[POLL]Given HTC's recent actions against devs and ROM distribution, would you buy another HTC device

[EarlyMon]

Or go after the developers that modify and distribute their proprietary ROM's. It wouldn't do any good to shut down the "legitimate" sites since as someone has already pointed out that would just drive it underground.

A. Go after developers, using corporate legal dollars in a battle that you just said couldn't be won.

B. Stop providing a bootloader unlock, something that they provided when threatened with a consumer boycott.

C. Neither, just protect the brand and the gross leaks.

I'm going with C but ymmv.

 

[CafeKampuchia]

I think that they would more likey target those devs that are working on sense roms and distributing them.

Since they haven't, I maintain that this is an isolated incident and not part of some grand scheme to kill off sense development

The point is that they did. JMZ is a dev working on moded Sense ROMs, some of which are posted here on Android Forums in the One V section. Read his reddit thread linked in the OP. They forced him to hand over the moded Sense ROMs and told him he's not allowed by HTC policy to do that.

 

[EarlyMon]

The point is that they did. JMZ is a dev working on moded Sense ROMs, some of which are posted here on Android Forums in the One V section. Read his reddit thread linked in the OP. They forced him to hand over the moded Sense ROMs and told him he's not allowed by HTC policy to do that.

Still doesn't address the isolated incident part.

That all started with a copyright issue.

 

[ramjet73]

A. Go after developers, using corporate legal dollars in a battle that you just said couldn't be won.

B. Stop providing a bootloader unlock, something that they provided when threatened with a consumer boycott.

C. Neither, just protect the brand and the gross leaks.

I'm going with C but ymmv.

We'll just have to wait and see how HTC behaves over the next few months and what options for unlocking and gaining S-OFF are still available when the variations of the HTC M7 start shipping.

In the meantime, I've requested the Sprint ICS RUU.exe for the Evo 3D from HTC US support and will post here when I get a response.

ramjet73

 

[CafeKampuchia]

EM, you forgot one, which everyone else is doing.

D. Realize that Android is open source and this is why a large segment of the market likes it. So don't worry about it.

This is part of a larger narrative for HTC. They don't know how to listen to customers. We want micro SD slots and removable batteries, not to mention no messing around with locked bootloaders. HTC's decisions on these things drove many buyers away, at least contributing some to their poor 2012 performance. This is another step in the wrong direction. As someone else mentioned, they'd be better off competing in the Microsoft world because this is not Android-friendly behavior.

 

[CafeKampuchia]

Still doesn't address the isolated incident part.

That all started with a copyright issue.

Because it's not isolated. They went after Football first. It had nothing to do with the copyright. That was just a quick and easy excuse to take JMZ down legally. But this is clearly past of the Football narrative.

 

[Rxpert83]

Because it's not isolated. They went after Football first. It had nothing to do with the copyright. That was just a quick and easy excuse to take JMZ down legally. But this is clearly past of the Football narrative.

We're going in circles here.

Football was releasing leaked RUU's. HTC didnt like that and put a stop to it.


We have 1 case where HTC is stopping leaks and another where they are protecting the brand.

 

[brownchm]

So you prefer HTC Sense over TouchWiz based on actual experience. I've never used a Samsung Android phone but I think I would too.

And I definitely like the build quality of the HTC phones better based on the Samsung models I've seen.

ramjet73

I like touchwiz but sense has sense has features that I did not like giving up, such as usb mass storage mode.

 

[EarlyMon]

EM, you forgot one, which everyone else is doing.

D. Realize that Android is open source and this is why a large segment of the market likes it. So don't worry about it.

I forgot no such thing.

Motorola won't unlock a bootloader at gunpoint, Samsung plays the poster child for proprietary in court with Apple and the threats they launched, along with Huawei, over the Motorola merger, ZTE still refuses to release kernel source, and a number of LGs have never and will never see a custom rom.

I don't know who that everyone else is that you're referring to.

 

[ramjet73]

I forgot no such thing.

Motorola won't unlock a bootloader at gunpoint, Samsung plays the poster child for proprietary in court with Apple and the threats they launched, along with Huawei, over the Motorola merger, ZTE still refuses to release kernel source, and a number of LGs have never and will never see a custom rom.

I don't know who that everyone else is that you're referring to.

There's an interesting article comparing the "openness" of the cell phone manufacturers here. It looks like Sony Mobile might turn out to be the one that sets the example, which would be quite a surprise given the tendency to promote proprietary standards Sony has exhibited in the consumer electronics and entertainment segments.

ramjet73

 

[ramjet73]

In the meantime, I've requested the Sprint ICS RUU.exe for the Evo 3D from HTC US support and will post here when I get a response.

Well, I got the answer I expected regarding my request for an RUU:

Thank you for contacting HTC, Roger. I understand your EVO 3D has been rebooting on its own and you would like to try loading an RUU to resolve this issue. Unfortunately we do not have the RUU hosted on any website and we do not have a copy of it to email out. I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. However we can try some troubleshooting steps to resolve this issue.

They did include quite a bit of debugging advice which I've attached in case anyone is interested in their complete response. I've already used the form linked in their response to provide some very negative feedback based on their policy of not providing RUU's to their customers.

ramjet73

 

[Guitardoc64]

Yep, I thought it would go something like that. To HTC, I'm thinking of a finger...:banghead:

 

[ramjet73]

Here's a pretty old, but still relevant, news item from XDA.

And there's this thread discussing it. History definitely repeats itself.

From the FAQ on that website:

Hello, and welcome to the NEW Shipped-ROMs.com, part of the PPCGeeks Family. In mid 2010, Conflipper (Former host of Shipped ROMs), was given a cease-and-desist order from HTC, the company behind of many of the phones that the ROMs hosted here are for. Following this, Conflipper entered a legal battle between HTC to continue hosting the ROMs. Meanwhile, he intended to keep the server up to allow people to continue download past, present, and future ROMs from the site - however the costs became too great. In turn, we here at PPCGeeks have stepped in. We took over Shipped ROMs (With Conflipper

 

[lightsleeper23]

Well I sure am glad I got one of jmz's ruu's before this happened. Not a month ago my brand new one v got thrown into bootloops from simply flashing a kernel of all things. Turns out after MUCH more reading and digging through forums I discovered you cant flash a kernel on the one v if you've applied an ota update, because it changed the radio or something. That may be something a lot of people knew, but still I think it's relevant enough it would have been nice to have been included as a warning in the first place with the kernel.

But that's a different story. Of course I had a nandroid backup, so that should have been easy enough to fix right? Wrong. Apparently the one v has a common issue of md5 sum mismatches. Nobody seems to be sure why, just that it happens to that phone a lot. That also I think was a piece of relevant info that would have been nice to post up front along with the cwm. But anyways that, along with the fact that HTC purposely encoded the sense skins, and then changed that code with every sense release to make it harder for devs to simply make custom skins of all things makes me believe they do have something against the dev community.

That, and there phones don't seem the most stable for customizing at all. I was able to do so much flashing and tweaking in the system of my Huawei Mercury and it never batted an eye. I am definitely not into HTC anymore.

P.S. I also had quite an episode with a couple different evo v's a few months back that had the radio interface resource shortage problem. So I may be a little biased when it comes to the reliability of HTC phones.

 

[Rush]

My vote goes to option 1. I love my HTC phones just the way they are.

 

[CafeKampuchia]

Updated info from androidpolice.com.

HTC Vows 'Continued Support For The Developer Community,' But We're Not Convinced

Continued Support for the Developer Community — HTC Blog

This seems like good news, but as AP notice, HTC's lawyer's actions don't jive with the post on HTC's blog.

 

[Rxpert83]

Seems it was all overhyped panic

HTC: Sharing RUUs And Sense-Based ROMs Is OK, We Just Want The HTCRUU.com Domain


RUU's can be found at

http://androidfiles.org/ruu/

 

[Hadron]

Good to hear that

 

[CafeKampuchia]

I hereby eat my hat

Updated the OP as well.

Mmmmmmmmm.... not quite as good as bacon, but tasty! :eating: