Welcome to Ask Jerry, where we talk about all the questions you might have about the smart things in your life. I’m Jerry and I’ve spent most of my life working with technology. I have an engineering and R&D background and have been involved with Android and Google for the past 15 years.
Ask Jerry
Ask Jerry is a column where we answer your burning Android/tech questions with the help of longtime Android Central editor Jerry Hildenbrand.
I’m also really good at digging into data about everything — that’s a big part of our job here at Android Central — and I love helping people (another big part of our job!). If you have questions about your technology, I’d love to discuss them.
Email me at [email protected], and I’ll try to sort things out. You can remain anonymous if you want, and we promise not to share anything we don’t cover here.
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What app is that? What should I do with it?
I haven’t updated the Google Partner Setup app since it appeared in the Play Store, should I do that?
The best and worst part of a smartphone are the apps. The right ones can entertain us, help us organize and do various useful things that make life easier. The bad ones follow what we do or worse. Somehow, we have to know the difference.
It can be difficult because sometimes an app is both good and bad. Remember that a free app is not free; just don’t waste money. You pay with an alternative currency in the form of data that the company deems useful.
It is a type of Google Partner Setup application. It’s part of the Google Mobile Services suite of software that companies like Samsung use under license from Google, not part of Android itself. It’s not open source, so no one outside of Google can peek under the hood and see exactly what it’s doing.
Officially, the Google Partner Setup application is a utility application for the proper functioning of the device. The company that manufactured your phone installed it in the system software.
It works like connecting apps with Google services or vendors to solve software problems. It’s important to understand that this is not the same as Google Ad Partners or Play Games even though they have a similar name. It’s in the Play Store because the app has been removed from the system to make it easier to update.
Most say that this is a must-have app and you can’t uninstall it. It’s true that it might not be needed, and while you can’t easily uninstall it, it’s easy to disable. But unless you know what you’re doing and are willing to reload the software on your phone, you probably shouldn’t because it (potentially) does so many different things.
To answer your question, I recommend that you update the app. I would never intentionally run an older version of any system app on my phone unless I’m 100% sure what the app does. But this puts the focus on the real problem — there are apps on our phones that we don’t know the purpose of.
Android is like any other operating system and is full of executable programs that make it work. The software that runs an iPhone, Chromebook, or any other laptop or tablet is the same way.
Sometimes it’s tempting to disable or uninstall some of these programs, with privacy and performance being two of the biggest reasons. Often this works and everything works normally without all the parts. Sometimes it doesn’t work. When a new version of Microsoft Windows comes out, you’ll see that there’s a lot of talk about it, and it takes a while for people to decide what’s safe to get rid of and what’s not.
Unfortunately, my best advice is to leave things alone. If you’re looking for advice in an article like this, you probably don’t have the resources or knowledge to determine exactly what removing or disabling an app does. Even worse, disabling the wrong app means you’ve forgotten the software on your phone and won’t be able to undo it.
If you’re determined, at least spend some time researching to find out what the app is, what it does, and what might happen if you disable or uninstall it. Remember, 99% of the time spent modifying software on your phone should be spent reading and reading.