Is there a difference between jailbreaking and rooting?
Last weekend was, at least for me, filled with so many technical questions from family members that I almost had to jump out of my window. Some of those questions had to do with iOS and Android, obviously, but then one of my more tech-savvy cousins asked me a question:
"Calob, Android is supposed to be open, right? I have this Verizon Fascinate and I like it and all that, but why did I have to root the thing to do this one thing?"
Boom. I love Android, but I'm starting to feel like the openness is starting to go a little too far.
HTC and Motorola can do whatever they feel like to Android, including locking down the bootloader. According to Google, that's totally fine, since Android is open. But when that happens, the openness goes away for the people that it was made for: the consumer.
In my mind, unless you buy a Nexus device, you're buying into a platform that is almost as locked down as iOS. Obviously you can sideload apps as much as you want, but skins and unremovable bloatware is still all over, kind of like on iOS. And to get them both to the way you want, you have to do unnecessary steps. That just doesn't seem like an open platform to me.
I believe there's a happy medium, like letting skins and bloatware be removable, as well as keeping the bootloader completely unlocked. As an Android user, I honestly can't believe that this isn't how it works.
What are your opinions on Android's openness?
