Why am I unable to uninstall some application from my android phone?

There are few applications available on android marketplace, which when try to uninstall gives error message like below

The error message above is totally unintuitive and gives no idea what went wrong and what can possibly be done to successfully uninstall the app from the device. I hope in future Google puts in better error reporting for such situation.

Some applications, especially the ones under business administration category, require device administration privileges. Usually during install or during execution, these apps prompt the user to grant “Administrator” privilege. Once granted, these applications become capable of performing privileged tasks like locking the device, erasing data on device, reset the password on device, etc.

In addition, Android doesn’t allow direct uninstall of such application. Any attempt to uninstall such apps would result in screen similar to above. I guess this is to make sure that user doesn’t accidently remove such vital privileged apps (a better error message wouldn’t have harmed ).

In order to uninstall such apps, we first need to deactivate it as a device administrator. Go to Settings ->Location and Security->Select device administrator screen

Uncheck the app you wish to uninstall, confirm the prompt to deactivate.

Once done, now you can go back to “Manage Applications” and uninstall the application.

Prakash
SureMDM: Mobile device management made easy