Motorola Spoiled a Good Budget Phone With Bloatware

Motorola's 2024 Moto G Power impresses with its soft-touch back and contoured edges at a $300 price point, despite an underwhelming camera and LCD panel. Except one thing: the bloatware. The Verge: Scroll through the app drawer and you'll see a handful of automatically downloaded "folders." They are not folders; they are apps. I first encountered them on last year's Moto G Stylus 5G, and I hate them very much. There are three main offenders -- Shopping, Entertainment, and GamesHub -- and each of these apps acts as a little hub. Icons for apps that you have legitimately downloaded will appear in the corresponding "folder." You'll also find tons of other suggested apps to download -- pages and pages of them! Apps as far as the eye can see! Dismissing the suggested apps section replaces it with a "Discover" section. In the shopping app, it invites you to "Unlock the power of shopping" with links to buy stuff like kitschy Easter decor from TJ Maxx. Mercifully, there's a toggle to hide this section. These apps are all made by a company called Swish, and you can't opt out of downloading any of them during the setup process. You can (and should!) opt out of downloading a third-party lock screen from a different service called Glance. The more I dig into the software on this phone, the more I hate it. The preinstalled weather app is festooned with ads and even more suggested apps, plus pithy insights like "Gotta love air conditioning at these high levels of humidity." If you tap the option to remove ads, a pop-up asks you to pay $4 for 1Weather Pro.

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