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.
<i>Dialers available on the app store should be screened by Google to ensure they comply with US laws.</i><p>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 <i>legally required</i> 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!)<p>(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.)<p>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!
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.<p>The unforgettable cover photo was a dead body under a white sheet, with a toe tag.<p>(Ironically, it seems this article was drastically truncated during a website migration: <a href="http://www.baselinemag.com/c/a/Projects-Processes/Why-Software-Quality-Matters/" rel="nofollow">http://www.baselinemag.com/c/a/Projects-Processes/Why-Softwa...</a>)
Despite the linkbait headline I found this to be an amusing take on the whole smartphone craze.<p>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 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<p><a href="http://code.google.com/p/cyanogenmod/issues/detail?id=388" rel="nofollow">http://code.google.com/p/cyanogenmod/issues/detail?id=388</a><p>(this was a problem with the official android code, not cyanogenmod)