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Comment by bookwormAT | Hacker News Reader

You cannot jailbreak Android devices. Android devices usually come pre-jailbroken (able to run arbitrary software) out of the box.

What you mean is getting root access to the linux system that android is based on. Which is a cool hack, but not similar to a jail brake.

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Android users who don't have root are still in jail, because even if they can run arbitrary application software, they can't choose not to run arbitrary preinstalled software, so jailbreaking is still necessary.

Since an iPhone jailbreak provides full access and is, in fact, usually used for tweaks and other modifications rather than custom apps, that is disingenuous.

An iPhone "jailbreak" both jailbreaks and roots the device. Android phones (except for very cheap ones from certain carriers I think?) only need to be rooted.

It's not disingenuous, just (perhaps overly) pedantic.

That is my understanding of it anyway.

"Jailbreak" is a made up term. As far as I know, it originally referred to accessing arbitrary files on the filesystem (getting out of a chroot jail), but it now refers to a process including gaining access to the bootloader and/or kernel. Either would be an acceptable use of "jailbreak" (though the former might be misleading), but the term has never meant "run unsigned apps". HTH :p

Hmm, my impression was that the process of "jailbreaking" an iPhone was somehow rather related to breaking out of a chroot jail. I don't know where I got that impression though.

Android uses a Java-based VM. iOS does not. Is that correct?

Can you boot your own OS (sans Java VM) on an Android device? How easy is that to do?

The Nexus devices are generally the most open of all Android devices. Consequently, there's a Firefox OS port, in alpha right now, for the Galaxy Nexus. http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1805282

Many Android phones can also run various other distros using chroot.

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