Most of the android phones I’ve had came preinstalled with something called “Mobile Services”. I normally remove it because it just keeps randomly installing apps and games that don’t want but I’ve never had an active phone plan on those phones. If I disabled it from my phone, would I still be able to send and receive calls and texts?

So far the only thing I have found out is that “Mobile Services” is an app that is only preinstalled on android phones who’s carrier is Tracfone.

  • vortexal@sopuli.xyzOP
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    9 hours ago

    I’d try that but I don’t want to end up finding out that disabling it permanently disables my phone’s service. My phone’s service is through Tracfone and they are the developers of the app.

    • trolololol@lemmy.world
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      5 hours ago

      There’s at least one way to reverse it, by wiping the phone clean during a total reset, like what you would do if you sell the phone.

      • vortexal@sopuli.xyzOP
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        5 hours ago

        I would consider doing that but I’d rather not have to go through the process of re-downloading all my apps and re-customizing my phone just because I disabled a potentially important app.

    • catloaf@lemm.ee
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      9 hours ago

      It won’t.

      Or at least it really shouldn’t. I can’t imagine that happening. I wouldn’t hesitate to do it on my own phone.

      • vortexal@sopuli.xyzOP
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        9 hours ago

        I would try but I don’t want to disable something if I don’t know for sure that it’s safe to disable.

        • BearOfaTime@lemm.ee
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          5 hours ago

          Disabling something on your phone will have no impact on your account.

          Without knowing the phone, and the exact package name, we have no idea what this is.

          Get the Universal Android Debloat Utility, it’s pretty good at letting you know what can be disabled.

          • vortexal@sopuli.xyzOP
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            5 hours ago

            I forgot to mention these in my previous comment but I’ve added some information about the app in my post. As for that app that you mentioned, I’ve never used ADB commands before and I don’t want to risk bricking my phone, so I don’t know if I’m going to use it.

          • vortexal@sopuli.xyzOP
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            5 hours ago

            It’s not the account that I’m worried about. It’s hard for me to explain what I’m actually concerned about. I guess an example would be that the SIM card becomes invalid or something. One of the phones where I disabled Mobile Services has an effectively permanent error at the top of the screen that says “invalid SIM card”.

      • vortexal@sopuli.xyzOP
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        8 hours ago

        Yes but it’s still possible and I have yet to see someone mention that they were able to disable it and still use their phone service.

        • yokonzo@lemmy.world
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          2 hours ago

          Yeah and a meteor could smash into your house in the next 30 minutes but I wouldn’t count on that either.

          The way apps work on android is, they are compartmentalized, if you disable a system app like this, the worst that will happen is some things may get wonky, if you enable it, it will start right back up again.

          It’s just a service, if it was something that tracphone wanted to absolutely keep you from disabling, they would have put it in the bootloader. It’s most likely just a marketing app that they get kickbacks for including on their phones

          Edit: Here, exactly like I said. My man you got this idea of a worst case scenario in your head with absolutely no evidence