yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Windows Phone 7 General] Sethos II:
Well, you don't lose the lock screen, you just lose the slide unlock. Which means you press a button to unlock, instead of the slide-to-unlock.

You partition your SD card and install the apps2sd. Pretty easy I'd say. You can find guides on the forum.

I do not agree. ;)

Swiping with one finger should only be done within apps and swiping with more fingers isn't intuitive IMO. I prefer the back button plus a visual task switcher.
[Windows Phone 7 General] Sethos II:
How a device is rooted is device dependent and there are always different methods. Certainly more complicated than 4 steps.

But then, it's something you do only once, so I think it doesn't matter how easy/complicated it is.

Plus, unlike on the iPhone, it's actually not necessary.

All the things that you said you can do on the iPhone require jailbreaking. And Apple is working against you. A stock iPhone can not do any of those things. On Android, you can do them all without rooting, there are only a few things that require rooting, like the apps2sd (which is not necessary if you buy a device with enough internal storage) or the Exchange calendar support (which is not necessary on HTC devices). And even then, nobody is working against you.

I think it speaks for Android that you can do all those things "legally". Of course jailbreakers have developed lots and lots of implementations to do this and that, but if you use them, you always depend on hackers to jailbreak the next version of the iPhone and the next, and the next... and you can never be certain that you'll be able to install the next version without losing all of your enhancements that can only be installed after jailbreaking. I don't want to worry about that and I think Apple's "evilness" in that regard is another argument not to use their products.
[Windows Phone 7 General] eaglesteve:
Not with more fingers. Just slide one finger left or right on the the taskbar.

Just for record, with iPhone, you can also use one of the hardware buttons that I described to go back to the previous application, as well as to the next application (which Android can't do).
[Windows Phone 7 General] eaglesteve:
99.9% of iPhone users may find jailbreaking completely unnecessary. 99.9% of Android users may find rooting unnecessary.

Unfortunately, you and I belong to the 0.1%, so I have no doubt that I could never live with an unrooted Android phone. I'm too much a perfectionist to want an unrooted or unjailbroken phone.

Jailbreaking is not illegal. It merely void the warranty if you send it in with sign of jailbreaking out of stupidity. All of us restore the phone before sending it in. Restoring the phone is a simple process of connecting to iTune and click the restore firmware button.

That brings me to the next question: Can you unroot the phone? Would rooting void the warranty? If you can unroot, how complicated is the process?
[Windows Phone 7 General] Sethos II:
That is certainly not right. There are lots of reasons to jailbreak an iPhone. Also, a lot more than 0.01% of iPhones are jailbroken. I don't think that's the case for Android, as it's simply not necessary on Android.

Plus, a non-jailbroken iPhone doesn't stand the slightest chance about an Android phone. All the things you were talking about require jailbreaking, while on Android, they do not require any hacking at all.

That must be considered and it's the reason why I would never consider buying an iPhone, because even if jailbroken iPhones can do some things better, they still need to be jailbroken in order to do them at all. And whilst Apple is working against jailbreakers, nobody is working against people who develop enhancements fo Android.

I think it's not fair to say "iPhones can do this and that", because it's actually "jailbroken iPhones can do this and that" and "stock iPhones can't do this and this and this and.....".

Also, while some of the implementations on Android (like the app switching you request) are not yet as developed as the implementations for jailbroken (!) iPhones, they're getting there and more importantly, nobody is working against them!

I think this is a huge point to consider.
[Windows Phone 7 General] eaglesteve:
Never mind about whether or not it is right.

For me, I would not do it if it void my warranty. But if it there is an easy reversal mechanism, then there is absolutely no reason to not do it. Since iPhone's jailbreaking is riskfree and so easy, and reversal is so easy, I do not see any logic in not wanting to do it when it is able to turn a rather imperfect phone into a something so bloody good.

Question was: Would rooting void the warranty? Can you unroot an Android phone? If you can unroot, how complicated and risky is the process?
[Windows Phone 7 General] Sethos II:
1) You can never be sure whether the next version will be jailbroken again, or how long it will take.

2) Apple are not only working against the jailbreaking process, they're also working against developers who develop for jailbroken phones.

3) With Android you don't have to worry about anything. You can develop whatever you like and you don't have to worry that your phone becomes useless after installing an update.

That is something that must be kept in mind, when talking about what the phones can do.

I personally don't want to depend on hacks in order to get basic features any Android (or WM) phone can do out of the box. And of course I don't want to throw my money at the evil company that is Apple (and Mr. Jobs, in particular).

And if you talk about things a jailbroken iPhone can do, you should not say iPhone, but jailbroken iPhone.

Re rooting, of course you can un-root. The whole thing is exactly the same as what people do with iPhones or WM phones and of course the warranty issues are exactly the same and so on. You can find find the guides on the forum.
[Windows Phone 7 General] eaglesteve:
Sk far the jailbreak community has been winning. Jailbreak for 4.0 will probably be availabe a day it two before the the new phone is available for sales. But you're right to say that Apple tries hard to stop it like Sony is trying to stop the jailbreak of PSP. The other factor I consider is that each firmware brings in many things previously achievable only with jailbreak. Multitasking and application folders are examples. For some reasons I get a feeling that Apple is only pretending to be trying to stop the jailbreak. What it really wants to stop us the piracy. The jailbreak community comes up with lots if good enhancement that changes the OS functions and features so it's not such a bad idea to let this continue.

It's irrelevant AFAIC to seggregate between jailbreak and stock functions. These are all third party tools. The only difference between them are some tools are sold in the App Store while the tools I talked about are from the Cydia application store. Absolutely senseless to have to seggregate them.
[Windows Phone 7 General] eaglesteve:
Is it true that HTC can tell if the phone has been rooted before and refuse warranty as a result?
[Windows Phone 7 General] Sethos II:
No, that's impossible. As said before, there's no difference between HSPLing a WM phone, rooting an Android phone od jailbreaking an iPhone. Except that it's not necessary with WM/Android. ;)

That is utter nonsense for the reasons explained above.
[Windows Phone 7 General] eaglesteve:
For the sake of keeping harmony, let's just agree to disagree on this one and move on in our comparison.

But I just like to confirm that at this moment HTC Desire has already been rooted and unrooted by someone before.

Can you share some information on Android's multi-region and language support? Can the keyboard input in every language and allows quick switch to any layout with ease? This is an area winmo really had problem with. How is it like in Android? Can I use write in say Japanese and Chinese characters like in iPhone?
[Windows Phone 7 General] vangrieg:
Well, these are just rumors as of now. 3.1.x with newer bootrom will have been stuck with tethered jailbreak for over half a year by the time 4.0 is released. And nobody knows what kind of bootrom or other tricks will be in the new iPhone hardware. Jailbreaking firmware isn't the same as jailbreaking the device, as the 3GS example demonstrates. Or did I miss some big recent news?
[Windows Phone 7 General] Sethos II:
Well, you can say what you want, but is DOES matter whether you have to jailbreak or not and whether someone is working against you and the developers or not.

Maybe it doesn't matter to you, but most users certainly want to have the features available out of the box or easily downloadable from the official (!) market, they want to have all the features without voiding their warranty and without the uncertainty about whether they will be able to install the next OS version or buy the next device version or not.

And developers don't want to be pursued for creating enhancements to the system and don't want to worry about whether their hard work will be allowed and usable in the future.

The Desire has been rooted, but there's no write access yet and the method has not been made public.

System and keyboard language can be changed in settings.
[Windows Phone 7 General] vangrieg:
Actually, most people apparently don't care about features as much, and in most cases don't even know what that "multi-what?" thing means. And most users can't be sure whether they will be able to install the next OS version of Android on their devices either.
[Windows Phone 7 General] Sethos II:
a

I'm not (only) talking about "multi-what", I'm talking about things that directly make the phone more enjoyable to use. Like reaching the wireless controls with just a few taps and so on.

People definitely care about that, even if they don't think about it, but they notice it while using the phone.

Thus, people definitely DO care whether those features are available or not. They just don't think about it, like we do, but they still care.

And people also can be sure that they won't lose all their enhancements when they install the next version of Android, because the phone doesn't need to be jailbroken in order to use those enhancements, thus, they don't have to worry and can simply install the next version, knowing that the phone won't become "useless".

So yes, they CAN be sure that they will be able to install updates, without rendering their phone "useless".
[Windows Phone 7 General] vangrieg:
Well, not too many Android phones out there got official 2.1, and chances are, they won't get it earlier than a jailbreak for whatever iPhone OS they're using is released. Some may never get it. So yes, they won't get their phones "useless" by upgrading.
[Windows Phone 7 General] Sethos II:
Re: WP7 vs. iPhone vs. Android vs. WM6.5 - the definitive comparison!

This is an entirely different matter that has zero relevance to the discussion.
[Windows Phone 7 General] vangrieg:
Which discussion? This thread is about comparing different mobile OSes. Upgraidability of devices is a point to compare. You bring it up as an argument against a jailbroken iPhone. I say it's not that big of a deal and it's not that much of a difference as regards Android.
[Windows Phone 7 General] gullum:
Just to show how upgradable Android is take a look at this update by Google

http://phandroid.com/2010/04/14/google-updates-their-chart-to-show-the-state-of-fragmentation/

it shows that around 70% of all Android device still are running versions under 2.1

Version 1.5 - 38%

Version 1.6 - 31.6%

Version 2.1 - 27.3%

My guess is that all of the 2.1 are shipped with it and I also guess that most people running 1.5 will need a new device to get newer version of Android.

Anyway it's the same for iPhone and WM.

first gen iPhones will not get official update to OS4 (3 years of offical updates is quite a long time though)

most HTC WM phone don't get much more then 1 year official upgrades.

with WP7 things might get better as it's MS that will do the updates and not the manufactures.

so the way I see it concerning length of usability of a phone iPhone and WP7 are the way to go. But then again for most geeks a 1 year old phone is just that OLD
[Windows Phone 7 General] chikoo:
Apparently Steve Jobs does not think like you :(

apple-says-jailbreaking-is-illegal
[Windows Phone 7 General] chikoo:
People don't care about fancy jargons...but they speak with their money.

You simply cannot put numbers of such aspects of any device.
[Windows Phone 7 General] eaglesteve:
Yes you have indeed missed the news. More than one peoples, including Geohot himself have shown their videos. The jailbreak works for every single devices including iPad. They jailbroken it pretty much the moment iPad was released. They were able to do this because the exploit previously exist were not patched up by Apple. Interesting that Apple seems to 'forget' to patch up long known secret completely every time.
[Windows Phone 7 General] Sethos II:
Re: WP7 vs. iPhone vs. Android vs. WM6.5 - the definitive comparison!

@vangrieg

Firstly, you changed the subject of the discussion, your post had zero relevance, and secondly, you are wrong.

While not every manufacturer and especially carrier is reliable, most Android phones are updated just as quickly as iPhones. E.g. the Hero soon recieves 2.1, after one year, which is exactly the same time frame that Apple takes to release major updates. Also the Droid/Milestone is already getting 2.1 and so on, so you were wrong.

Plus, there's the fact that Android updates don't matter to most people, cause they're mostly cosmetic with only small feature additions, whereas major iPhone updates typically bring crucial features. Even Android 1.5 is perfectly fine today, it doesn'lack any crucial feature or provide a bad user experience like WM.

So yes, Android users don't have to worry about anything, cause unlike WM users, they ARE getting updates - like iPhone users - and even if they don't, it's not much of an issue, cause they're not missing crucial features - like iPhone users - or suffer a "sub-optimal" experience - like WM users.
[Windows Phone 7 General] awilaman:
I added Palm webOS 1.4.1 to the spreadsheet, please review and add if it is compatible your original idea for the chart.

Most of the information is based on my experience with webOS and information from:

http://developer.palm.com

and

http://www.webos-internals.org.
[Windows Phone 7 General] Fa7my:
Firstly, you are welcome.. glad I could help

Secondly, sorry but I forget to add this.. I discovered that Maemo OS can handle Xvid and DivX out of the box..
[Windows Phone 7 General] eaglesteve:
If you post like this, you will start to lose your credibility I'm afraid.

First of all, if most devices are stucked with the old Android firmware and can't upgrade, and Hero takes a year before it gets it's upgrade, and yet you think is the same as the iPhone, then you are talking nonsense. Apple's firmware has a major upgrade every year, yes, that part it true. It also have minor upgrades a few times in a year that you have failed to mention. The biggest omission you had was the fact that once a new firmware (big or small) is released, ALL devices get it immediately, not one year later, and not completely not getting it like in the Android fragmented world. For iPhone, OS4.0 will be the first time when not ALL devices will be supported. This is due to completely reasons from Android though. The decision to not introducing multitasking and the like to earlier iPhone was because it was a deliberate decision due to hardware limitation. In the case of Android, it is not due to hardware limitation but due to fragmentation and having far too many versions of Android floating around in the market. HTC has to almost redo the Sense UI for each combination of hardware model and Android, hence it becomes a prohibitive expensive exercise. This also lies one of the biggest difference between the two platform which any objective evaluator would consider.

Then you mentioned that most Android update does not matter to people. It may be true if you standard is set for the majority of users rather than people visiting this forum. What I find ironical is that you at the same breath things that majority of the people could not use iPhone's stock OS when evidence points otherwise.

You keep coming back to insisting that we must not perform a 30 second procedure on an out of box iPhone, and not offering any reason for your insistence. If the jailbreaking still requires tethered reboot, then you have a possible reason. If it causes the device to explode, then you have a reason. But it only makes the device better with no noticeable disadvantage (although Steve Jobs tries very hard to convince people that it makes devices slow, unstable, and more battary hungry - and those of us with day to day intimate knowledge of jailbroken iPhone know this is BS). Please... think of ONE convincing reason why you want to restrict me in how I use my phone. I don't like the restriction from Steve Job and you alike.

There is no CRUCIAL missing element to MOST people even if used out of the box. On the contrary, one could argue that there is crucial missing element in Android out of the box with regards to abilty to install enough applications due to the memory shortage despite having double the amount of RAM as compared to iPhone. As a result of this, Android OS and iPhone OS on similar hardware specification differe so much in performance, to Android's disadvantage. I'm not really saying to you that this is crippling, but only to point out your unreasonable position regarding iPhone here.
[Windows Phone 7 General] rorytmeadows:
I don't consider a jailbroken iPhone to be comparable to other mobile OS', because it's constantly pushed back down by Apple. Several articles exist that speculate and conclude that Microsoft is PURPOSELY looking the other way on rooting their ROMs (most likely because they know it sells units). Android, I'm not sure about. But with Apple, they don't want you doing it, and they will constantly work towards locking it up to the best of their ability. For every jailbreak method, there WILL be a method of locking it down and forcing another way around. Theoretically, it will be harder and harder as time goes on, with a tyrannical Jobs telling you no and claiming that it's illegal. I just don't see that on the same level.

I think about it like a Car & Driver test. They pair up new vehicles and rate their performance and who's the winner. You can't pair up one new car with another new one that has a governor built-in limiting the speed. So, you'd think that taking out the governor would make them comparable. No. Not at all. You tinkered with one and not with the other. It's not an even race. And it's not how they are meant to be.

In Apple-dumb speak, Apple says it's illegal to jailbreak your iPhone. Now, you're comparing an illegal phone to one out of the box legal.

I just don't see this as an adequate comparison. iPhone out of the box vs. Android out of the box. iPhone loses. iPhone jailbroken vs Android rooted? Well, I have no idea about that one, personally.
[Windows Phone 7 General] eaglesteve:
Can someone else with Android confirm that it supports Chinese out if the box? My friend was complaining on this point and I'm not sure what to believe now.
[Windows Phone 7 General] JAguirre1231:
Google honestly doesn't care, in fact with the Nexus, they included a one line command to root it.
[Windows Phone 7 General] Sethos II:
At least there's the option. I won't tap on it, though ;)
[Windows Phone 7 General] rorytmeadows:
Got to love companies like that. Honestly, I've been burnt on Google ever since Google Desktop ended a relationship for me (my girlfriend caught me cheating through searching my chats) and they installed Google Updater Service, but maybe I should start thinking otherwise. Google Desktop has gone the way of buddyprofile.com but this updater service really pisses me off. Do we really need a service running in the background that makes sure you have all the latest features of Google Earth? Comon people!

But the nice things to say about Android in light of Microsoft's moronic Windows Phone lack of features, have got me a thinkin'.
[Windows Phone 7 General] Sethos II:
The ONLY ONE who loses credibility is the one who needs to say something like this. Pathetic.

JUST like the iPhone. No difference there at all. Minor versions are for bugfixing and of course Android devices get them whenever necessary.

All devices is only the iPhone. Older iPhones usually don't get all of the new features, so again no advantage there AT ALL.

Fragmentation is a myth, talked about by people who can't think of any other arguments to defend their iPhones/WM phones/whatever phones.

There's nothing ironical at all. Stock Android is just much better than stock iPhone.

That is a total lie. I've given you huge reasons.

I don't want to depend on hacks to make my phone usable, cause it SUCKS out of the box.

I want certainty that any update will not render my phone useless.

I don't want to throw any money at a company that behaves like Apple and Steve Jobs in particular, regarding that issue (pursuing developers, working against the hacks, disallowing any "competition" like alternative apps, Flash, cross-compiled apps and so on).

And most important: If I put huge efforts into developing something for a platform, I don't want to depend on the mercy of an evil company to approve it or not to withdraw it whenever they like for any obscure reasons. I want my stuff to be available to anyone, without them having to hack their devices and I want my stuff to stay available, not become useless if some day people can't hack their devices anymore.

That is MORE than enough.

If you live in a small world where there's only one phone running a particular OS... but actually, all you have to do is get another phone that has enough memory for you. THAT SIMPLE, yet hard to understand if in your world, there's only the one phone.

'nuff said. Since I won't dicuss against PATHETIC 'lose your credibility' claims, I'm not going not contribute anymore to this discussion.

I'll have a look at the updated charts tomorrow. Thanks a lot, Fa7my and awilaman!
[Windows Phone 7 General] vangrieg:
Ah that. Yes, I've seen it. There still is nothing available to use, most 3GSs are thus crippled. And still nobody knows if it will work with 4G hardware, whatever it is.

*Shrug* Glad you liked it. Enjoy.

Manufacturers won't support dozens of phones forever. And you need manufacturer support to have upgrades because they customize the OS and supply drivers and software independently of Google. Simple as that. So you're touting the fact that some phones got upgrades a year after release. Cool. Let's wait another year and see. Or even see how many phones will get FroYo and when.

Re importance of updates - I wouldn't call Exchange support or sending files over Bluetooth cosmetic additions, although they're not the scale of iPhone getting the SDK or copy/paste of course. Most other additions to iPhone OS are quite comparable in importance however. I'm not sure I'd prefer the native mechanism for multitasking to the ones offered by JB. And for those who don't JB their phones it probably doesn't matter anyway - they must be happy with what they have.
[Windows Phone 7 General] Sethos II:
Right, just like the original iPhone is not supported anymore.

...which will probably never be available on non-jailbroken iPhones...

Thanks for supporting my points.
[Windows Phone 7 General] vangrieg:
Except in the case of Android we're talking about much more recent hardware.

*Shrug* I don't care for a non-jailbroken iPhone. A jailbroken one is a very capable machine, it's certain hardware specs that turn me away, not a dislike for Jobs or protesting against Apple policies or respect for DMCA or whatever such childish bull****. To be fair, not too many Android phones are better in terms of hardware than 3GS - just two, and both have their own drawbacks. Being afraid of losing usability with an upgrade isn't a serious argument either anymore - on Android you might not even get the upgrade, while iPhone OS after 3.0 is the same as Android in terms of upgrade importance.