Samsung Galaxy S III
Bloat in Stock Image

The stock Verizon system image occupies 820Mbytes, compared on the Droid-3 to the stock Gingerbread image at 213Mb, and the CM-10 Jelly Bean image at 158Mb (add 87Mb for Google apps). These are all zipped files. What bloatware are they putting into this image? Here's a list of all the apps in the stock image that have icons. Sizes are shown; items without sizes are well under 1Mb each.

• AllShare Play -- Not sure what this is (1.0Mb)
• Amazon Kindle -- E-book reader (2.7Mb)
• Apps (from Verizon) -- An app finder program. (1.8Mb)
• Calculator -- not scientific, just plus minus times divide
• Calendar -- Standard Android calendar app
• Camera
• Clock -- Alarm clock, timezone clock, stopwatch, timer (down-counter) (4.5Mb)
• Color -- Some kind of overlay for Facebook (4.5Mb + 1.1Mb for Facebook API)
• Contacts -- Standard Android contact app
• Downloads -- Direct jump to download manager
• Email -- Standard Android Mail reader for generic accounts
• Gallery -- Standard Android photo viewer (1.3Mb)
• Gmail -- Standard Android Mail reader for Gmail (1.89Mb)
• Google+ -- Google's social network app (7.2Mb)
• Guided Tours -- Tutorials how to use the OS (media likely is on web)
• Internet -- Web browser (misnamed) (2.3Mb)
• Kies Air -- Manager for over-the-air updates (0.9Mb)
• Latitude -- Google service so others can keep track of your location (not sure of size)
• Local -- Google Maps extension to find advertisers in your area (not sure of size)
• Maps -- Standard Google map navigation app (24.6Mb)
• Media Hub -- Samsung app for (I think) DRM protected media (video?) (1.2Mb)
• Messaging -- To send and view SMS
• Messenger -- Probably XMPP client for Google+ instant messages
• Mobile Hotspot -- Turn your phone into a 802.11 access point
• Music Hub -- Upload your music, stream theirs (not free), get playlist recommendations
• Music Player -- Organizes and performs music files and playlists on the device
• My Files -- A simple file manager
• My Verizon Mobile -- Dedicated app to pay your bill, etc. (0.5Mb)
• Navigation -- Turn by turn navigation from Google, I think (not sure of size)
• Phone -- For originating voice chat (phone calls)
• Play Books, Magazines, Movies, Music -- Interface to Google's store, and player/viewer in these 4 categories (3.9, 5.4, 2.4, 3.2Mb resp.)
• Play Store -- Interface for purchasing apps from Google's market, plus app management and updates (9.2Mb plus 30.Mb common code)
• S Memo -- Sticky note app with finger art to text translation (1.5Mb)
• S Suggest -- Makes suggestions of things you can buy; they mention apps. (0.6Mb)
• S Voice -- Voice commands and queries, like Apple's Siri. Not tried. (4.3Mb)
• Google Search -- Direct jump to Google's search engine
• Settings -- Main configuration menu for the OS (standard Android app) (4.0Mb including storage)
• Setup Wizard -- If you need to run setup again
• Talk -- Client for Google's XMPP instant message server (not Google+) (0.95Mb)
• VCAST Tones -- Rent ringtones from Verizon (0.6Mb)
• Video Player
• Voice Recorder -- Not in CyanogenMod-10 but apps are available
• Voicemail -- Direct jump to play your voicemail
• VPN Client -- Connect to a VPN. IPSec supported, not sure about OpenVPN.
• VZ Navigator -- Turn by turn navigation provided by Verizon's contractor. I think this is a free trial. (3.4Mb)
• Youtube -- Dedicated app to play Youtube videos (2.9Mb)

The sum of the known app sizes is 100.8Mb, and it's unlikely that either the tiny apps or the ones I'm not sure of would inflate this significantly.

Digging into the image file: 820Mb compressed, 1.24Gb uncompressed (tar file). The contained objects break down as:

• 7.8Mb Bootloader and friends
• 6.4Mb Recovery
• 82.7Mb Miscellaneous including 35Mb going into cache (?)
• 1.14Gb System image

The system image is an ext4 filesystem. Unfortunately I was unable to mount it -- perhaps an endian issue? ARM is big endian while Intel is little endian. Neither could I do anything useful on the phone using ADB because I lack root access. Strings shows the names of all the APK files, presumably in /system/app. Let's try this command line: dd if=system.img.ext4 of=system.gmi conv=swab -- Didn't help. Later when I do have root I'll try copying the image onto the phone's /sdcard (plenty of room) and mounting it there.