Android: Google’s Mobile OS
by mmayhew on Sep.13, 2009, under Android
I’m a big fan of Google’s Android mobile OS. It allows a lot more flexibility and freedom over the iPhone OS. T-mobile is also a lot more “hacker friendly” by allowing apps for rooted (hacked) phones in their Market which is equivalent to the iPhone’s App Store.
A few key features that puts the Android OS over the iPhone, IMHO, is removable storage, ability to install 3rd party applications, open source, 3g tethering and running apps in the background.
But to get the full potential out of your Android device, you may want to consider “rooting” it. This gives you full root (administrative) access to the device. This allows custom ROM images, customer boot loaders and custom applications.
With Cyanogen’s custom ROM you get several custom features as well as a heavily optimized kernel that will speed up your device. With Cyanogen’s ROM, I’ve moved my applications to an ext2 partition on my SD card. I’ve also moved the cache for internal applications to the SD card. This free’s up internal memory, allows more capacity and speeds up the device. Cyanogen’s ROM also provides enhancements to the browser as well as other internal applications.
For the true geek’s out there, you can run a full Debian distro on top of the phone’s OS. There is also a free tethering application that will tether your 3g connection over Bluetooth or Wifi. The Wifi aspects still blows my mind. It basically turns your phone into a WEP-enabled Wifi access point that multiple devices can connect to. The app gives out DHCP addresses and will even do MAC address access control.
I’ll leave you with a few links:
Root Your Android Device In 1 Click.
xda-developers.com: The Best Source On The Net For Android Hacking
Cyanogen’s Rom: The Best Custom Rom For Your Rooted Android Device
Please leave any questions in the comment section and I’ll address them.
November 6th, 2009 on 12:42 am
Hi
so I am about to buy a mytouch. I am not a geek and do not understand half of the acronyms or there uses. But, It seems like I have to root my phone `more storage faster os and the beloved tethering.
How does it work can I or do I load more than one? like Cyanogen and Hero’s cupcake and donut. I don’t really understand any of it. Have you tried the donut it seems to be the way I need to go since I want blue tooth It says no radio is required not sure what that means. Are they referring to internet radio or radiowaves? but it will have a music player? I do want to play pandora
Sorry for all the ?? oh yeah do I do this to a sd card and not the phones hardware? I know I am supposed to partition a sd card? Any thanks for your knowledge
signed confused
November 6th, 2009 on 12:05 pm
Non Geek: I would strongly consider NOT rooting your phone if you aren’t a techy. As much as I love Android and the ability to hack it, my wife’s MyTouch is not rooted. Simply because she doesn’t care enough about the rooted features to maintain the ROM updates.
Don’t let me discourage you from rooting if that’s what you want to do. CyanogenMod has a very nice OTA (over the air) updater that will keep you up to date if it’s configured correctly. Just weigh your options.
If you decide you want to give it a shot, head over to XDA and find the thread on How To Root your android device.
And as far as the radio goes.. That’s talking about the firmware that controls the radio in the phone. Since you are buying the MyTouch you will not have to update, as you mentioned.
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