key and going to “Settings”. Then, touch the “System” tab and tap “Clear Storage”. You will be asked to enter a series of numbers printed onscreen and to answer “YES” or “NO” if you want to go through with the reset.
4) Your device will go through the hard reset and you will told to ‘tap the screen’ once the device has gone through the hard reset.
5) This part is VERY important if you don’t want ATT’s crapware installed on the phone. Once you start calibrating the device, grab that second stylus or tip and place it into the ‘soft reset’ receptacle. Do not push the ‘soft reset’ button yet.
6) Once you are done calibrating the screen, the phone will load into the green Windows Mobile 6 default screen. The instant you see the green bar atop the phone, push the soft reset key. The time between finishing the screen calibration and seeing the first glimpse of the default green Today screen is less than 2 seconds.
7) When your phone restarts, you should not have any demo games installed. You should not have the OZ communication, Blackberry Connect software, Xpress mail or any Java midlets installed. If you do, you waited too late. Don’t believe me? Check my picture gallery below. 🙂
