[ale] Moving my phone into the 20th Century

[Charles Shapiro]

A year ago I was in exactly your position.  I went to the CyanogenMod site
( http://www.cyanogenmod.org) and looked at the phones they said were
compatible with the current release version. Then I went to the Verizon
site and did an inner join. That brought the choice down to 3 models.  I
wound up with an HTC Incredible 2 which I rooted & installed CM 7 on in a
weekend or two.  It's been a rock ever since, and I have no crapware
installed by Verizon on it.  Most 3rd-party ROMS will allow you to do
tethering or personal wifi right from the OS; Verizon's build of Android
has this feature disabled.  In addition, there have been security scandals
related to software installed on proprietary Android builds -- another good
reason to beware of them.  (
http://www.engadget.com/2011/12/01/carrier-iq-what-it-is-what-it-isnt-and-what-you-need-to/,
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/02/ftc-orders-htc-to-fix-its-reasonable-security-failures-on-android/
)

You should get a dual-mode (GSM/CDMA) phone if you can.  GSM and CDMA are
two competing mobile phone protocols; GSM is open, but CDMA is proprietary.
Alas, Verizon uses CDMA technology, so any phone you use with their network
must talk this protocol.  CDMA doesn't use the little smartcard gizmo (
"SIM card"), which means that a CDMA-only phone is tied to its carrier --
you cannot easily use it on any other cell phone carrier. With a GSM phone,
changing carriers is usually as easy as getting a new SIM card.  Most
European carriers use GSM , so if you're planning an overseas trip the GSM
capability is very handy.

Be aware that your spiffy new smartphone is a significant security risk. US
law is still in flux over whether the police can confiscate and search your
smartphone.  As long as it is turned on, it will give anyone interested
very strong clues to your location, even with the GPS feature turned off.
OTOH, watching my brother navigate with his smartphone in a strange city
was one of the things that persusuaded me to get one.

As for development, your Development environment should be separate from
your production environment.  It's easy to pick up a used smartphone for
next to nothing -- they're even surprisingly easy to repair.  The dev tools
are all free and easy to find, and linux seems to be the environment of
choice  for using them.

-- CHS




On Wed, Apr 17, 2013 at 3:41 PM, JD <jdp at algoloma.com> wrote:

> On 04/17/2013 03:30 PM, leam hall wrote:
> > We have Verizon as the wireless carrier. Would like to get an Android
> based
> > phone on the chance I start doing programming on it. What phones are the
> best to
> > have for programming purposes?
> >
>
> Whatever Google sells, like the Nexus4.  Don't know if that is available
> unlocked for Verizon or not.  Mine is GSM.
>
> By stating with google devices, you prevent the network-provider delays in
> getting updated OS releases.  It also means you run the reference platform
> for
> Android.
>
> If you plan to run other firmware, then I don't know.
>
> Programming for Android isn't really performed "on the phone" - most devs
> use
> Eclipse on Linux or Windows for development and only use any specific
> phone for
> testing purposes.  While it shouldn't be necessary to have any specific
> Android
> phone for most application development and testing, there do seem to be
> phone
> that are modified by the cell companies which appear to introduce very
> noticeable incompatibilities.  Some programs don't work on some phones and
> I
> can't think of any reason beyond vendor customizations or terrible drivers
> for
> that to happen.
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