Truth be told, most smartphone users never venture further away from basic settings, and there are even those completely unaware that what they have is a smartphone, instead regarding it as a really good-looking SMS typewriter. The advanced among these users change the wallpaper from time to time, and there are, of course, those who utilise the potential of their smartphone to the fullest. This situation is hardly something to be dazzled about, since mobile providers tend to rip off with their mobile data transfer charges. The situation is drastically improved only with special tariffs and offers that provide customized conditions for data transfer.
When smartphones get too smart
Naturally, not everyone needs mail and messenger all the time (they perhaps do Facebook and Twitter, though?), which particularly understandable in countries where fax is still the synonym of reliability and doing serious business. Yet modern technologies seem to be penetrating the masses, however slowly, and one can see more and more users tipping and touching their phones' display ad nauseam. This has led to an increase in truly advanced users, who actually wish to milk the entire value for their money out of the newly bought smartphone – similarly to overclockers, in a way. The typical user from this group will go through all the functions, change the way UI looks to the slightest detail, install all sorts of applications, until he/she finally gets that blissful Mona Lisa smile every time the phone is unlocked. Believe it or not, there are even users who've found ways to overclock their smartphones (uhm, including yours truly, who's already done it once, only to witness the battery percentage indicator decreasing the number in real-time). Can you do that with every phone? Not quite. It's not really as simple as CPUs, graphics cards and RAM are nowadays. In the beginning, PC overclocking was much the same as this, just as complicated and mystical as smartphone tuning. But do not despair, as everyone will ultimately be able to overclock a smartphone in the foreseeable future. Until then, let's see what other ways there are to go around the factory-predefined settings.
Which OS are you running today?
Indeed, there are those unsatisfied with the very operating system that they got preinstalled on their smartphone, so they've managed to change this as well. These efforts mostly end up partially successfully, with quite a few limitations. Why? Well, every OS on a smartphone functions in much the same way as a PC OS. There's the BIOS, then loading OS together with driver startup, followed by UI bootup and finally the programs themselves (we've simplified things a bit for clarity's sake). The problem is in the driver part. You see, in order to boot iOS (iPhone OS) on another smartphone, you need to write drivers for every module present in the target smartphone, since Apple has, obviously, provided only the drivers necessary for the modules located in their own hardware. Of course, this is just one of the hindrances that need to be overcome in order to accomplish a successful port.
Ever since iPhone and Android phones first started to achieve mainstream popularity, about 2-3 years ago, many owners of Windows Mobile devices, manufactured by HTC and gathered around the xda-developers.com website, started developing on the idea of running Android on their phones instead of the utterly obsolete Windows Mobile OS. With the differences in hardware platforms between Windows Mobile and Android devices, it was a huge success even to get any form of image on the display whatsoever, but as Android devices grew in popularity and became more widespread, so did the support for Android on the Windows Mobile platform. The situation as of this moment is that you can run a functional version of Android OS on HTC: TyTN II, Touch HD, Touch Pro, Touch Diamond 2, Touch Pro 2, HD2, as well as Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1.
Installing and running Android on these devices is relatively simple. All that's needed is to copy a single folder (“Android”) to the memory card and run an .exe file. That .exe file (haret.exe) serves the purpose of removing Windows Mobile (Phone) OS from the device's RAM and first load, and then start Android. The first bootup of the new operating system can take a while, so some patience will be required in this phase. Once Android has started completely, you can start using your new OS just like any user of the “real deal”. Android Market is functional, you can talk, send SMS, access WiFi networks... Of course, not everything is slick and shiny. Various problems have been known to surface: from the inability to have a normal conversation due to the other side perceiving your voice as alien/robotic, over unstable data connection, display problems, memory card access troubles, the impossibility to connect to any WiFi network etc. But despite these functionality issues, which may or may not appear on a particular model, the situation is never that tragic, since you can return to the “good old” (rather old than good) Windows Mobile by simply resetting Android OS (or in the worst case scenario, pulling out the battery and putting it back).
Android instead of WM
Yours truly has been hanging out with an HTC HD2 on a daily basis, using Windows Mobile all the time. Android is installed on the memory card and fully functional, but I'm personally simply unsatisfied with the way it all works. Don't get me wrong, Android is working, everything is, even better so than on HTC Desire, for example, which has a similar hardware base. But one thing is simply off-putting: autonomy is disastrous. A similarly set Windows Mobile can hold the phone on for up to three days, while Android drains it in no more than 12 hours. The situation with other Android-compatible WM devices isn't as catastrophic as far as autonomy is concerned. On the other hand, HD2 is likely to become the first WM device able to boot Android OS from the NAND memory (ROM). Other devices are expected to attain this ability as well over time. Whether HD2 will be able to run Windows Phone 7 OS is a question that won't be answered for a while yet, but preliminary research indicate a positive answer. Of course, there's always the question of how well Windows Phone 7 OS will be able to function at all on HD2's hardware, but that's already delving into particularities that will be dealt with when the time comes.
Besides the aforementioned phones with the (unofficial, mind you) ability to run another OS, there are other devices with similar abilities. Certain individuals have allegedly succeeded in running Apple's iOS on Android phones, but authenticity of these trials may be questioned, since the procedure has never been published, and system performance was borderline usable. There are even a few partially successful projects in running Android on iPhone smartphones, but having in mind what fanatics Apple users usually are, it's nothing bewildering that this idea hasn't been welcomed particularly warmly amongst users.
