Despite Samsung claiming that it has toned down TouchWiz on the Galaxy S6 and S6 edge, the handsets come with 56 apps pre-installed. For comparison, the Galaxy Note 4 only comes with 50 apps pre-installed. 

The list of pre-installed apps on Samsung’s latest Galaxies include Google’s suite of apps and services, a few apps from Samsung itself like S Voice and S Health, Microsoft’s OneDrive, OneNote and more. Samsung has also pre-installed some popular apps like Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp on the handsets.

The pre-loaded apps in itself should not be a problem if Samsung allowed users to remove them, which is what an XDA user had earlier claimed. However, as it turns out, Samsung is only allowing users to disable apps, and not remove them completely from the device. The company must be given due credit for allowing users to disable more apps than before though, which even includes the pre-loaded Calculator app.

Keep in mind that out of these 56 apps, nearly 15 are from Google, and are pre-installed in every Android device. Others like Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook are used by almost everyone, so not many users should complain about them. The pre-loaded Microsoft apps might not be used by everyone, but are useful as well, and cannot be branded as bloatware.

The side effect of all these pre-loaded apps is that the 32GB Galaxy S6 and S6 edge only come with around 24GB of free storage space. The amount of free storage space is not particularly bad, especially when you consider the fact that the 32GB Moto X also has roughly 24.81GB of storage space out of the box.

By disabling unneeded apps, users can make sure that the apps don’t consume unnecessary resources, but they will still occupy space on the internal storage of the device. When Gizmodo contacted Samsung about the ability to remove pre-loaded apps, this is what Samsung had to say:

Simplicity is critical for usability and functionality, so Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge offer a refined and optimized user experience and the offering of core and preloaded apps has been streamlined. Some apps can be uninstalled while some can be disabled, and this varies by region and carrier. Further, 40% of the features and steps have been deleted compared to previous models.

While it is disappointing to see that most pre-loaded apps on the Galaxy S6 cannot be uninstalled, the positive side is that despite all the pre-installed apps, the Galaxy S6 and S6 edge absolutely crush the benchmarks and perform admirably in day to day usage.