On Friday 13 November 2009 18:29:49 James wrote: > Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon <at> gmail.com> writes: > > It's not an iPhone and Apple's psychosis doesn't enter the picture, I can > > install any user-space app I feel like. The warranty is already invalid > > though, for a different reason - I flashed it with an OS and firmware > > that's far superior to the one my carrier thinks I should have > > OH BOY, > > My son wants a droid phone. I'm pushing him towards the HTC droid > as I think we can customize it, if not eventually run embedded > Gentoo on this phone.
Do you mean "droid" as a synonym for Android? Motorola are soon releasing a phone called Droid, you might want to look at it. It will ship with Android 2.0, has a *huge* screen and overall very positive reviews. HTC has the Dream (swing out screen with physical keyboard) also known as the G1; plus the Tattoo and Hero (also known as Magic) - these two are touch screen only > I'd be most interested in the details of the exact model you purchased > and what resources and howtos you are following, so I can customize > this phone for him, aka linux style... I got the G1 Dream as a physical keyboard is a must for me. Virtual keyboards are a nice extra but I just can't get to grips with only that. Flashing it is quite easy. The kernel is very recent Linux with the Android user-space APIs as developed (mostly) by Google and a very light-weight Java VM for apps. Google supplies a full SDK free as in freedom plus free as in beer. Anyone familiar with embedded devices will feel right at home. To flash it you need root privileges which is a trivial hack; carrier-provided phones usually have this disabled but this too has been hacked around. Then followed Google and HTC's own docs on the flash procedure :-) Two sites provide everything you need: http://wiki.xda-developers.com/index.php?pagename=HTC_Dream http://wiki.cyanogenmod.com/index.php/Main_Page HTC images available at http://developer.htc.com/adp.html This page describes how to install Debian so gentoo will also be possible: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=507291 > You are using Verizon as your cellular service? I'm stuck with Verizon > for a variety of reasons.... I'm in South Africa, where Verizon is something we used to have :-) Business rules are different here so very little of the rules here will be applicable in the US -- alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com
