my friend is about to switch to android and he is interested in tinkering with his phone. he wanted to know what the most hackable phone is (on Verizon, btw).
According to verizon's devices, I would say the Dinc2 and the thunderbolt.
Usually HTC products are root friendly, provided they are not the ones with physical keyboards (desire z).
The above 2 devices can be rooted a couple different ways. Should also be custom Roms available.
Remember, the newer the model, the fewer custom roms.
Usually, if it can be rooted, it can be rommed! Personally, any root is best using a 1 click app. Unless your friend is a technical person, I would avoid devices that you have to use the software dev kit to get root. Requires you to type in commands, which of course increases the risk of fubarring your device.
HTC Nexus One
HTC Incredible and HTC Evo 4G
Samsung Galaxy S
Motorola Droid
Samsung Nexus S
Sony Ericsson Xperia Phones
This is not actually the case, so be weary.
An example would be the newly released Bionic. It now has root access via AnyRoot, but the bootloader is still locked down. This means that you could run Apps that require root access such as a WiFi Tether App or Root Explorer, but you couldn't load up a brand new, let's say Stock GB, ROM onto the Bionic.
-Rhaen-