[Onetouch Idol 3 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] lawhec:
I've managed to get rid of a load of Alcatel's bloated ad-ridden apps without them reappearing on my 4.7 (6039Y), though it does in my case involve rooting the phone and downloading a paid app from Google Play. Also in my case I have one of the later production line models that only have an actual 8GB eMMC chip and came with fastboot commands disabled. It takes a bit of patience, but it can be done.

1. Ensure you're using Lollipop 5.0.2 (Firmware 01005), if you're on Marshmallow 6.0 then try and downgrade your firmware if you can (you can try Mobile Upgrade Q, ensure you get the latest version which at this time is 5.1.7).

2. Download King Root for PC, install it and follow its instructions. You will need to connect your phone via USB for this.

The reason for insisting on Lollipop and not Marshmallow was in my case, King Root didn't work with MM but was able to get root with LP. If you're not successful the first time getting King Root to root your Idol 3 you might have to adjust a few security settings on your phone. I can't remember exactly what I did one time for this. But after about 10 minutes of work and a few mobile reboots you should be successfully rooted. I had earlier tried King Root's APK to root on the phone but that didn't work either. Root via PC it needs to be.

3. Download something from the Play store or sideload an APK which requires root access - in my case it's Titanium Backup - and check that root is working.

4. If you're like me and you're not keen on King Root hanging around on your mobile and prefer Super SU instead then you could do a search around the internet as to how it's possible though in my case I'm hampered with the lack of ability to run fastboot commands. So on the Play store there is an app called "Super SUme". This is a paid app (UK£3.49) but well worth it in my opinion for what I am (and probably you are) trying to do!

5. Download Super SUme on to your phone and run it. It will then ask to download an additional helper app - do this. Once that is set up run Super SUme again, press the big blue button and it will begin the process of Uninstalling King Root and installing Super SU. In my case it uninstalled King Root but didn't automatically install Super SU. Not to worry, just go back to the Play store, search for Super SU from Chainfire and install it.

6. Open up Super SU and check that it root is available. It'll likely prompt to update the system binaries - let it do so and then reboot your phone.

7. Once you've restarted your phone and the lock screen appears, unlock and try the app (Titanium Backup in my case) you installed earlier to test for root. You may be asked by Super SU this time to grant root permissions, if it does then grant it. At this stage your phone is rooted, King Root is gone (except for a couple of empty folders) and Super SU is in place.

8. Now install an app which will allow you to freeze & uninstall system apps. In my case I went for Link2SD but there are a fair few about.

The reason I used Link2SD is that I had partitioned my 64GB SDXC card into two partitions, first in FAT32 for media, photos etc. at around 50GB and the second partition of around 12GB formatted in ext4 to move apps from the internal SD card (only had a capacity of around 4.2GB available) to this partition that Link2SD is capable of. Link2SD requires root, but you should already have this!

9. Using Link2SD or a similar program, start looking down the list of installed apps that you want to freeze. (For Link2SD, just long press the app name and a list of options will come up, with "Freeze" being one of them"). At this stage it's better to just "freeze" the offending apps rather than uninstall straight away in case something goes wrong. Once you've decided to freeze the apps in question, reboot your phone. If your phone seems to be functioning OK, no signs of something failing to load up, all your remaining apps run fine etc. Then you can go and uninstall your frozen apps - go back to Link2SD, long press on the frozen app and this time select "Uninstall". After each app it has uninstalled it will advise you to reboot - for the cautious you may want to reboot after every app you uninstall, otherwise just continue to uninstall all your frozen apps and then reboot when you're finished.

10. Once the phone has rebooted, all of the offending apps that you wanted rid of should now have been scrubbed off your Idol 3. What else you want to do beyond this is entirely up to you.

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In my case, between instructions 7 & 8 I wanted to install a firmware update to take my phone up to Marshmallow as available in this thread that has been available to Russian 6039Y owners but not to UK owners. So I did the following...

* Download the Firmware file - the thread linked above doesn't contain the relevant file in the first post, but it is available on the following link (in Russian, link to file is near the bottom of the post) - https://4pda.ru/forum/index.php?showtopic=702765&st=1940#entry51067534 - and copy it on to your external SD card.

* Go to the Play store and download Flashify - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cgollner.flashify

* Download TWRP Recovery 3.1.0-0 from this post - https://xdaforums.com/idol-3/development/twrp-3-1-0-0-3-0-2-r5-idol-3-t3572607 - and place it on your external SD card.

* Open up Flashify and use it to flash the TWRP image. When this is completed your phone should reboot into recovery mode. If not then turn you phone off, then when it is off hold down the Vol+ and power buttons for about 7 - 10 seconds and TWRP should load after the Alcatel splash screen.

* It's always worth it at this stage to make a full backup of your current ROM just in case!

* You can then flash the Marshmallow file now through remember - WIPE! Do the data, cache & Dalvik wipe first, then install the MM firmware zip, and then do another wipe before rebooting the phone. Don't be alarmed if nothing appears to happen while it's installing, it doesn't give running details of the installation and should take around 10 minutes to complete. When you reboot your phone it should take around 6-10 minutes for it to fully boot up.

* Check at this stage that root still works. If it doesn't, then you'll need to get SuperSU as a flashable zip file (from chainfire's own site), boot back into TWRP recovery and flash Super SU - reboot the phone and check that it is rooted. Also if your phone model is one of the earlier ones that had a 16GB eMMC chip that was software restricted to 8GB, the MM firmware should now have released the full 16GB. Not in my case :(

* At this stage you can now go back to point 8 above, though if you're like me and want to use the ext4 partition on your external SD card, Link2SD is unable to mount it in MM! Instead download Apps2SD from the Play store, mount the partition from the SD card using it, reboot your phone, remove Apps2SD and install Link2SD if you haven't already done so.

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So at this stage my phone's been working fine now for about 1.5 weeks and I did a job on getting rid of a lot of scum and unwanted apps - the only apps from Alcatel I still have is Camera, Hotspot & NFC while I also uninstalled several Google Apps I didn't want as well, as well as a couple of others. I ended up with about 450MB of free space in the system partition of internal storage so I moved some key apps over as well as integrate updates to some system apps (though don't integrate updates to Google Play Services - it sent my phone haywire and I had to reinstall LP ROM!) to fill up the room and ease the internal data storage before starting to move other apps on to external SD using Link2SD. So far nothing I uninstalled as a system app has come back from the dead - yet! Though I did have automatic updates from the Play store turned off until yesterday, but I'm fairly confident that they won't return. If it does, I'll reply on this thread.

P.S. I'm not responsible if the above sees you damage your phone, having to reinstall firmware etc. Do so at your own risk!