wifi.gifSome braver and more dedicated (dare one say, geekier?) Android device users may be in the habit of modding their devices with custom firmware, etc. I’ve done this in the past to up the capacity of one of my favorite e-reading phones, the ZTE Skate. This is usually a complex procedure involving USB connections to a computer. However, a post to the Android Open Source Project has signaled that TCP capabilities have now been added to fastboot, the Android tool that allows you to reflash and update parts of the Android device ROM. And Android Police has reported a sighting of a 2015 Moto G with a bootloader that can access WiFi.

The pairing of these two should allow you to flash and update your Android device over a WiFi connection, if you’re so bold, without using a USB cable. As the Android Authority article states, this could be important for devices like Android smartwatches that don’t even have a proper USB socket. The same article also hints that Google may be about to introduce this capability as a regular feature of its latest round of Nexus software, but otherwise users will have to wait for bootloaders with that feature to debut.

With TCP-capable fastboot and a WiFi-enabled bootloader, you might also be able to flash and mod your device over the air from a website, without using a computer at all. I somehow doubt there’s any danger of anyone hacking your device remotely to do this, though. The flashing procedure is already hard enough as it is…

 

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