Thread by @SavageAryan007

[UPDATED THREAD on Realme UI's ad situation]

As some of you who followed me from the start might remember, I made a thread on January 1st bashing realme for the addition of ads in realme UI.

Almost half a year on, here's an update.

See ⬇️

https://twitter.com/SavageAryan007/status/1609583143690063872?t=AdIIVTv5YuAXNMralDtXYw&s=19

(1/17)

For starters, I would like to reiterate that when I bought the GT Neo3 150W and GT Master Edition, all we had in realme UI was just spammy notifications, and bloatware, could be easily disabled.

But realme has made it a virtually uncleanable skin over the past year...

(2/17)

For starters, the app scanning page after installing any Play Store application remains, but it is implemented differently.

On my dad's GT ME, it shows ads. On my GT Neo3 150W, it doesn't.

Also present on newer phones, can be disabled in settings, allowed after Android 13 OTA.

Newer realme phones also have the realme App Store, which forces people into installing a lot of junk apps that they do not need, alongside annoying pop-ups and ads in the "App management" settings page?

This is bad on so many levels! Here's it on realme 11 Pro+:

(4/17)

Found this nasty enough? Wait, there's more!

First off, the now infamous "Personalised Search" toggle.

Here's my dad's GT Master Edition, and my friend's Narzo 50 Pro showing the same shit:

A red dot which coerces people to re-enable the ads:

(5/17)

And of course, the pop-up which we have to toggle "Cancel" twice on, then say "Don't show this again" and then Tap "Cancel" on third time.

I can confirm this and the red dot re-appear after every single goddamn OTA update, doesn't matter how many things you disable!

(6/17)

The ads even cycle through the app drawer with every single swipe, as shown below!

So what do we have here?
1. An app drawer which cycles though ads.
2. An ads in search toggle you'll definitely get irritated with (my dad and my friend did).

Wait, it gets worse...

(7/17)

There is this MIUI Super Wallpapers APK I downloaded from an XDA article page back in February.

So it has been there on my phone for months, now imagine my surprise when my phone shows me this, just once, no repeats, all of a sudden! What did I do? Open Amazon!

(8/17)

And if the app really was malware, it should show up everytime I open Amazon, right?

No, because it never re-appeared again, despite me trying to replicate it multiple times, example shown below.

I would like to remind you that my phone cost me ₹36k.

(9/17)

Now, this may not be a realme-only thing, but there was something else I noticed in the Phone Manager app which it redirected me to.

What the f*ck is this BS!?! You're telling me the app *scans* everything in the background in a really creepy way?

This is very horrible!😳

Okay, I'll get to your possible arguments now:

(A) Yes, you can debloat through ADB, but not everyone has a laptop (myself included), and others may not have the knowledge and technical know-how to do this [95% of phone users]

Just think about a normal non-techie user!

(11/17)

(B) Yes, you can still disable it through settings, and that's what I did.

But that personalised search toggle will still bother you everytime, and I'm pretty sure the company will mark realme App Store and Phone Manager apps with 'this affects system functionality' BS.

(12/17)

Hence, this is why I said that realme UI is uncleanable.

Even if you disable everything, there are still asterisks everywhere that you cannot remove, and the worst part is that many of their older phones got these shits through OTA updates.

(13/17)

The problem is that some of the ColorOS users say to pick realme UI over FuntouchOS, even I noticed this trend recently.

But, FuntouchOS is cleanable and doesn't bother us later, as demonstrated by @Chaitanya7483 on his newly bought Vivo V27 to me

Realme UI will irritate you!

And yes, the bloat. Here's the realme 11 Pro bloatware out-of-the-box.

65+ bloatware apps. Do we really deserve this for hardware that isn't the most aggressively priced thing in the world.

I'm certainly not going to recommend this UI to any buyer from now on!

(15/17)

I also apologize to everyone who bought realme phones on my recommendations in the past and is suffering because of such irritating money-milking schemes.

And yes, this has no bearing on OPPO and OnePlus phones specifically because their phones are much cleaner than this.

So this is the current state of realme UI 4.0 on almost every realme phone.

In conclusion, it is now an effectively uncleanable skin, and which you absolutely will almost certainly be annoyed with.

They can still fix this by rolling back everything like MIUI did.

(17/17)

Tagging some peeps for better reach

Please retweet if possible:

@MicrosoftvApple @MicrosoftvAlts @TechWhirlUlt @ChdryTanishk @Hrshita_kshyp @AnshuTechblog @Cartidise @rikhiltaneja @that_chand @bluefym @ReBoot23 @thegadgetshub @ItsKanti

Forgot to mention one thing.

The Phone Manager toggle just sits in the notification panel even if you accidentally use the app even once.