Several devices have a HIDDEN partition that is mounted at location like /preload.
While on some device it only contains Samsung promotional materials like on (all?) the GT-I9300 (Galaxy SIII), on the Galaxy SII it can contains apk. So while the apk aren't installed in Replicant (checked with the applications in the settings) it's still a good idea not to mount the partition:
- It increase users trust as having a partition from the stock OS being mounted with shady apk in it is not a good idea, as users then need to check (and to be sure) that the apk aren't automatically installed somehow. We also didn't check extensively.
- It makes booting more robust as I don't know if boot still succeed if the partition is blanked or corrupted.