A killer Android app | Hacker News Reader

A killer Android app

arcriley.blogspot.com

59 pointspufuwozu23 comments

He is running a hacked firmware that apparently does not have the native Android dialer, and then wants Google to remove the app that didn't run right with his hacked firmware? Sorry, but that's not Google's fault.

As much as I tend to agree with the "I should be able to do anything on my phone" crowd, it seems to me like it would be a good idea to have some kind of built-in back-up dialer that can't ever be removed, in case you ever need to call 911.

That's just it. The firmware that he chose to install removed the default dialer. Most of the time, a phone that has Dial One installed on it, still has the default dialer that can be chosen from the application launcher.

Right, I understand. But there are ways of making it impossible to remove emergency functionality (burn it into ROM, for example).

There's absolutely ZERO way to make it impossible to remove functionality. Walk to top of building. Release phone.

Even at a more practical level, it's still practically impossible. At most you move the modding 'down the stack,' but that's hardly an insurmountable barrier, as modders have demonstrated time and time again.

There is a place for personal responsibility for the decisions one makes, and this is a great example.

Just felt I should mention that the dialer that comes with Vanilladroid is the default Android dialer. Not the Sense UI dialer (which is the default for the Eris), though.

Ah. In which case the author didn't know how to use his own phone.

I don't think he's really blaming Google for it, just suggesting that they stop promoting (via Android Market) a replacement dialer that doesn't let users make emergency calls.

You don't need to hack your firmware to install other dialers. There are dozens on the android market.

Edit: Dialer One's release notes for v1.2 say that an issue was fixed regarding United States emergency numbers. Not sure if that pertains to this issue, though.

That's correct.

You do need to hack the firmware though to not be able to access the default dialer (which he had done).

I just tried on my phone: even if I install Dialer one, I can always go to all applications and run the default phone app.

Without the modified firmware, he could have realized the 3rd party dialer had a bug and immediately switched to the default in seconds.

Dialers available on the app store should be screened by Google to ensure they comply with US laws.

What are the applicable US laws? If they say "a cell phone must be able to make calls", then Google and the carriers will just sell a "PDA that has a 3G connection" instead. If it makes phone calls, excellent... but if not, well, it's not supposed to. (Reminds me of these stickers that came with my VoIP phone. The instructions said I was legally required to attach them to "any device that could not call 911 during a power failure". That day, my alarm clock and microwave got a new sticker. They cannot, sadly, call 911 during a power failure!)

(Remember how HDTVs were required to have an HDTV OTA tuner? So the HDTV manufacturers just sold "HD monitors" instead, which weren't required to have the pricey tuner. You can't extract blood from a stone.)

Incidentally, one time, I witnessed a mugging and all I had was a coffee cup. I tried to use it to dial 911, but it didn't work and the victim died! Starbucks should ensure that their cups comply with all US regulations!

That article was 100% different than I thought it was going to be.

Remember Nelson in Ep 3F17 after seeing Naked Lunch with the fake ID: "I can think of at least two things wrong with that title."

A good reminder that hacking your phone (jailbreaking, rooting, etc) can cause serious problems outside of just the technical realm.

Reminds me of an old Baseline Magazine cover story about how poor software can kill. The poster child? Software that calculated radiation doses for cancer patients which produced results off by ~1000% when the lead pads were entered counter-clockwise instead of clockwise (!). It caused dozens of deaths in Panama.

The unforgettable cover photo was a dead body under a white sheet, with a toe tag.

(Ironically, it seems this article was drastically truncated during a website migration: http://www.baselinemag.com/c/a/Projects-Processes/Why-Softwa...)

Haven't heard of that particular case, but the Therac-25 caused six people to receive 100 times the amount of radiation intended, killing three of them.

There were a number of issues, many UI-related, but what I found most interesting was that the prior Therac machines, which ran the same software, had hardware interlocks that allowed them to operate safely, masking software bugs. When the hardware interlocks were removed in the Therac-25, the buggy software was able to make the machine misbehave dangerously.

Citation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25

Therac-25 is the most famous incident, but it's just the tip of the iceberg. This is still happening, and it happens a lot.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/health/24radiation.html

Despite the linkbait headline I found this to be an amusing take on the whole smartphone craze.

Sure, his own fault for running custom firmware I suppose. But I wouldn't have been surprised if the story had ended with "but the battery was drowned" either...

I really expected this to be about an app that impressive to the point where I had to get an android..?

Voting down someone for saying it is linkbait? I don't get that. The title is entirely misleading in this community.

Sorry for the link bait - I just didn't feel it was right to create a new title after the author of the blog post had spent time to come up with one. I was wrong and should have come up with a different title when I submitted it.

I'd be happy if a moderator changed it.

I have a Droid for Android development. During the time it was activated the dialer crashed frequently. I wasn't impressed and definitely wouldn't depend on it in an emergency.

i guess that's slightly less bad than actually rebooting

http://code.google.com/p/cyanogenmod/issues/detail?id=388

(this was a problem with the official android code, not cyanogenmod)

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