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Hi all,
I am just looking for some advise!!!
I have been playing with xdandroid on my Verizon TP2 for a long time, and have decided its time to switch from win mo to android. Although on the TP2 alot doesnt work, I love android!
Some I'm wondering what is the Best Hackable android phone for Verizon???
Thanks for any thoughts.
Chris Seeley
Many would argue that the droid one is best
For Verizon? Your best bet is probably the Fascinate... maybe the Incredible. From what I've read, the Incredible is more usefully-hacked today, but I believe the Fascinate is likely to have the brightest long-term hacking future.
The big difference between the two: HTC violates the GPL and builds a monolithic kernel with proprietary drivers compiled directly into it, then unceremoniously hacks them out and $hits the hollowed-out carcass on the curb. HTC's kernel source is a half step short of completely useless, and building custom kernels for HTC phones that fully support its hardware (camera, bluetooth, etc) is a never-ending challenge that begins anew with every upgrade. Put another way, HTC's kernel source isn't buildable at all (it has dependencies on files they didn't include and broken references), let alone buildable into a kernel that can be used in the phone. Samsung, in contrast, releases nice kernel source that actually builds, and neatly bundles its proprietary drivers into proper loadable kernel modules.
Put another way, more progress has been made on the Incredible since it's been out for almost 6 months now (vs ~6 weeks for the Fascinate), but the Fascinate today is roughly where the Incredible was 3-4 months after its release. The Epic4G had custom kernels built from the ground up less than a month after its release. Most month-old HTC phones are lucky to have slightly-hacked and tweaked kernels that don't break one or more major peripherals. In fact, the biggest delay for the Epic (and presumably Fascinate) wasn't building a kernel... it was building the replacement bootloader and ripping backup copies of the ROM before blowing it away (the bundled apps from Samsung, Sprint, and Google can't legally be redistributed, so the only way to get them in a new ROM is to rip them from your stock ROM and save a backup copy to restore after reflashing)
Forget Motorola phones even exist. The likelihood of ever being able to truly reflash a Droid2 or Droid X is slim. They've both been rooted, and are hackable to some extent, but with both, you're always going to have to worry about Motorola or Verizon changing the metaphorical locks on the door while you're not paying attention and seriously compromising your satisfaction with your phone.
Thanks.... It just so happened that the fascinate is FREE at bestbuy today. Had to order it online, but I can deal with that.
Free phone Friday I guess....
So it is on order.
Thanks,
Chris
bitbang3r said:
For Verizon? Your best bet is probably the Fascinate... maybe the Incredible. From what I've read, the Incredible is more usefully-hacked today, but I believe the Fascinate is likely to have the brightest long-term hacking future.
--snip--
Samsung, in contrast, releases nice kernel source that actually builds, and neatly bundles its proprietary drivers into proper loadable kernel modules.
--snip--
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I would think n1 being a developer phone
Sent from my Nexus One using XDA App
OP said they're on vzw...hence no N1 option
Sent from my ADR6300 using XDA App
Too bad u'r on verizon...otherwise it's the Nexsus One
The incredible is just as hackable as the first droid but twice the speed and way sleeker I've had both and I much prefer the Incredible.
Congrats on the Fascinate!
One other benefit of the Fascinate over the Incredible. The Incredible shares much of its design with the Desire, but the only other Desire that's CDMA is US Cellular's. Verizon has never really promoted the Incredible heavily (first they ran out of them for months, then the Droid2/DroidX came along to take Verizon's top spots), and US Cellular is kind of like Alltel was... not exactly a small company, but not exactly T-Mobile, AT&T, or Sprint, either.
In contrast, the Fascinate shares much of its architecture (including the GPU) with the entire Galaxy S family, and shares the most proprietary parts of its architecture with the Epic4G, which IS Sprint's flagship (or at least reigning co-champion) phone right now. So, in the long run, there won't be any shortage of AOSP-based ROMs that combine the CDMA-specific stuff from the Epic with the family-wide stuff from the rest of the Galaxy S line. Even if the Fascinate never really gets heavily promoted by Verizon or attracts a huge number of developers, the fact that it can more or less benefit directly from so many other family members is IMHO a huge plus. Oh, also... US Cellular has the Mesmerize, which IS pretty much identical to the Fascinate.
The Incredible is a very nice phone. If Verizon released it with the same form factor as US Cellular's Desire (specifically, the real hardkeys) and managed to keep them in stock long enough to tempt me, it might have been the phone that got me to leave Sprint. But knowing what I know now (6 months later) about the kernel architectures and cross-family compatibility of both HTC's phones and Samsung's, I do think the Samsungs are going to have a long, fertile life as phones for hacking.
bitbang3r said:
Forget Motorola phones even exist. The likelihood of ever being able to truly reflash a Droid2 or Droid X is slim. They've both been rooted, and are hackable to some extent, but with both, you're always going to have to worry about Motorola or Verizon changing the metaphorical locks on the door while you're not paying attention and seriously compromising your satisfaction with your phone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have a droid2, fully flashed to cricket and hacked all to he**.. idk if verizon has something in there system that makes changes to the phone whenever they want, but I have not had any problems with the phone doing whatever I want it to do. custom roms/rooting/etc.. all work great
Droid is the best for hacking other vize try out the Nexsus one....
HTC HD2
Sent from my HTC HD2 using Tapatalk
Thanks to all that contributed. Is the consesus here that the best developer support for future android builds, irrespective of carrier, is The Nexus S ?
The reason for the question is, as end users it is meaningless to get a phone that has no Dev support when we need to tweak or customize our phone than having it run stock.
I'm sure there is more research they must do before they decide to get a new device (are they able to root it, lock bootloader, accessibility to leak firmware upgrades and such), I'm guessing.
So far it looks like the Atrix is the device everyone wants, but if the Devs aren't able to work on it because of the lock bootloader, your pretty much SOL.
And I know if the Samsung Infuse has working GPS (which is the most common ***** session for the Captivate) I think most will rethink their purchase in the future. Especially if the traffic is as heavy as the Vibrant, i9000, Captivate, and etc.. forums.
I for one has said that I will never buy a Samsung phone again but if the Devs can do their magic, like they did with the Galaxy S phones (Vibrant, Captivate, i9000, etc), I will pretty much have to rethink my next purchase.
So Devs, which device are you looking forward on purchasing?
Xstop said:
The reason for the question is, as end users it is meaningless to get a phone that has no Dev support when we need to tweak or customize our phone than having it run stock.
I'm sure there is more research they must do before they decide to get a new device (are they able to root it, lock bootloader, accessibility to leak firmware upgrades and such), I'm guessing.
So far it looks like the Atrix is the device everyone wants, but if the Devs aren't able to work on it because of the lock bootloader, your pretty much SOL.
And I know if the Samsung Infuse has working GPS (which is the most common ***** session for the Captivate) I think most will rethink their purchase in the future. Especially if the traffic is as heavy as the Vibrant, i9000, Captivate, and etc.. forums.
I for one has said that I will never buy a Samsung phone again but if the Devs can do their magic, like they did with the Galaxy S phones (Vibrant, Captivate, i9000, etc), I will pretty much have to rethink my next purchase.
So Devs, which device are you looking forward on purchasing?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
DG has said he's going to be deving for both the Atrix 4g and the Infuse 4g.
I will never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, buy a Samsung phone ever again.
It's Atrix or HTC. But not for several months, I'd imagine.
Sent from my Captivate.
10tonhammr said:
DG has said he's going to be deving for both the Atrix 4g and the Infuse 4g.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I will be definitely be watching DG when the Infuse comes out.
And yes my next purchase will be based on what the Devs can do with the phone. I hate running it stock! (ex. Paying extra for tethering is absurd)
Hey there folks!
I'm a MotoMan myself (mostly by fate, not choice). I had a Droid 1 which I loved dearly, and now I'm rocking a Droid X that feels like a new phone every day thanks to CyanogenMod nightlies.
Now, thanks to Motorola's dickery, the Droid X only recently received CyanogenMod (bootloaders are awful). But as I said now that it's around, things are like night and day. Not quite as awesome as my Droid 1 since there are still no custom kernels, however I'm still a happy camper.
A few days ago however my sister bought herself a Droid Charge to lock in a 2-yr contract of $30/month LTE. Naturally, I immediately snatched it and began ROM'ing the sucker into oblivion. It's great! I love how easy it is to flash this puppy. You either use Odin, which is relatively painless... CWR, which I already spend most of my time in on my DX/Nook Color.... or the Samsung utility, which is no different than RSDlite for Motorola phones! All familiar, painless territory. And it seems like you can get some pretty customized ROMs rockin'!
So, uh... why no CyanogenMod? It seems like a lot of Samsung phones are lacking the CyanogenModz. Is there a piece of the puzzle I'm missing? Has Samsung installed something devious like a bootloader preventing it? What's going on here?
thank!
Cyanogen mods are mostly RUU mods. HTC in fact. I coming from TMO have used dozens and release a few Cyanogen custom roms. Realistically, the team releases code for phones that they can easily acquire. HTC phones are GSM phones and can be bought anywhere for about 100 bucks. VZW and Sprint phones are CDMA phones that are a lil harder to obtain and need a contract with the company. Easier to get GSM phones because you can unlock them for whatever global service you want to use them on.
The team is easy to get in touch with, but you will probably need to get a fan base together on a certain device and send to them, to get them to be able to write the code for. Hope this makes sense.
Barny Style.
GSM = Easy to get, easy to sale, no company crap to deal with
CDMA = Company needs to turn on, hard for resale since you need a clean esn. Harder to acquire.
I'm not a dev, but I think CyanogenMod uses AOSP as a base, not RUUs. It certainly looks a lot more like stock Android on my HTC Incredible than it does Sense.
That said, the point about CDMA phones being less widely available and used than GSM phones is probably a valid one, as CDMA is primarily a US thing. There is a CM port for a few Samsung Galaxy S phones.
The issue is that Samsung uses stuff that is not compatible with most of the stock CM code, and a lot of hacking needs to be done to get anything simple working. I know that there are a few Samsung phones in the pipeline for CM7 support now, but it took months of work, and there are still several bugs that need worked out. The biggest issue is primarily just that Samsung releases as little source as they have to, and trying to reverse engineer their binary files that are needed is difficult to do as well. However, I do think that there will be AOSP based ROMs for the Charge after r2doesinc starts working on it.
As far as I know they could be working on a Droid Charge port:
http://rootzwiki.com/showthread.php?631-WIP-CM7-for-Droid-Charge
Plus there's more than a few posts in that thread of people saying they'd send in phones for them to dev on. I've never used CM (just got my charge after a first-generation iPhone), but it looks slick as all getout. GummyCHARGED is the closest rom to it as far as I can tell.
I've been following, off and on, the struggle Entropy and other devs have been having with Samsung to ensure clearer documentation and accurate source files. It seems like Samsung may have opened up a little with their Insignal repositories. What I'd like to know - and haven't been able to discover - is if Samsung has already (or intends to) release the same for Exynos 3 (hummingbird). The source up on their regular opensource site is clearly not complete. Also, have Samsung opened up enough that Cyanogenmod will continue developing for Samsung devices?
I have a few reasons for asking. One is that I have another year on my contract with the Infuse and feel pretty annoyed that Gingerbread is as high as they'll go (my fault, but before this, I really had no concept of how primitive Gingerbread is). I'm happy that development has lived on here on xda, but I'd like to have a properly working camera. I don't think that's going to happen until Samsung open up.
The other reason is that, having read all Entropy has had to say on the matter, I won't buy another Samsung phone for me or family members until I know development can continue beyond AT&T and Samsung's arbitrary schedules.
Whizzpopper said:
I've been following, off and on, the struggle Entropy and other devs have been having with Samsung to ensure clearer documentation and accurate source files. It seems like Samsung may have opened up a little with their Insignal repositories. What I'd like to know - and haven't been able to discover - is if Samsung has already (or intends to) release the same for Exynos 3 (hummingbird). The source up on their regular opensource site is clearly not complete. Also, have Samsung opened up enough that Cyanogenmod will continue developing for Samsung devices?
I have a few reasons for asking. One is that I have another year on my contract with the Infuse and feel pretty annoyed that Gingerbread is as high as they'll go (my fault, but before this, I really had no concept of how primitive Gingerbread is). I'm happy that development has lived on here on xda, but I'd like to have a properly working camera. I don't think that's going to happen until Samsung open up.
The other reason is that, having read all Entropy has had to say on the matter, I won't buy another Samsung phone for me or family members until I know development can continue beyond AT&T and Samsung's arbitrary schedules.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You think samsungs bad...wait till you get an HTC lol they are even worse
Every manufacturer is bad with source unless its a nexus...if its not a mexus then they do the bare minimum
Anyways...I have no actually answer for your question...just felt like letting you know they are all bad...
Sent from my HTC Holiday using Tapatalk 2
mg2195 said:
You think samsungs bad...wait till you get an HTC lol they are even worse
Every manufacturer is bad with source unless its a nexus...if its not a mexus then they do the bare minimum
Anyways...I have no actually answer for your question...just felt like letting you know they are all bad...
Sent from my HTC Holiday using Tapatalk 2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I know! Afterlife development is what Android has going for it over iOS (IMHO). I guess Moto, Samsung, HTC, etc - just like every freaking retailer in America - really want everyone to buy into iOS? Had I opted for an iPhone 3GS, I'd still be eligible to upgrade to iOS 6. & I would have been able to copy and paste a tracking number the day I booted up my phone! LOL! Now, do I want a walled garden to enclose all my other walled gardens? Or do I want a walled garden with a gate?
Whizzpopper said:
I've been following, off and on, the struggle Entropy and other devs have been having with Samsung to ensure clearer documentation and accurate source files. It seems like Samsung may have opened up a little with their Insignal repositories. What I'd like to know - and haven't been able to discover - is if Samsung has already (or intends to) release the same for Exynos 3 (hummingbird). The source up on their regular opensource site is clearly not complete. Also, have Samsung opened up enough that Cyanogenmod will continue developing for Samsung devices?
I have a few reasons for asking. One is that I have another year on my contract with the Infuse and feel pretty annoyed that Gingerbread is as high as they'll go (my fault, but before this, I really had no concept of how primitive Gingerbread is). I'm happy that development has lived on here on xda, but I'd like to have a properly working camera. I don't think that's going to happen until Samsung open up.
The other reason is that, having read all Entropy has had to say on the matter, I won't buy another Samsung phone for me or family members until I know development can continue beyond AT&T and Samsung's arbitrary schedules.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Have you looked at the JB Roms for the infuse? I'm loving The ParanoidAndroid port Scott's done.. I've also put the AOCP rom on there as well as an AOKP rom but I always go back to PA..
as soon as the infuse was in my hands I installed a JB Rom I never had to deal w/ Gingerbread or Froyo or even ICS.. I did the same for my captivate and my 2 Skyrocket 2's as well..
_oxygen_ said:
Have you looked at the JB Roms for the infuse? I'm loving The ParanoidAndroid port Scott's done.. I've also put the AOCP rom on there as well as an AOKP rom but I always go back to PA..
as soon as the infuse was in my hands I installed a JB Rom I never had to deal w/ Gingerbread or Froyo or even ICS.. I did the same for my captivate and my 2 Skyrocket 2's as well..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm not sure why you ask. Yes, is the answer, but I don't know what that has to do with the topic. The camera doesn't work properly on JB and I don't think it will until either a) a developer with particular expertise in digital recording has time to spare or b) Samsung releases the source. I've tinkered enough with the source to know more or less what the main problem is, but where it is and how to solve it is well beyond me. There are other little problems too, but they may not be important in the long run.
I often wondered why Entropy called the Infuse, the Confuse. When I started rifling though the source, I found out: the Infuse is a Frankenphone.
I wasn't thinking of the video recording functionality w/ regards to the camera. Apart from that, it all works quite well for me. I haven't tried the 4.2 AOSP based ROMs so I don't know about the video recording functionality of that. I highly doubt Samsung is interested in furthering the development of the infuse as its getting pretty old.
_oxygen_
Sent from my SGH-I897 using xda app-developers app
Galaxy Note II user here, rooted, running CM, happy. This fall, I will be due a free or cheap handset upgrade. I've been loosely following the GN3, even though I will probably wait for the GN4, and reading about KNOX. Then I got to thinking, maybe if Samsung is so interested in putting up barriers to rooters, maybe I don't need to give them my money next time I upgrade handsets. I recall a few years back, HTC decided to stop locking it's bootloaders... Good news. but then I didn't follow through to see how that turned out.
So is there a way to list the companies and/or specific handsets that are "friendly" to rooting?
-peter
pcrussell50 said:
Galaxy Note II user here, rooted, running CM, happy. This fall, I will be due a free or cheap handset upgrade. I've been loosely following the GN3, even though I will probably wait for the GN4, and reading about KNOX. Then I got to thinking, maybe if Samsung is so interested in putting up barriers to rooters, maybe I don't need to give them my money next time I upgrade handsets. I recall a few years back, HTC decided to stop locking it's bootloaders... Good news. but then I didn't follow through to see how that turned out.
So is there a way to list the companies and/or specific handsets that are "friendly" to rooting?
-peter
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
its not all specifically Samsung's fault for the locked boot loaders, their devices have some of the best specs in android so why get rid of the option to opensource? its the carriers fault, like for AT&T for instance, all of the carrier variants of the Galaxy s3 had unlocked boot loader (i could be wrong) when the Galaxy s4 came out they like a few others decided to lock the boot loaders, why? i wanna say they Want people to tether lots and if we were to have a unlocked boot loader we could root it faster and get free tethering, they think they are losing money with all the flashaholics and root users. as for knox yeah its Samsung's fault and i think we all think its a big no no, there is a bounty (over $3000!) going on for it. its really disappointing that Samsung would act this way, Samsung's my hero and i hopped to work with them one day but since they are moving away from open source i think im gonna stick with someone else. as for a new company for phones you should probably go with HTC, LG is terrible, they only care for you if you buy their flagships and their UI is pretty much copying Samsung's.