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The 10 Best Android Hacks
Barence writes "The Android vs iPhone debate will continue until the apocalypse, but there's no doubt Android wins on customability. PC Pro has listed its ten favorite Android hacks, which include the ability to open your garage door with your smartphone, install Ubuntu on your handset, and overclock your phone's processor. There's also instructions on how to replace your dashboard satnav with Google's version."
Well, if you make up words, I guess you get to define them to mean whatever you want. If "Android wins on customability," then iPhone wins on appleability.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
My favourite android hack is when I set the alarm last year and it still works this year!
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
... but it could be nice to have anything usefull among those hacks, don't you think ?
In this war between Android and iPhone, the customer wins.
The "Droid Does" (multitasking) ad campaign spurred Apple to develop iOS 4.x, which allows multitasking. The first Droid smartphones got Apple off the dime with cut and paste. Customers continue to win here, no matter which phone they purchase
Personally I have an iPhone (4) and I like it. I had the original iPhone and retained it well past my contract with AT&T. I have a client who purchased a Droid Incredible and asked me to set up his email (from my server) on it. Took all of about a minute. I was very impressed by the phone and shall always retain that impression.
I think the real losers here are RIM with the Blackberry and the Palm WebOS smartphones. While Palm has innovated, they have been passed by and are now in a niche. RIM is trying to play "catch up" and the only real difference they offer in their phones is complete integration with secure Exchange Servers. They have lost utterly in the easy app purchase field.
Apple's biggest mistake so far in the United States has been the exclusivity contract with AT&T. Initially, it was a boon for Apple, but the Android smartphones are selling faster than the Apple smartphones because they are available on more networks. To the extent Apple stays with the phone company we all love to hate, they will lose market share versus the Android smartphones.
Gods don't kill people, people with gods kill people.
Wait - I thought [insert favorite-company-to-hate] did that!!
I'm glad I held on to my WM 6.5 phone. Personally, I think having a phone you can hack is part of the fun of owning a smartphone.
Most people who look at my setup give a 'WTF is that?!?' expression. But it works for me, and that's what counts. (Yes, it's stable, I just had to un-HTC ware the freaking thing and it became stable, cooking my own ROM is was part of the fun)
My next phone will be Android based, because MS is too busy playing iPhone catch up to actually release a real smartphone. I'll most likely cook up my own Android ROM when the time comes.
Ok, in order:
1. Um, connect your Android video-out-capable phone to your in-car video. If the hack is replacing yoru in-car satnav system, you did that with the Android phone without the video. Now, hooking up YouTube to your in-car video, that's a hack. And illegal in many states.
4. Playing classic games on your Andriod? That's an *app*, not a *hack*. The controller hack is nice tho.
7. Installing root-only apps? How about "Getting root on your android"? After that, well, the apps come.
8. Controlling your Media Centre? Um, My Palm III did that. And that was before I *had* a mnedia centre.
10. "Get the latest Android versions, fast" What? If you're referrring to getting custom ROMs from those intrepid developers out there, fast is relative. Getting Froyo on my G1 took waiting for Froyo to be released into SDK, then waiting for it to be ported to the G1 (which required waiting for the DangerSPL), then waiting for a stable candidate, then finally the 2708 hack to make it useable long-term. Now, this is admittedly faster than waiting for the OPTA release, cause neither TMO, HTC, or Google will ever release any Android 2.x for the G1, but that's sort of like saying it was a clever hack to play DNF at PennyArcade before anyone else, since for all purposes DNF is a DNF, but the demo is not a release. Well, maybe not quite like that, but calling an alternative ROM release 'fast' is relative.
Stupid list. Mostly apps, not hacks. Show me the RAM stack hack for the G1 and I'm nominating it for #1.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
I read the garage door opener and was excited to see how it worked. It involves hooking a Linux box up to your door opener that is connected to the internet. That is kind of lame , certainly in environments where it would be impossible to put a pc in essentially a outdoor setting and I would suspect it wouldn't be that hard to do on other smart phones.
A couple examples:
If these are the best hacks they can come up with, well... color me unimpressed. Seriously, there must be more exciting things you can do with Android than this.
Comment fail. Overuse of ALL-CAPS and bold typeface, it makes your post damn near unreadable.
Try it again, but try to write like a grown-up with something useful to say. Experience tells us that most people who shit all over our displays like you did have nothing to say -- they need the bold and all-caps to get attention, because their ideas themselves have little merit.
So please clean up your text, people like me might actually consider your ideas if it didn't look like an unstable person wrote them.
And, FWIW, I do think you're unstable, from exchanges we've had in the past, and from exchanges you've had with others. But that's not the point -- the point is no one will take you seriously (well, among those who still *might* take you seriously) if you write like a lunatic.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
The garage door opener is labeled as "brilliant" by the article, but frankly I was hoping for something more inspired than networking to a PC-controlled garage door. A real hack would be to modify the firmware so that the cellphone antenna would send the right rolling code directly to the existing radio receiver in the garage door opener. Then there's no need for special "don't accidentally open the garage door if I'm in Japan" type safeties in the software.
What do you mean they cut the power? How can they cut the power, man? They're animals!
Would it have helped to have the alarm set for 2011 insteaf of 2010? Or did you do this test in your time machine?
Cheers!
FTA: "Satnav’s only the tip of the iceberg. Connect your phone to access your music collection, read your Twitter feed, check the latest headlines or perform any other function on your dashboard"
As a motorcyclist I really hope I'm not anywhere near a car driver reading their Twitter feed or the latest headlines on their dashboard! It's bad enough when they're sending SMS or changing the song! Yes I know they probably mean that you should do this when stationary but to be honest for most of the drivers I see this means "while at the lights or in traffic". The last thing they need is more distraction.
I posted a generally polite response as to why so many of us think you're unstable, and how you could address that.
It was advice.
And instead of taking it like a man and considering whether or not there were valid points, you go off the deep end with another rant written in a style sure to make other continue to consider you, as I do, a complete loon.
What are you talking about, you crazy cunt? Then, as now, you had no idea of how slashdot works.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai