Huawei Sonic u8650, Im building custome ROM, need help with list of apps I can remove

Question

Im building Huawei Sonic costume rom for myself. And I will share it with all of you ofcorse. I own this phone for 2 days now, its great, my first Android :) And I tryed all custome roms and they all suck. Ok, ok they are ok, and have overclock and whatnot, but what I want is a clean and simple rom. I want stock rom, thats cleared of all the crap apps, and rooted.

So my rom will be moded stock rom, without stock apps, and it will be rooted.

Now I need your help since I own this phone for 2 days now, I dont know what system apps can I remove safely, and what are the apps that joust needs to be there for the phone to function?

So can you write a list of all proccesses that can be safely removed? And we can work through this together and build a plain Sonic rom, without all the crap and with Market so you can download your own stuff. Its a nice phone but not that powerfull, so lets make it mean and lean :D

I joust need a list of apps & services I can safely remove, or the list of ones that must be on the phone for it to work?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Usually completely de-branding an android device is not as easy as just removing the "extra" system apps. Manufacturers and carriers often modify the devices' firmware to a great extent, so simply deleting "bloat" apps would seriously cripple that device's functionality. ROM makers usually either try to minimize the prevalence of manufacturer/carrier customizations by trial and error (remove APK -> see what breaks -> rinse, repeat), or go all out and build a completely new ROM that is based on "vanilla" Android from AOSP (Android Open Source Project) source code which is released by Google.

AOSP code contains only the Android Operating System, and does not contain the kernel or hardware drivers for any devices. Those pieces are most often proprietary, and therefore non open-source. Rare exceptions are handsets and tablets in Google's "Nexus" line, which are intended for developers (even then, drivers are provided pre-built by the manufacturer, since Google doesn't make the hardware.) Developers either have to use the closed drivers as-is which greatly limits what can be modified in the OS itself, or somehow find a way to make similar/older drivers function in AOSP. Furthermore, AOSP code must be modified to work for the specific device it's being ported to.

Needless to say, the effort to get an AOSP-based ROM onto a new device is not an easy undertaking. There are a few projects that do attempt this. The most famous ones are CyanogenMod and MIUI. While MIUI attempts to enhance the user interface, CyanogenMod (usually shortened to "CM") tries to stick as close to the AOSP source as possible, while providing behind-the-scenes tweaks and enhancements.

Currently your device is not officially supported by wither CM or MIUI teams, but there are several "unofficial" ports that you can install. Those would be a good start to see what it would take to build your "own" ROM.