To Hack a Smartphone or Not to Hack?

phone_telephone_111145The smartphone has gone mainstream, but that is only a recent phenomenon. For years, smartphones were the realm of the techie enthusiast who was willing to spend the money and time needed to fully exploit the capabilities of these mini-computers. What many smartphone owners today may not be aware of is there is a full community of smartphone hackers who are constantly expanding what can be done with just about every smartphone out there. Those willing to experiment with their phones can quickly learn that there is a lot going on with their particular phone behind the scenes.

These hackers are not the black hat hackers out to do harm to anyone. No, these hackers are trying to expand what can be done with these smartphones with just a little effort. A lot of the effort is expended to get around the OS fragmentation we’ve mentioned before. A given phone may get the latest and greatest version of an OS but only in select markets, leaving owners in other countries or with other carriers out in the cold. The fact is, smartphone owners don’t have to be penalized by factors out of their control; if a given phone has a particular version of an OS anywhere in the world, hackers have made it possible for any phone owner to put it on their phone.

I’m not going to get into the morality or legality of doing this. Almost all of the people who hack their phone to put software otherwise unavailable do so for the reason I mentioned. Some do it to live on the cutting edge of technology available at a given time. It is a huge community of enthusiasts working together to get the most out of any phone. And don’t think it’s only a few phones being hacked; it’s a safe bet that once a given phone is released, it is being hacked right away. Sometimes the phones are getting “unofficially updated” before they are widely released. It is an amazing ecosystem that is well-connected and very technically savvy.

We’ve all heard of jail-breaking the iPhone. Many owners have done so to unleash functionality not readily available from Apple. The hacking I am referring to is very similar to this jail-breaking; it’s just not called that on phones other than the iPhone. How integrated into the smartphone world is this hacking? You know that new HTC Hero phone just announced this week? The one with the cool UI that HTC has rolled out for Android, HTC Sense? That UI is already available for any Android phone in the hacking community. It has been for a while, as a matter of fact.

Now, I am not recommending that anyone hack their phone, especially not their only phone. This can be a very unstable process that can easily brick your phone. Hacked versions of phone software are often early beta versions, complete with bugs. When you hack a phone, you are replacing all tested software and firmware with totally user-derived versions, and they may not work as intended. However, if you are a technically savvy enthusiast with a spare phone around, it can be a lot of fun. I’m just saying.

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