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Question of the Day: Will you be subscribing to the new Disney+ R49 streaming package?
"Forget Android: the iPhone Is a Better Phone for Hacking", etc
- Thread starter bwana
- Start date
Elimentals
Honorary Master
I get that he loves his iPhone more than Android but I must admit I did laugh at the last section:
Oh and as an owner of both devices I tend to disagree with his views on which is easier but I guess to each there own.
Oh and as an owner of both devices I tend to disagree with his views on which is easier but I guess to each there own.
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I'm still waiting to get my hands on an android device but whats your take on that last bit you highlighted?
Btw, as well as being unfamiliar with Android I'm not much of a jailbreaker either
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Elimentals
Honorary Master
1st I would agree, I started to use ROMs to "fix" what I see as problems, but to be honest the adding cool stuff part can be done without ROMs or even rooting.
You can connect PS3 Controllers, HDMI onto TV have DLNA or AirPlay support right out of the box. Hell I can connect and control my Canon camera with USB cable or us a USB thumb drive or even play movies off my 2 TB USB drive so its not about functionality. As for themes there are millions of launchers and themes that you install strait off the market. All of this before I even root/jailbreak.
So yes the prime reason is not for functionality per say as Android support that out of the box, its to do things that iPhone user can not even think of like say adding Samba Support or change stock applications.
So for me Jalbroken iPhone = Stock Android.
Rooted Android = Access that you can never get with an iPhone
![[)roi(]](/forum/data/avatars/m/8/8711.jpg?1563828683){kind=avatar}
A mute discussion...
Why even bother with underpowered and hampered devices when for years we've had unhindered full-blown computing solutions like OSX, Linux, Windows, ...
Show me a person who thinks Android or iOS phone / tablet can today be a viable 100% substitute for power user needs and I'll argue they're either morons, or have masochistic tendencies.
We haven't hit the point where a single device will suffice... So for now I prefer my smartphone to be just simple i.e. don't need it to be a second class replacement for my desktop / laptop / xbox, ...
If you disagree, then get rid of your PCs, etc. and try to function (all requirements) for a week with only your phone / tablet...
Why even bother with underpowered and hampered devices when for years we've had unhindered full-blown computing solutions like OSX, Linux, Windows, ...
Show me a person who thinks Android or iOS phone / tablet can today be a viable 100% substitute for power user needs and I'll argue they're either morons, or have masochistic tendencies.
We haven't hit the point where a single device will suffice... So for now I prefer my smartphone to be just simple i.e. don't need it to be a second class replacement for my desktop / laptop / xbox, ...
If you disagree, then get rid of your PCs, etc. and try to function (all requirements) for a week with only your phone / tablet...
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[)roi(];8369035 said:
Who said anything about smartphones replacing desktops? Having certain advanced capabilities added to smartphones doesn't imply that it needs to replace a desktop. It just opens up more options for the odd occasion that one might want to make use of it.
Anyway, even though technology might advance to the point of a phone having advanced capabilities implemented sufficiently to your liking, I'm pretty sceptical about the idea of one device replacing all other devices. The future will probably involve an array of devices that utilise the cloud to bring deep integration by syncing. In fact, the Android and iOS platforms already does this to a great extent.
Bwana - This is all very off-topic, of course, so do excuse me, please.
Not off topic imo; many of the reasons for tweaking and the examples given re Samba, PS3 game controllers, watching videos, ... have historically been associated with PCs, game consoles, TVs,...
Hence my point that the entire tweaking / custom ROM crap is a futile / wasted effort without any real or viable benefits (at best it's a second rate effort vs the historical alternative)
For me people that tend to play with this stuff have far too much idle time i.e. fancy moving wallpapers, changing fonts, themes, widgets, ... as proven in OSX & Windows adds no real value, and typically after the fleeting interest, tends only to fall by the way side.
I'm btw quite happy for a phone to be a phone, computer to be a computer, ...
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xodosman123
Expert Member
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I do not have an iPhone but I can tell you iPad is ok but has a lot of problems for example their Bluetooth sucks why don't they open it up to connect to all devices.
AntiThesis
Executive Member
[)roi(];8369135 said:
Which is why it's useful to get them to work on smartphones - it brings it one step closer to actually being able to replace the devices you're talking about.
For example, I'm quite content to watch things on either my TV, my SGS or my Flyer. All are equally good at giving me media.
That's your opinion and you're most welcome to it but IMO, you're wrong. I'm sure it would be difficult to quantify benefit of tweaking or using custom roms but it's not meant to represent a monetary value or something tangible. However, I do benefit from doing it. I've hacked apart pretty much every device I've ever owned (including Apple stuff) and it has always given me greater access, more features and made the devices easier/better to use (for my personal uses obviously, might not suit others).
If you believe that the sum of custom roms and tweaking is "fancy moving wallpapers" you should probably spend some time playing with the devices and see what they're actually capable of. A good custom rom on an Android device extends the device lifetime each time - my SGS today is just as fast and just as usable as when I first got it. In fact, when my upgrade comes due in November, I am not likely to upgrade it. I may get another phone that I can just play with (perhaps an iPhone or even some symbian) but all my core needs are still being met by my original device simply because I've tweaked it and cooked my own roms for it.
While it's true that often people do tend to go "OMG! Custom roms!" and then fall off to the side, that's true of almost any technology isn't it? There are always those people who actually stick to fiddling and remaking and generally make things better than when they arrived. Look at MIUI, CyanogenMod and a couple of the other big release folks and you'll see that they produce roms that almost completely change the way the devices are.
Of course - nobody ever said they shouldn't be, but I like the features to overlap enough that one will do for the other in a pinch. And they do. I can conduct 90% of my business using just my tablet.
Having said all that, I have found that Jailbreaking is much easier than rooting in general - I mean it's not tough to simply go to Jailbreakme and click a button. But the limitations of iOS are such that even jailbroken, you are still very much stuck inside the walled garden. There's only so much you can actually do.
Elimentals
Honorary Master
[)roi(];8369035 said:
I think you take the world to much in a black and white image instead of loads of colors inbetween. its not an either or option its something that is in between.
[)roi(];8369135 said:
All the things I mentioned is not to replace my home pc but to make life easier.
For example, by default you can access Windows shares from an Android phone but installing Samba you can access your phone's storage from a PC asif its another networked PC. This enables me to manage the files from my Desktop PC. Remember when I am on the move I can use the phone as a normal thumb drive or other removable storage, thus removing the need to always carry a thumbstick or laptop. So its not a total replacement.
On PC3 Controllers, Its the same. I have PC for gaming but not in every TV in my house. the 40" in my bedroom has no TV and if I feel like Playing a game or watching a movie on it I can, again not total replacement just an added bonus or can you honestly tell me there is no game on iOS that you would have loved to play on a big screen with a proper controller?
Watching video's again is a great feature for when I am traveling. When I go up to JHB for a weekend all I take is my tablet + phone and when I am bored at night in a hotel room I can simply plug them into the TV and watch the media that is on them (copied with Samba) making my travel luggage slimmer yet I have all the entertainment I normally would carry on a laptop.
As for the custom ROMs, it actually prolongs the phones live, I use to play around swapping ROMs to see what each one have to offer and settled for MIUI(review) because it gave me the best experience. In fact MIUI is so good that I prefer my DHD above my Xperia S simply because the Xperia's MIUI ROM is still in alpha stage, I will switch back to Xperia S once MIUI for it has been released.
TL;DR Sure some people see it as a waste other don't. For me your argument sounds like why do people prefer pick-up trucks when a SUVs can drive you from A to B.
cerebus
Honorary Master
I agree but with a few caveats. Jailbreaking the iPad2/4S was only possible after like half a year of being on the market which for me meant I bought an iPad2 and then sat without access to 4/5ths of the apps due to the whole US/SA iTunes store debacle. But once the tools were available, it was a breeze to do and yep - I can now do more with it than I can with either of my Android devices.
On the Kindle Fire it was a huge schlep to root, and even then it took a long time for the community to get ICS working properly with hardware rendering. SGS wasn't as difficult because it's very old and the tools are well established but still for a supposedly 'open' system like Android why is rooting such a pain to do? Touchwiz 2.3 is not something I want to sit with by default and you are quite limited what you can do without rooting. Then you must hunt and peck for a decent stable tool - risk getting a bootloop or worse which will take a big effort to fix....
Then my friend's HTC Sensation has only now been able to root and even then major things were broken.
On the Kindle Fire it was a huge schlep to root, and even then it took a long time for the community to get ICS working properly with hardware rendering. SGS wasn't as difficult because it's very old and the tools are well established but still for a supposedly 'open' system like Android why is rooting such a pain to do? Touchwiz 2.3 is not something I want to sit with by default and you are quite limited what you can do without rooting. Then you must hunt and peck for a decent stable tool - risk getting a bootloop or worse which will take a big effort to fix....
Then my friend's HTC Sensation has only now been able to root and even then major things were broken.
Elimentals
Honorary Master
You dont need to root to change the look, simple launchers can do that for you.
Check Go Launcher, SPB Shell 3D, Launcher7, ADW EX, and millions more
As for why its so hard, well blame the SP's they the ones that request the lockdowns because they wanna protect there precious bloatware.
Edit: Oh and I think you missing the point of Open, Android is Open as in you can go download the source code from http://source.android.com/ and do with it as you please. Its not Open as every phone is open for you to do as you please, if you want that go buy a Nexus, that is why they exist.
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Maverick Jester
The Special One
Elimentals- off topic, but how do you find the Xperia S?
Elimentals
Honorary Master
Its a great phone, love the screen and it feels solid, I have no issues recommending it to normal people. Only things that drove me up the wall was the Facebook integration(I dont have facebook) lack of Firewall/Monitor and DND options.
I think my only issue is that I got so use to MIUI that I can not use a phone without it.
cerebus
Honorary Master
You dont need to root to change the look, simple launchers can do that for you.
Check Go Launcher, SPB Shell 3D, Launcher7, ADW EX, and millions more
As for why its so hard, well blame the SP's they the ones that request the lockdowns because they wanna protect there precious bloatware.
Edit: Oh and I think you missing the point of Open, Android is Open as in you can go download the source code from http://source.android.com/ and do with it as you please. Its not Open as every phone is open for you to do as you please, if you want that go buy a Nexus, that is why they exist.
I appreciate all of those points. But it's not just about changing the look. I want the features of the latest version of Android which is actually very nice - to me nicer in many aspects than iOS 5. The only way to get those was to root. Not to mention that any of the decent Android modding tools simply require rooting. Titanium backup for instance. And the fact remains that rooting is far more fraught on Android than it ought to be because of carrier discretions.
No I get the point of open - it's just that in Android the term open must be so carefully ring-fenced with 'open does not mean this this and this even though you might wish it did' that in the end it's hardly any more open TO THE USER than iOS.
AntiThesis
Executive Member
Yeah, this is a problem that crops up all the time and it does suck - it's getting better though. Quite a few manufacturers are now starting to get onboard with the bigger release people like Cyanogen and making things easier for them. It's not ideal yet but it's kinda getting there. Custom Rom builders are also getting quite nice, I played with a very nice GUI based flasher the other day.
Personally, I feel the opposite is true. Android is so far open that it starts to seem closed. Because you can literally do anything you want (up to and including bricking your phone), it's almost as if there's too much freedom. People like to have a little bit of control, some end that they can't go past. I mean, I've bricked my phone many times (I even had to make my own USB jig to unbrick it which was... not the most pleasant experience of my life) but I knew what I was doing - the average user doesn't.
I did find the stock roms limiting but at least you could change more than you can on the stock iOS devices. Settings and whatnot. It's just... not enough for me.
Elimentals
Honorary Master
I get that but to be honest we only have ourselves to blame. When Google wanted to give us truly open phones nobody was buying. Remember back when the 1st Nexus came out? You could get it off Google with no restrictions whatsoever. No one was buying, so Google had to go make a deal with the devil(Verizon) who insisted that phones needed to be locked and have the ability to install bloat in order to sponsor the sales. If we back then bought em off google who know what the world would have looked like now.
See above about Nexus,
Lucky the future looks like we might get back to the range of unlocked phones as Google once again started selling the Nexus directly from within Google Play and what is even better is that the next Nexus range will include phones from more than one OEM.
See http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100...+wsj/xml/rss/3_7011+(WSJ.com:+What's+News+US)
Also OEM's come to the party now:
http://htcdev.com/bootloader
http://unlockbootloader.sonymobile.com/
http://developer.motorola.com/products/software/
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Quey_Quick
Expert Member
I dont find it that difficult to root hey.
Copy a file and click a button. Search for one click root solutions, they work a treat.
Copy a file and click a button. Search for one click root solutions, they work a treat.
cerebus
Honorary Master
It's getting there... but in another sense it is far from getting there, since the fragmentation issue is just increasing.
Yeah.. look it's true that you can do what you want so long as you can get CWM onto it. But in truth I was doing all that back in the WM5 days - flashing roms, bricking, unbricking. It's not that much fun. It's nicer to just have the right software in the first place, and be able to modify it to an unlimited extent. The article's point is, modding is just more enjoyable on iOS because all you need to do is jailbreak (5 minutes, 1-click), and then search in Cydia to your heart's content.
Why can't we just blame the ones who made the software? That's a very silly argument. We didn't create the situation.
I don't have a Nexus. In my whole life I've met 1 person who does have a Nexus. It's a brilliant phone but it's very atypical and niche.
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