My Mobile Wishlist: A Cellphone I Could Hack

Motorola Brick PhoneI consider myself to be quite the mobile phone junkie. Since I was young, I’d always been fascinated with anything that could let me communicate with other people while untethered with wires. Unfortunately, I was born at a time when mobile phones were still just objects of luxury to most people, and unattainable to the common person. Handset costs were otherworldly. Service costs were equally unbelievable. You’d have to pay an arm and a leg–and sometimes even more–in monthly fees just to maintain anywhere, anytime-connectivity. Wait, that wasn’t even anywhere connectivity as dead spots abound, and celular roaming was iffy and expensive.

But that didn’t stop me from hoping and dreaming. And it didn’t stop me from exploring, the born hacker I was. I was tinkering–disassembling, rebuilding, experimenting–with my toys and gadets since I was a toddler. And I had a firm resolve to be as curious and exploratative on what would be an expensive hobby.

My First Mobile

The Nokia brickWhen I got my hands on my first mobile phone back in high school, I was elated. It was a big, analog Nokia brick (not as brick-y as the brick-phones of old, but still a brick by today’s standards). It was great–had a decent, albeit text-only, LCD screen (the norm back then was LED), had a 100-memory phonebook (when the norm was twenty, I think), and had a standby of a whole day (when the norm was less than ten).

But, alas! Even though I could tweak the phone in more ways than the average mobile user could, It was not as hackable as I would hope for. And I had been reading up on the ‘Net that other brands and models were more flexible, I looked forward to a change.

I realized that I could never live with a stock phone. I needed something that could offer me more ways to personalize, tweak, and even hack than usual. I was not interested in changing the color of my phone casing, or slapping on a fancy wallpaper or operator logo. I wasn’t even too keen on changing the default ringer tones.

I wanted a phone I could hack.

My Hacker’s Phone

Micro TAC UltraliteOne of my next phones was a Motorola Micro-TAC. Still an analog unit, and actually an even older model than the Nokia (and older than another Motorola I had). This time the phone had an LED display (definitely a downgrade), and lasted less than a day on the bundled slim-type battery (definitely a downgrade, too). But I loved it for the mere fact that I could do all sorts of stuff to the phone, with the help of a wonderful text file I had gotten off the Internet.

With some tools (pieces of wire or even tinfoil) it was quite easy to get into the phone’s programming/test mode, and access the internal features. Within a few seconds of entering the test mode key sequence, I was in business. I could arbitrarily change the cell site or channel used by the phone. I could change transmit power levels and receive sensitivity. I could arbitrarily open the audio even without an active call.

In short, I was eavesdropping on calls.

I could’ve probably been able to clone other people’s accounts, too, but that would’ve been against my good moral upbringing (and it required a bit more effort, too). So the good kid I was, I stuck to programming the phone and eavesdropping every now and then just to pass the time and to learn new stuff.

But from this point on, I told myself that one factor in choosing a mobile was the extent to which I could hack the phone.

My Next Phones

Most of my succeeding mobiles were GSM and consisted of either Nokia DCT-3 series models (firmwares easily tweaked and flashed into the phone) and Siemens 45-series (I owned two ME45s and one S45, which I all converted into the S45 “i” series with a bit of firmware hacking and patching). These weren’t always the newest releases by the time I had purchased them, but what was great was that there was already extensive discussion on the Internet–in forums and e-mail lists–about how to hack these phones.

In short, these were also, like my favorite Micro-TAC of old, hacker’s phones.

Siemens ME45At one point, I was even considered a “guru” in hacking Siemens phone firmware. I’m not even really a programmer, much less a good one. But as Eric Raymond would say, Good programmers know what to write. Great ones know what to rewrite (and reuse), so that probably automatically makes me a great programmer nonetheless (okay, not really).

With a patched firmware binary on hand, and a bit of luck (that I don’t screw up big time and fry my phone’s internals) I would usually be able to flash my phone on thirty minutes of spare computing time.

The Power to Change Tweak

You know what’s so great with being able to hack your phone? It’s the ability to tweak it such that it is you who gets to define the user interface, from the shortcuts to the way the firmware/OS responds, to the functionality of each key on the phone. By the time I would finish hacking my phone, it’s pretty much as personalized as can be, and sometimes only I could actually get to use the phone as intended (other people end up confused with the interface change).

I’ve written, time and again, that I dig simple and usable designs, whether they be on Websites, mobile phones, gadgets, and heck even furniture and clothing. Nothing should be so complicated that you’d have to spend hours RTFM (reading the effing manual). Nokia seems to lead the pack in terms of usability, especially to people not really adept at navigating devices using shortcuts and quick-access keys, which usually have to be memorized. The vertical file-folder system is straightforward and simple. And it works well in most cases.

However, what I find even better than out-of-the-box usability is if you could hack a phone to adjust to your preferences, to your workflow, or to how you would normally do things, and not the other way around. True, while I would usually regress back to using only the most basic of functionalities in my mobile phones after the novelty of being high-tech wears off–namely calling, texting, and the occasional calendar/ToDo entry–I still rely on my ability to tweak the user interface enough so that all my important functions are easily accessible, and with as less key-strokes as possible.

Sometimes, it requires hacking. Sometimes just a bit of tweaking and menu-exploring. And yet nowadays, you could actually already download ready-made scripts, hacks, or even executables to do your every whim.

Hacking Made Easy

The ultimate mobile phone hackThese days, I use a Microsoft-powered SmartPhone (wow, that’s “Microsoft” and “smart” in a single sentence!). Being a Windows Mobile powered device, hacking is definitely easier, with readily-downloadable third-party applications that can do just about any tweak I would like. There are even GUI-based registry editors that can manipulate the phone’s user interface so I wouldn’t have to do manual hacks.

Then again, if I wanted to get things pretty exciting I could always do some manual patching of the phone’s firmware. Actually, I had already modified the phone’s boot loader and re-flashed it with a different firmware to open up some added functionality (and improve battery life, among others). But I usually hate having to restore my data from scratch, install my third-party apps and restore the settings to my preference, which would set me back 30 minutes to an hour of fiddling with my phone.

This phone isn’t getting any younger, and I would probably have to replace it with a newer, snazzier (and smaller) phone, and when that time comes I’m sure my choices would be limited to phones that I could hack to my heart’s content.

June 12th, 2006 Posted by J. Angelo Racoma in Article at 3:37 pm 1 Comment »
Related Posts:
MIT Researchers Map City by Cellphone
Cellphone Scandals
My Cellphone As My E-Book Reader
Prepaid Lines, Budget Friendly
Touchscreen or Keypad?

1 Comment »

  1. HOW DO I LEARN HOW TO HACK PHONES?

    Comment by RICH — August 28, 2006 @ 8:24 pm

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a comment

 |