android apps that alter normal phone operations

Question

hi, so i was wondering if its possible to for an application that i would write to be constantly running in the background and alter regular phone operations. For example this could be something like as soon as you receive a text from anyone you forward it automatically to another number. Is something like this at all possible?

Just to be clear I don't want to solve that particular problem through some other means, just want to know if apps can accomplish that.

Also if that is possible is it possible for an app that i write to alter more immediate and instant things, like an incoming call.

thanks all for reading this, and hopefully a helpful response :)

Answer 1

It depends on how far you want to go, but I would expect that what you want to achieve probably isn't possible.

The Android OS does reserve some actions and prevent them from being doing programmatically. For example, you can display the Dialer with a number filled in but the user has to press the call button to make a call. Similarly, you can display the SMS app with a message already written but it is up to the user to send the message.

I don't know for sure, but I assume this is for security. For example, let's imagine you could write an application which could start a call with no user interaction. I would release my Super-Handy-Dialer application which makes quick calls for you making you life easier, but what it also would do is wait until 2am and call my premium rate phone line every night for 3 hours.