One of the big issues with carrier branded phones is the fact that many times, they come with bloatware that can not be uninstalled. The HTC One M8 is not exempt from this practice and includes quite a bit of extra software preloaded by AT&T. The AT&T version is actually the second HTC One M8 I’ve had contact with, the first one being Sprint. The Sprint version included app as well, but they were really just icon shortcuts that took you to the PLay Store to download them. They could also be uninstalled. The AT&T version of the phone does not have that luxury. All apps are baked in and can only be disabled, not uninstalled. The following apps are what came on the AT&T version of the HTC One M8.

1. AT&T Visual Voicemail
2. AT&T DriveMode
3. AT&T Family Map
4. AT&T Locker
5. AT&T Mobile Locate
6. AT&T Navigator
7. AT&T Ready2Go
8. AT&T Smart Wi-Fi
9. AT&T Battery Manager
10. AT&T Data Manager
11. myAT&T
12. ISIS Wallet
13. Lookout Antivirus
14. Keeper Security
15. WildTangent Games
16. Famigo
17. YP.com
18. Kindle
19. Mobile TV
20. Beats Music
21. Scribble

As you can see, that is a ton of apps preloaded. These aren’t just shortcuts either, these are full apps. Of course there are also HTC apps loaded, but I won’t count those as those are loaded up with all HTC One M8 devices. Some of these apps are useful, while others are apps you will most likely never touch. Luckily, they don’t really take up that much space but I would have still loved to have the option of deleting unwanted apps. This isn’t the only phone though where I’ve seen AT&T add all these apps added to it. From my understanding, pretty much every Android phone they sell has most of all these apps installed on them as well. So it seems that the ability to delete bloatware is carrier based.

On a side note, the iPhone is still the only smartphone I’ve ever seen that comes free of carrier bloat.