Android Ported To iPhone 280
anethema writes "iPhone hacker planetbeing, from the iPhone Dev Team, has successfully ported the Android OS over to the iPhone. He is doing it on a first-generation iPhone, but others may be possible. The port is pretty functional, with data, voice, and many apps working, although it is running a bit sluggish and buggy at the moment. There appears to be much work left."
I think I just jizzed myself (Score:5, Funny)
I can't believe it. Someone's answered my dreams!
A phone that is expensive, sucks, *and* pretentious. I thought I was going to have to go with a lame old Android phone, but man, there's hope for poseurs like me yet!
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A phone that is expensive, sucks, *and* pretentious.
So we've got here either a phone that is sucks or a phone that pretentious?
Well, if there's a phone that can be sucks or pretent, it's the IPhone.
Re:I think I just jizzed myself (Score:5, Funny)
And we've apparently found a new niche: Label-conscious serial public masturbators.
Don't forget the porn !!! (Score:5, Insightful)
and finally, a Jobs-approved way to get pron on your iPhone.
(He *did* say to get Android !)
Yessiree! (Score:5, Funny)
Apple's low-cost hardware with its wide range of options and standard interfaces teamed up with Android's consistent, carefully designed user interface experience, dazzling speed and frugal memory use.
Truly a marriage made in heaven.
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Re:Yessiree! (Score:5, Funny)
Tip to moderators. This is a joke. Not sure why this is modded insightful.
From the /. FAQ: Note that being moderated Funny doesn't help your karma. You have to be smart, not just a smart-ass.
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That's why there's "underrated." If mods would use this more often, it'd be less confusing.
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Note that being moderated Funny doesn't help your karma.
Karma: Excellent
Forget Karma, its the "Comedian" Achievement points that I crave.
For the record, I have both an iPod Touch and an Android phone. Incredibly, both have their pros and cons - I'd rave enthusiastically about Android if I'd never used an iProduct.
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Karma doesn't seem to affect ANYTHING unless it is negative. My KArma's been "50" (or "Excellent") for years, and it's been a long long time since I was asked to moderate or metamoderate. I think that depends on how frequently you post matters more (which is sad because that inversely affects the quality of discussion if there's a million "me too" responses).
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inversely affects the quality of discussion if there's a million "me too" responses
I agree
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You must be new here. Lately criticism of Apple will get you insightful. It doesn't even have to be intelligent criticism. ("Apple $ucks") is about all you need.
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Tip to Alanis, it's also a genuine example of irony.
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There is often insight in comedy. His post, dripping in sarcasm, makes a pretty good point. Communication isn't all just in the dictionary meaning of the words.
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Left MS heart broken not lookin' for community
Surprised in my eyes when I logged online
The nerd site and I saw the story
My brain stood still so did time and space
Never felt that I could free mobile again
But the feel of the code screamed I need a developer
Mom turned to me that's when she said it
Looked me dead in the face, asked "early birthday? or christmas"
And I
Jizzed in my pants
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To achieve ultimate suck it will require Windows Mobile.
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Now the developer needs to pretend to "lose" it in a bar so he can get endless free hype and advertising for his iPhone/Android marriage.
Pr0n! (Score:3, Funny)
So Steve Jobs was wrong, you CAN get porn on your iPhone ;)
Re:Pr0n! (Score:5, Insightful)
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More likely he's just not caring. You bought the iPhone hardware, put money in his pocket, and relieved his company the expense of having to support the phone should you ever go to the genius bar with the phone like that.
The porn thing is probably just being in a rock and hard place of having stuff like that in the App store yet there being only one app store. If it went in, you'd have all the parenting groups crying foul, and once another app store opens that Apple allows the phone to connect to, they'll
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Great, so Apple has made it so parenting groups can dictate what I can do with my tech devices.
There could have easily been many other possible solutions other than making all Apple devices G-rated. Give people a choice, put simple parental controls at the time of purchase, sell a second version without "parental controls" for those of us who don't require an Apple chaperone.
Further, there could have been a very simple solution to the Apple app-
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You do realize this is Apple we're talking about here, right? No way will they ever relinquish any control over their software or hardware as you suggest by allowing any competition. And Apple obviously doesn't care if you care that the phone has an "Apple chaperone." If they ever did allow porn, they'd come up with a way to bone you for going with that as well. So essentially, to see some fucking, you'd still get fucked.
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There you go making a rational and well worded and thoughful comment in a iphone article thread.
Why cant people like you be like the rest of the nutjobs and simply foam at the mouth that the word iPhone was used?
Next thing we will see is a well edited story.... YOU ARE DESTROYING SLASHDOT!
Dang rational people....
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When someone tells you 2 + 2 = 4, do you also think they're cheating?
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How often do you see someone link to old slashdot posts when they recycle an old as sin SCO joke? For what it's worth, I think it's a pretty obvious joke with a very basic and short sentence structure. I could reasonably see two separate people making it.
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And they stole it from Reddit [reddit.com].
But I'm sure Jellybagel doesn't care, because whining about an obvious joke is fucking retarded.
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Original? you must be new here.
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lol, nice.
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So Steve Jobs was wrong, you CAN get porn on your iPhone ;)
Now if you only could find an iPhone that's yours and not Steves...
If he can get it going on a 3G iPhone... (Score:2)
... then it may just be the next step when my contract is up with O2 in a couple of months. I want the free google turn-by-turn app, and if I don't have to buy new hardware to get it, it might just make the difference.
Android ??? (Score:5, Funny)
Porn will find a way. (Score:4, Funny)
rule #35. If no porn is found of it, it will ...
Best headline ever! (Score:2)
I think the headline is in itself better than the substance of the story! Is Jobs punching holes in the walls now?
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I think the headline is in itself better than the substance of the story! Is Jobs punching holes in the walls now?
I love that this headline came less than a day after the headline about Steve Jobs recommending Android for porn.
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Might as well (Score:2)
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This freaking sucks. A phone that is 2 years old is EOL? Apple is insane with the upgrade profits. Case in point minidisplay port on all new laptops that you can't use
your existing ACD with unless you buy a $29 converter. Lets just call that $1.00 of manufacturing costs, and $28 dollars of pure profit, times how many ACD's they have
already sold. Oh yeah, they used to give adaptors away with laptops (these are premium price points, reminder). I estimate apple has made at least 10 million dollars
from
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Not only the first iPhone but the first iPod touch as well. Mine's going to be stuck at iPhone OS 3.
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I DARE you to get Windows 7 edition special mobile release (or whatever they call it) for a Samsung blackjack 2. Hell I dare you to get a OS update for any phone that is 2 years old. Nokia stopped making updates for phones when they pass the 18 month mark unless there is a major nasty in symbian.
Windows flips the bird to lots of phone makers that use Windows mobile phones. I dont see you frothing at the mouth over them.
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Unless I'm missing a tiny detail, recent PowerPC Macs are supported up to OS X 10.4. If my 12" Powerbook G4 can run it, I really don't know why your PowerMac G5 couldn't.
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You are missing it... My spare iBook G4 is running 10.5
Works great and the better SMB support means less lockups when using older linux based NAS devices.
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Oups, mixed 10.5 and 10.6 there.
Sluggish, buggy... (Score:2)
...but still faster than running Android on an original G1.
Does flash suck down battry fast? or is apple just (Score:2)
Does flash suck down battry fast? or is apple just trying to lock out free flash games?
Finally, it's the (Score:3, Funny)
Running Sluggish and Buggy? (Score:2)
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Sounds like you have an issue with your handset. I have an HTC Magic in the UK too, I'm on Vodafone (afaik they're the only UK distributor of the Magic anyway?) and have neither found it sluggish nor buggy.
The only qualm I have with it is battery life- it only lasts 2 days, assuming I don't make more than a single phone call or two, but that seems par for the course for smart phones in general nowadays unfortunately. Even the likes of the Nexus One and the iPhone only have similar battery life and you reall
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No, there are some Nokia smartphones that give you 5 days at a time. My 5800 did that easily.
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I only wish I could say the same thing for my Blackberry Storm.
I dub thee "hackeroid" (Score:3, Insightful)
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Perhaps as an Apple fanboi you kinda missed their point.
Let me re-iterate to you:
APPLE STIFLES INNOVATION AND LIKES TO ABUSE THEIR POWER OVER DEVELOPERS.
Do you seriously think that armed with a NDA-protected, $99/year developer fee, restricting nearly all aspects of development and content and NOT providing alternative app stores will EVER match up to Android?
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Since you seem to be this thread's expert on the topic, perhaps you can answer this simple question:
Why do you approve of the significantly stricter controls and higher development that Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony place on their Wii, XBox, and PS developers, but hold Apple to a different standard for their consumer electronics device?
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Nintendo never pretended to be in the computer business.
OTOH, Apple fanboys get their panties in a bunch when you call the iPad an overgrown iPod.
Clearly Apple and it's lackeys want the line to be blurred. Admitting the device is a souped up DS would make it much less attractive.
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So uhm, all those people who say the iPhone/iPad is not a computer because things like this are "impossible" -- where are you now?
Lots of things have all sorts of electronics in them... Frequently enough processing power to be called a computer, if you really want to be pedantic about it. I could probably go to the junkyard and rip some chips out of some cars and port Android to that pile of silicon too... But that doesn't really make my car a computer, does it?
Used to be that you'd buy an engine or a motor. It'd be a big ol' freestanding thing. You'd use an assortment of gears and belts to attach it to whatever equipment you wan
Re:Case in point (Score:5, Insightful)
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Note that the iPhone has more than just a "processor [that] can run arbitrary code" -- it has a CPU, memory, a general user interface, and could, in the absence of deliberate software restrictions on the part of Apple, be used as a small mobile computer (which happens to have the ability to connect to a cell phone network). This is not as extreme as running NetBSD on a toaster, or repurposing a car's microcontrollers for some other task -- the iPhone has all the hardware needed to be used for general consumer-grade computing, albeit in a pocket sized form factor.
I understand all that.
And the same could easily be said of many other smartphones out there.
But I wouldn't actually call any of them a computer.
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Re:Case in point (Score:5, Insightful)
I honestly do not understand why you would not call a device that has every hardware feature my laptop has a "computer" -- the only difference is the form factor and the advertised use. What if I installed software on your laptop that railroaded you into using it in a specific way, would I have suddenly transformed your laptop into something other than a "computer?"
I guess one of the primary differences for me is the ease of executing arbitrary code.
My laptop has a keyboard that I can use to type in commands/code/whatever. It also has an optical drive that I can use to load software. It has USB ports that I can use to load software off a USB key, or connect another CD-ROM or floppy drive or whatever.
The iPhone has a touchscreen and little else. If I want to load software on it I have to go through their official channels, or jailbreak my phone. If I want to write my own software for it, it requires a second device to do the programming and then upload it to the phone.
Similarly, the PLCs that control the heating and air conditioning in my building are most certainly computers in the technical sense. They're fully functional and can be programmed to do pretty much anything I want them to. But I have to connect external devices to them in order to do that... I have to plug in a laptop with a serial cable if I want to actually do anything to them.
My Cisco routers are also pretty much computers in the technical sense. And they've got USB ports I can use to store/load software. But again I have to connect another machine if I want to do anything with them. Otherwise they just do their job, day in and day out, like any other appliance.
I guess I'm not really debating the functionality of the iPhone. It certainly is a computer in any technical sense of the word. But there are connotations to the word "computer" that just don't match an iPhone.
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Which are not a result of the iPhone's design, but a result of the proprietary software that the iPhone ships with. All I see here is Apple trying to reshape the way people think about mobile computing, by removing capabilities and taking control of those devices -- and the fact that people think there is something wrong with using the word "computer" to describe the iPhone shows that Apple's tactics are working. I am n
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The Mega-iphone already has accomodations to use it as a proper desktop computer.
The only thing keeping the Mega-iphone from being used exactly like a Mac Mini is some artificial software restrictions.
If it's ports were standard, you could hook it up to the same peripherals that your Mac Mini or your PC uses.
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i think your confusing the word "computer" with "user workstation"
QFT.
My n900 has a keyboard and a USB port and lets me run arbitrary code. It's also a smartphone! The iPhone is no different: Its keyboard is software and not hardware, but it still runs arbitrary code. It's just the iPhone OS and associated software that refuses to *install* arbitrary code.
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All we need now is a Downfall video of Hitler learning Android OS has been ported over to the iPhone.
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Since it's just another ARM, all you really need is driver support for the "peripheral" bits.
Running Android on this thing should be conceptually little different than running Ubuntu on a mini. The user base is not defined by how many people run Ubuntu on minis, but how many people run Ubuntu on x86 in general.
Running a Revo with an nv9400 is pretty much the same as running a Mac with one.
Re:android debug build is sluggish (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple does more flashy useless bullshit on less but more expensive hardware.
FTFY.
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> A vertical intergration in your hardware software stack means you can squeeze every drop of performance out of it.
Not really.
That only works if your hardware is something special. If Apple's phones are anything like their PCs, then this isn't the case.
Android liberating phones from St. Steve. That's just hilarious.
Re:Neat hack, but ultimately useless (Score:5, Informative)
The 3GS has 256Mb, but the 2G and 3G do only have 128Mb.
This will be nice even if only for google's turn by turn app. I love my iPhone, but I don;t love TomTom's ludicrous price for their app.
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I run CoPilot on my Windows Mobile phone, having used dedicated TomTom units and TomTom software on my old WinMobile device. ALK beats it hands down, and is a good site cheaper.
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The CoPilot app for the UK is £27.99 ($43), which is much cheaper than TomTom's app (£60 - $92), but I still need an in-car mount, specifically for keeping the battery topped up and TomTom's one is the best but is a further £90 which is just crazy.
I think I may end up just finding a TomTom satnav separately, which comes with a mount and a touch screen, and a case, and a while set of hardware for less than the iPhone mount on its own. It's fucking stupid!
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If you want a car mount, try Brodit ProClip [dsldevelopments.com] - I've not used them, but the folks at xda-developers with the
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I like the look of those, although the tell tale mount would have to live on display in the car permanently, so even if I always take my phone with me (which I would) the fact that the holder is on display invites someone to break in and look in the glove box. Even without losing anything that would be annoying!
I think a suction mount would be a better option, with a cloth to wipe off the screen marks!
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Unfortunately you won't get it, because having Google Maps requires a Google-branded Android device, which an iPhone is not.
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How does this manifest to the user? I've got a Droid and cant' say I notice any problems that I'd attribute to the OS eating memory. Granted I haven't really gone looking to see what the RAM footprint is, but everything I do runs smooth and stable. Am I missing something?
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No, they're just whining because they probably have a G1 with not enough RAM in the first place. Android kills processes when memory is needed, it's not like WinMo where all the apps stay open. I have a Droid and haven't had any memory-related problems either, and I use my phone quite a lot.
Re:Neat hack, but ultimately useless (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh god, are we still at this stage?
I thought we'd got past the "OMG ITS USING RAM!!!111111" whines after that completely wrong and setup article drama about Windows RAM usage where multiple people pointed out that applications using RAM is better than RAM going unused.
Yes you're right that Android phones generally have more RAM, but they also often tend to have faster processors, more pixels on their screen and so forth too, but it doesn't mean it's a requirement of Android, it's just the benefit of the rapid evolution of Android phones vs. the once per year refresh of the iPhone. The iPhone is always behind on hardware apart from right at the start of each refresh, it's just the way Apple tend to do things.
RAM usage is not a bad thing, it's a good thing when used properly, as it is with the JVM and Dalvik- RAM usage is optimised so that RAM isn't just sat there unused and is actually being used for what it's there for.
Can we finally put to bed this ancient idea that RAM usage is inherently bad and that developers should ensure their applications use as little RAM as possible which would in fact make things worse because it'd generally mean more work is being done to keep RAM usage down, such as higher levels of paging from disk or use of compression and so forth?
RAM is cheap now, we can afford plenty of it, and we can afford to use it, the idea that having less RAM and having as much of it as possible sat unused meaning there's more paging from disk and more CPU cycles being used on data compression is ludicrous. It's not like the bad developers argument holds much weight nowadays even, RAM is cheap, it's better to use as much of that as possible than it is to try and shrink your RAM footprint at the expense of more expensive processor cycles.
Re:Neat hack, but ultimately useless (Score:4, Interesting)
There are Android devices with only 128MB of RAM that to this day work very well. A great example is the Droid Eris from Verizon. I just upgraded a friends to the leaked 2.1 update and it actually runs smoother than it did on the 1.5 release. Does Google Naz and more just fine with Sense UI running.
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Re:call me when apple approves it (Score:5, Insightful)
For all of their "think different" ads, Apple is a very traditional vertically-integrated engineering firm... like the old "big iron" unixes: Cray, SGI, SUN, IBM, where they sold the entire platform: hardware, software, custom interfaces, etc.
For all the Microsoft-bashing we do around here, they were really the ones that separated hardware from software on the PC (and then Linux came around and offered the even more of the same).
But now we have vertically integrated smartphones again. And for all the Google vs. Microsoft that we do, Android is pretty much Google's effort at doing to the smartphone what Microsoft did to the PC.
So don't take your freedom of hardware abstraction for granted! But in the end, we pretty much know how this dance should turn out.... just look at what Cray, SGI, SUN, IBM are doing now :-P
Apple will probably always be Apple (at least as long as Steve Jobs is around). Because he doesn't make products for us geeks, but for the rest of the people. He know his market well. And it is not us. So get over it and let the people have their stripped-down straightjacket internet devices.
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Let's be clear here that Microsoft only did that on the PC. Throughout the 70s, a large amount of software for Unix was decoupled from the machine and the specific Unix running on the machine, and that software was exchanged between various hackers. The only innovation Microsoft introduced, in terms of computing, was to decouple software from hardware and then sell that software.
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From where I sit, the iPhone is very, very far from being the "primary communication medium of the general public". That title would probably fall to straight voice on non-smart cellphones, if not actual landlines. Most of the people I know have no desire to pay for either the more-expensive phones or the monthly data rates.
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Android is pretty much Google's effort at doing to the smartphone what Microsoft did to the PC.
Except that MS made it "Any hadware, Microsoft Windows"
Google is trying to make it "Any hardware, Any vendor's Android." There's a world of difference between those two positions.
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Apple will probably always be Apple (at least as long as Steve Jobs is around).
Well, and I think it's fair to say that Apple plays a role. We could argue quite a lot about this, but the way I see it, Apple is able to make some pretty good stuff that works really well because of their strict control and vertical integration. Because of that, Apple gets to be the sort of high-end luxury brand of computers. Microsoft and other companies meanwhile do a good job at commodifying computing. FOSS helps to keep everyone honest by giving cheap and powerful options. In some ways, this arran
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So, um, don't update the firmware....
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block it in their upcoming firmware version
Why would you need to upgrade to later firmware versions if you're running Android on your iPhone? Seems to me you would only want to upgrade to later Android versions.
That's how I read it at first, but I think the point is that new iPhones that come with new firmware preinstalled won't be able to take advantage...
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That problem already existed if you bought a Mac computer.
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Yeah, a Corvette engine [corvetteracing.com].
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A lexus LFA would eat any corvette's lunch hard. plus the engine technology is 12X more advanced.
So why would I downgrade that car with a chevy corvette engine?
You want performance, use a ford engine out of the GT not the joke that comes in vettes.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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Money says this person gets a cease and desist by Apple because as we all know, you don't really own the phone, Apple has given you the incredible honor of simply allowing the iPhone to own you.