Installing G+ app on Android phone w/o Gchat

Factual Questions
1

I am posting this on behalf of a friend. She has an Android phone (I do not know the make/model but I can ask if it is relevant) and wants to access Google Plus from it. Apparently the most recent app update rolled in a Gchat app. She neither wants nor needs Gchat on her phone, and the Gchat app takes up too much space on her phone. She would like to know if it is possible to uninstall the chat app while leaving the G+ app.

I did some preliminary Googling on her behalf but didn’t really find anything so I figured I’d ask here.

2

I’m pretty sure she can’t.

I have an Android phone and here’s how it apparently works.

First, I assume the application in question is called Messenger with a red icon and small plus sign in it. If this is correct, no you probably cannot uninstall it. When you open that application, it simply opens the Google+ application, but defaults to a different screen or page within the G+ application.

If the application in question is the one simply called “talk”, then also no. That one opens an application much more similar to the desktop program Google Talk, but still has no option of uninstallation.

3

That doesn’t seem right…I’m looking at my app drawer right now I have have Google+, a red icon with ‘g+’ in it, and a different app called Messenger, which has the standard chat bubble with a + in it.

However, you are correct that you can’t have one without the other. If I look at my apps in my app list in the settings, only Google+ is listed, because it installs Messenger along with it. But if she’s worried about app space, the G+ app itself takes up the majority of the space that G+ and Messenger combined do.

But the OP said ‘GChat’, which I do not have anywhere on my phone, in the app drawer or app list in settings. In fact, near as I can tell, there is no Google app called “GChat.”

4

Sorry, I’m the one who said Gchat. My friend’s original post was this:

It looks like this can’t be done, from what you guys are saying.

5

Huh…that doesn’t make sense.

“Taking up space” to me means storage space. And taking up storage space would in no way affect how an app runs. If she means it’s using RAM, then I can sort of see that making sense, but that would imply she’s using the chat app (which I assume is Messenger), but it sounds like she isn’t.

It’s possible that Google+ itself is taking too much RAM to run, which could be possible.

Can you ask her what model phone she has? Certain Android phones are actually pretty sub-par.

6

What is not right about what I said?

I have the G+ application and yeah it has the red g+ icon. Then there’s the Messenger application and corresponding icon. Opening the messenger application takes you to the G+ application, the chat section.

Or did you mean “not right” in the sense that they shouldn’t do that or something else like that? EDIT: It’s more than likely just two icons for one application, which wouldn’t “take up” a noticeable amount more space than one application with one icon. Then there’s the Google Talk application, which is a separate application from Google+. According to my phone though, it’s only 690kb in size.

EDIT: And yes, “taking up space” is rather ambiguous.

7

Sorry, I thought you were saying the icon/shortcut for Messenger was actually the Google+ icon/shortcut. I misread your post.

8

From my friend:

9

Tell her to delete a few photos or songs. That should free up enough space for several hundred apps.

10

Agreed.

Tell her to buy a microSD card, four or eight GB should be enough, and save all her songs, videos and pictures to the card instead of the phone memory.

11

Well…yes and no. I mean, if all she did was delete from photos, songs, or whatever, then no, that won’t help. She’ll have to do a couple extra steps.

Most Android phones (the exception being a couple of the newest ones running Android 4.X) have two completely separate internal storage spaces. There’s the App Storage, and then there’s the SD storage, which despite being called SD storage, is actually a combo of both an internal storage (but not the internal app storage) and the SD card storage.

Manufacturers, especially on cheaper phones, skimp on the internal app storage space. I’m guessing that she only has 250 MB of app space…by contrast, mid-to high level phones have 500 GB to 1 GB.

But there is a way for her to free up more app storage by moving some of her apps to the SD card storage. Not all apps can be moved to the SD storage, and even some of the ones that can you shouldn’t (any app that has a widget, for example, shouldn’t go to the SD storage.)

To do this, she has to get into her Application Settings.
Menu->Settings->Applications->Manage Applications.

Then, at the top, she should click “All.” She now has a full list of all the apps on her phone, and the space each one is taking up should be listed right below the app. If she then click on an app, she’ll go to a page will all the details for the app, as well as options like “Force Stop,” “Uninstall,” “Clear Data,” and “Move to SD Card”

In case you can’t tell, that third option is the one she should choose for large apps. IIRC, the G+ app is fully capable of being moved to the SD card, and also fairly large (I think over 20 MB.)

She should go through the list and not only uninstall apps she never uses (plenty of phones come pre-installed with near-useless apps, though unfortunately many of them can’t be uninstalled unless she “roots” her phone, which we won’t get into here,) but move the larger apps that let her to the SD card (again, any app that she uses a widget for she she leave on the app storage.)

12

Thanks, everyone. I’ve directed her to this thread, FYI. But it sounds like the answer to the initial question of whether you can unbundle the messenger app from the G+ app, is no. Hopefully the suggestions about moving/deleting data will be helpful.