For your reading pleasure: Editorial: Firmware, forums, and desperation -- the dark side of Android hacking -- Engadget
Not a big fan of this article. The dev community is not happy about it either.
It's not as bad as the article makes it out to be. It's fine for people who want nothing more than to buy it and do what it does out of the box, theres a few problems here and there for the people who want to make it theirs but the community fixes these problems and they fix them quickly.why is that?
It's not as bad as the article makes it out to be. It's fine for people who want nothing more than to buy it and do what it does out of the box, theres a few problems here and there for the people who want to make it theirs but the community fixes these problems and they fix them quickly.
I am not a developer, and my intention is not to step on toes, but I can't believe I had to register to say what wasn't being said. The reason devs would most likely not appreciate this article is the author's choice to completely publicize the resources he used to achieve this end, despite the fact that it has been made very clear everywhere, even engadget's site itself, that those found offering the file for use have been being issued C&D notices. The instructions that come with most phone hacking tutorials clearly mention that this MAY brick your device and you do so at your own risk. Anyone attempting this sort of modification should be aware of said risks, and not be salty when things don't go according to plan...this makes those who actually succeed (like myself, who achieved what the author did in less than an hour, including the time taken to download necessary files and programs) seem like an unknown quantity. The last thing that the community needs, in my opinion, is publicity. Particularly not from sites that portray the typical Android hack as needing a wirestripper. The picture suggests this strongly, I think.
I agree with sundown. Everyone that has their finger on the pulse of the smartphone community (ppl that would read the article) knows that rooting and hacking is the essence of Android. All this article does is put Motorola in the spotlight for trying to lock down an open source OS. It makes a good point of the issues Motorola is forcing upon their CUSTOMERS. Kind of a cliche, but what happened to the customer is always right? They have no reason to lock stuff down like this except to intentionally shorten the life of their devices by taking the hacking community out of them. They're essentially sabotaging their own products. Making sure their effective life ends when they decide to stop pushing updates. This article does nothing but show ppl who aren't associated with the Android community the type of corporation Motorola is. End rant.
I'm not sure I can jibe with that. I'm not sure that Motorola would intentionally block the upgrade path, as I would see no good motive for them to do so. Why deny the user the potential for better future functionality on purpose? Sure they sold the user a phone in the end, but they'd like to get repeat business, I would assume. Do I think that they were maybe not willing to put in the necessary time to ensure that those who installed leaked firmware would be able to upgrade along with those who didn't? Probably. But I don't think it was a point of making extra effort to do so, more of a lack of effort to assist those who have already essentially voided their warranties, technically.
and if they are going to insist on trying to stop hackers from modding the device, it's counter productive to put so much effort into stopping people from flashing the device back to stock. even from a business standpoint, it's not incredibly smart to put so much effort into blocking downloads of the .sbf. even crapple provides a simple way to flash back to stock.
I'm not sure I can jibe with that. I'm not sure that Motorola would intentionally block the upgrade path, as I would see no good motive for them to do so. Why deny the user the potential for better future functionality on purpose? Sure they sold the user a phone in the end, but they'd like to get repeat business, I would assume. Do I think that they were maybe not willing to put in the necessary time to ensure that those who installed leaked firmware would be able to upgrade along with those who didn't? Probably. But I don't think it was a point of making extra effort to do so, more of a lack of effort to assist those who have already essentially voided their warranties, technically.
Like changing the ota bootloader to make sure you can't sbf back to 2.1? Locking down their devices means that they choose when support ends for it. Which means they decide when their customers buy new phones. Sure they might lose repeat business but plenty of ppl will buy their new phones and they are throwing a lot of customers back into the market this way.
Like changing the ota bootloader to make sure you can't sbf back to 2.1? Locking down their devices means that they choose when support ends for it. Which means they decide when their customers buy new phones. Sure they might lose repeat business but plenty of ppl will buy their new phones and they are throwing a lot of customers back into the market this way.
But hold up: I don't trust this phone at all anymore. I don't know anything about the system software I've installed or where it came from, and I have no idea what the leaked flashing utility actually did to it. I can't rely on a device that I don't trust. If this was my actual phone and not a review unit, I'd be completely screwed -- I need this thing to do my job.
That's simply not the case with Android, and it's a problem -- Google can't keep implicitly condoning Android hacking and trading on the enthusiasm of its community unless it requires manufacturers to provide restore tools for every device. Sometimes you just want to go home again.
I read with interest the many negative comments in engadget and I think they missed the key point which was an entreaty for the manufacturers to allow hackers a way to get back home. I can see Motorola being OK with that but Verizon resisting it as they want to discourage removal of revenue producing bloatware and abuse of tethering.
It'd be so simple. Just provide an easy bootloader recovery tool. Encrypt the crap out of it if you want to protect your software. Make sure that nobody can extract a single thing out of the tool. Just allow users with problems to get back to a safe place, quickly and easily.
It would be nice if they would actually do this. They could even make users sign something saying their warranty is void.
But why should they? The bootloader is a highly reliable way of doing it if they would just allow the stupid phone to charge while it's flashing, which should be a minor software update to the bootloader.
Apple doesn't have any restrictions on it. You just boot into recovery mode, plug your phone in, and iTunes says, "Hey, I see you've attached a phone in recovery mode. What would you like me to do with it? <Recover Only/Recover and Restore Settings/Cancel>"
In any event, it becomes unmanageable if you try to enforce anything on the users. Tracking signatures/approvals, even electronic ones, is difficult and costly. The bootloader is completely stable, and flashing software with it is one of the most fundamental and reliable processes of any computer system. The tools already exist, they just need to put a wrapper around it, encrypt the whole thing to lock the users from separating the tool from the software, and put it up for download.
No mess, fewer returned phones, no security/encryption breach, happier Android community. Wins all around.
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