[Galaxy S I9000 Android Development] miki4242:
With all the cats in the bin fighting and mewing fanatically, why not try to bring some sense in again.

I have to say I'm almost sad for Richthofen making internal releases and me outing about Kies Test Mode. We could have kept it for ourselves you know, let some other poor schmuck stumble upon them and set the world on fire.

I sincerely hoped that people here on XDA (hey, what's that word after the dash in the URL mean, anyone? Jeez, it's even in the name of this forum!) would enjoy playing with TEST, BETA, UNFINISHED firmwares before they are released (if at all) to the general public.

If anyone would care to do just a tiny little bit of research, they would find out that currently, the SGS series of phones is one of the most open(-minded) platforms out there.

Just some examples:

- It uses very decent (that's an understatement) hardware. Look for any other phone with better gear and THEN find out if it's development (there's that word again :) ) is as open as on the SGS.

- Yes, there are issues with it, mainly software related IMHO. If you do a little research on what's actually in the device, you will find out that several of the chips in it are very new and have only brand new, partly experimental, drivers for them. It's not that Samsung wants to be a ***** and wants us to beg and pay them more for better drivers, there just arent any (tested to the bone, put through years of field trials)! Not from Samsung, not even from the other chip manufacturers. Not only us, but many people with dev boards are waiting for them. This doesn't mean they will never come, just that development (3 times!) takes TIME and EFFORT.

- There's a LOT of development going on, and Samsung are quite open about it. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to find all the mailing lists, Git repositories, IRC channels, etcetera.

- The SGS series is one of the most open platforms I've seen in the embedded world, Ever. (The radio will remain off-limits FOREVER, a legal requirement). The hardware is documented in source right to the chip pin level. There are NO MORE critical-for-booting, anonymous, kernel version locked binary blobs in the kernel to speak of. Even the graphics accelerator driver has been GPLed (which may be a world first in terms of short time after release!) What that means is that when Android Pancake (or whatever name they come up with by then) comes out, we will be able to port the SGS drivers over to that (unless it requires 32 Gigs of RAM just to boot :) ). Just imagine. If you don't like that, run over to HTC/Qualcomm/Broadcom or whoever and enjoy your 'copy proprietary drivers from phone'/'write ugly blob wrappers'/'watch your kernel panic in unexplainable ways' masochism.

- Yes, you could argue that Samsung shipped too soon. But hey, what if they said: "Sorry guys, wait until somewhere around 2011, then we will be shipping the great SGS series!" You might have sold your soul (erhm hard earned cash) to another company with much lower-spec'd hardware and much more locked-tight software by then. Just enjoy having a phone in your hands right now with all the potential it has. Enjoy it getting better with every (community) update instead of becoming obsolete when the manufacturer drops support for it.

- No, I'm not a Samsung shill, even if the above might suggest that. I just enjoy working with this device.