[mdlug] Android

[Ingles, Raymond]

> From: David McMillan

> 	Speaking of those "Evil Google People" (stick 'em up! This is a
thread
> hijack!), does anyone have a good handle on just how locked up, or
not,
> the Android phones are?  I've been wanting to get one, but I'm on AT&T
> and their first Android phone appears to have been deliberately
> I-Phone'd in order to avoid The Wrath of Apple.  I'm wondering if it's
> worth going after an unlocked Android to stick my SIM card into, or
how
> effectively one can "jailbreak" a vendor-crippled Android.

 The Droid uses CDMA, so (as I understand it), it won't work with AT&T's
GSM network. However, the "Milestone" is the GSM version. Again as I
understand it, the only difference hardware or software-wise is that the
Droid comes with a 16GB microSD card and the Milestone comes with an 8GB
card.

 The Droid phones are more open than Apple's offerings, though not
*quite* as open as I'd like. I'm hoping to get one shortly. From my
developer's perspective, not having to buy a Mac or pay $100 for the
SDK, or get things signed by some company to install them, is a huge
difference. For a non-developer, this may or may not be important.
Something few people would care about, but I'm looking forward to
playing with, is enabling "USB host mode" on the Droid.
(http://www.tombom.co.uk/blog/?p=124) Then you could plug in things like
keyboards, joysticks, webcams, or all those other USB doohickeys...

 Stock Droids don't actually give you full control over the system,
though. You can essentially run an exploit - take advantage of a bug -
to get 'root' access, at which point you can change things willy-nilly,
install applications that do more than the stock OS allows, etc. (On the
iPhone, as you note, they call it 'jailbreaking'. On the Droid, it's
'rooting'.) I don't have direct experience (yet) but apparently because
the Android source is fairly open, people can - and do - create entirely
new versions of the OS.

 Anyway, that's as far as I've gotten on that question...

 Sincerely,

 Ray Ingles                                                     (313)
227-2317

 "There is no distinction in nature between microevolution and
macroevolution.
 Macroevolution is just larger quantities of microevolution over much
longer
 times. It's like saying that there's 'microwalking' which is what I do
from
 the car park to the office every morning, and down to the shops on
weekends,
 and that can result in changes of my location over time on a small
scale; but
 the idea that people, over tens of thousands of years, walked out of
central
 Africa into Europe, then over to Asia, across to North America and into
South
 America - that's 'macrowalking' and it's impossible. God must have put
them
                        there." - Anthony Steele

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