That's the trouble with a common phone OS, particularly one where most phones don't see more than 1 or 2 software updates. I love my Android phone, but I wish I could get more than one software update on it before I have to buy another phone...
Custom ROM's for android are where you'll get the most joy, most of the software updates released officially are just bug fix's, but the ROM's made by other people usually have alot of great features added/ported.
Nope. Trust me, I know all about XDA-developers... but my phone is now unrootable seeing as I updated it to Android 2.2 (HTC Wildfire - the official update blocks rooting). Plus, even if I could root it I could only go as far as Android 2.3, and that would probably be a bad move as it would be extremely buggy. You shouldn't have to be such a geek to update your phone. Thankfully, in their recent Google I/O conference Google talked about how on later versions of Android (ice cream sandwich - i.e. 4.0), phones would have at least 18 months of software updates before becoming obsolete...
Well, by paper yes, 99% are vulnerable. In reality, you must be really stupid to get caught by this attack. The vulnerability lies in the fact, that google uses HTTP protocol when it sends an auth key (no password or username, just an auth key) durring the data request. This can be catched by bad guys and used to view your data. Now this sounds horrible, but - how many of you take your phone and join random unknown wifi networks ? So yes, phones are vulnerable to packet sniffing attack, when the phone connects to the network where someone does packet sniffing. But the reality is that not many people join random networks.
No, this is not comparable to Sony at any rate. Once again - the problem is that authorization ID is sent through HTTP and not HTTPS. Nothing more. If you are not connecting to unkown networks, you are safe.
have you tried unrevoked ? http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=788776 My desire was official 2.2 and had no issue rooting it. 2.3 isnt really buggy and it would offer more customizing which is what you asked for
Having to travel quite a bit for work, i plan on using my android smartphone at a number of different locations, and i expect to be connecting to free wifi services quite a bit. The train especially. What are the consequences of someone hacking into the connection? What could they do?
The Wildfire is one step behind the Desire in a lot of ways. Unrevoked doesn't work on 2.2 on the Wildfire as HTC updated the HBoot to a version that hasn't been hacked yet. There's nothing wrong with 2.3, but to get 2.3 on the Wildfire a lot of hacking around has had to be done (as it hasn't been released anywhere officially!). Thanks for the thought though.
Same issue with my Wildfire, would like 2.3 or a custom rom on it but guess I'll just have to get a better phone in a couple of months
There are no issues with rooting a wildfire before 2.2, its just HTC being absolute arseholes! The wildfire is supported by Cyogenmod who i use they give updates on nearly a monthly basis. If the carriers could actually do this then people would feel they need to use custom ROMS because security would be as big an issue! 2.3 isnt buggy at all its prefectly fine. And if you do use a good Custom ROM and keep up to date then you wouldnt have any issues with android security, this bug was sorted by google in 2.3.4 but its the carriers fault that nobody is getting these updates. Some poeple are stuck 2.1 still! If you are using android and dont use a custom ROM you are missing out greatly and i would advise it to anyone.
