The Motorola XOOM is one of the most powerful Android tablets on the market at the moment, but after playing around with one for a few days I keep finding myself wondering why I would carry a tablet around when I can perform many of the same tasks with an Android phone that fits in my pocket. Sure, a larger display is great for reading email messages, typing with an on-screen keyboard, or viewing pictures. But I’m still not convinced the tablet is a full-fledged replacement for my phone, so it feels silly to carry them both.

But thanks to xda-developers forum member sangreal06, it might just be possible to completely replace your phone with a XOOM tablet. That’s because he’s figured out how to add phone capabilities to the tablet using Google Voice… sort of. The mic and speaker aren’t working yet, but you can send text messages and initiate phone calls.

The hack also changes the user agent in the web browser so that you can automatically see the desktop versions of web sites without manually configuring your settings repeatedly.

You’ll need a rooted 3G XOOM model to apply the tweaks. You can find download links and more information at the xda-developers forum.

via Droid-Life

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2 replies on “How to hack a Motorola XOOM and turn it into a big smartphone”

  1. I’m already using my Xoom as a phone in conjunction through Google Voice. It’s quite easy to set up SIP calling with CSipSimple. Carrying a tablet is slightly inconvenient compared to carrying a phone, but not that much more. And paying $20 a month instead of $70+ for phone service is reason enough for me to bear the slight burden.

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