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Talk about good news/bad news. Last week, the long-awaited Netflix app for Android finally arrived–but only for five phones. If you own, say, an HTC Thunderbolt, Motorola Droid 2, Samsung Galaxy Tab, or other incompatible device, the waiting game goes on.
Or not, if you’re tech-savvy enough to root (that is, jailbreak) your device and fiddle with some settings. Over at Reddit, a user by the name of natemckn explains how to make Netflix for Android work on unsupported devices.
The hack works by fooling the Netflix app into thinking your phone or tablet is one of the supported models. Assuming you’ve already rooted it, the process looks fairly simple: using any root file editor, just edit a few lines in the device’s “build.prop” file. Then reboot, install the Netflix app, and you’re good to go.
The author says he’s tested this on an LG Optimus V, and it worked like a charm. I do advise reading the user comments, however, to see how others have fared with other models. Some reported success, while others weren’t able to get the hack to work. As always, any time you’re messing with your phone’s settings, you run the risk of gumming up the works. If you don’t know what you’re doing, you may want to wait for an official Netflix update.
I’m in the process of trying this now on a Samsung Galaxy Tab, and will update the post later with some test results. In the meantime, if you decide to give this a whirl yourself, hit the comments and let me know how it went.
