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Monday, September 02, 2013

Annoying OTA Ads by GiONEE Smartphones

Android pushed smartphone usage to a level, where people are just pushed to use it for many reasons. And for some reasons it's always nice to get Over-The-Air (OTA) update on your phone. OTA means you don't have to connect your handset to a PC/Mac; just download the essential packages over phone's WiFi/Mobile Internet and get it updated.

Most Indian handset manufacturers like Micromax, Lava, Karbonn etc don't offer OTA update on their handsets. (Does Micromax even offer Android version update to any of their smartphones, apart from Canvas ones?) Lava offers, but to get the update you have to visit Lava's service centers.

Anyway GiONEE, a new handset company, directly from China has been launched in India, and they have some quite-good smartphones under their portfolio, and they offer OTA update on them.

GiONEE misuse the OTA feature and they push advertisement over OTA. Most of them are irritating, showing over the drop-down menu. Check the screenshots.


Screenshot #1

Screenshot #2

Screenshot #3

 Screenshot #4
 As of now I could not root this phone, and hence there is almost no chance to remove the settings to prevent the ads.

Solution:
The solution is pretty simple, and you don't have to root the device. 

Just long press the ad, and there an option 'App Info' will appear. Open App Info and disable the app.
I found that the Chinese ads are from Temple Run (came preloaded) and other ads are via V5 Music. None of them are system app, so you can disable them with no problem.

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