There's a few good ideas in here
, like home security and baby cams ...

I tore it apart, pried random bits off the circuit boards, then hit it with a hammer. A lot.

I get it, my cheep android phone from China came from the factory with adware built into the OS. You can't get rid of it! It re-installs a bunch of apps in the back ground and if you uninstall them they just come back. But I found you can force stop them so they take no action, (but don't uninstall)  then the shitware sees they are still installed and relaxes. Worked for quite a while now.

I tore it apart, pried random bits off the circuit boards, then hit it with a hammer. A lot.

Your ... IPhone?

I get it, my cheep android phone from China came from the factory with adware built into the OS. You can't get rid of it! It re-installs a bunch of apps in the back ground and if you uninstall them they just come back. But I found you can force stop them so they take no action, (but don't uninstall)  then the shitware sees they are still installed and relaxes. Worked for quite a while now.

What kind of preinstalled shit?

I've done it to an Android, an iPhone, and pre-smart phones.

I also did it to one of those stupid handheld scanners from Target. I took it home with me and smashed it to hell.

I also smashed the fuck out of a Dell laptop that stopped working years ago. I took it down to the basement, stood on top of my washer, and repeatedly dropped a 50 lb dumbbell on top of it. Whenever my roommates and I would have people over at the time, once people would get drunk I'd talk them into standing on the washer and dropping dumbbells on things.

You are a wild man Emp. Did that big guy dent your washer?

In other news my state is on fire and there is a layer of ash on my car this morning. I've seen the weird light outside from the high altitude smoke, but I've never had ash covering my car before. I thought a fucking volcano went off.

Someone watched late-night tv ....

It's currently 4:30am  here, what do you think.
But I NEVER watch TV .bitch

What kind of preinstalled shit?

The main ingredient seems to be something called "master in android" This typically is a valid app to teach how to program for android devices. But in this case is a piece of shit that refuses to go the fuck away. It's not the real app and "restoring to factory" won't dislodge it. It is actually built into the os.

Have you tried rooting it?

No but if it becomes more a problem I will give it a try. I lost a bunch of pictures last time when I did the reset to factory.

Two different things ....
I'd root the fucker, personally ...

Hell, I wanna root MY phone but I can't find a way to do it yet ...

Well there ya go!

Most of the generic, and the Chinese phones can be rooted though ...

Some of the newer ones that are "assigned" to specific carriers, well, they lock the phones and the bootloaders, and make it very hard to root ...

You can easily turn them into door stops. 

I don't think I dented the washer but I chipped the concrete floor.

Honestly the biggest reason I stick with Apple now is the crap on phones. They have some crap on the iPhone I would like to be able to delete, but it's not nearly as bad as the other phones I've had. And Apple seems to be slightly better about data than some of the other companies.

I've had a couple of Samsungs (for work and one for personal use) and you get Android, then you get some shitty Samsung apps on top of that, then Verizon loaded more shitty apps on top of that. Some of the crap you can't delete and I was never going to bother rooting the phone.