Slashdot Mirror
Droid X Self-Destructs If You Try To Mod
An anonymous reader writes with some discouraging news for hack-oriented purchasers of the new Droid X phone: "If the eFuse fails to verify [the firmware information (what we call ROMS), the kernel information, and the bootloader version], then the eFuse receives a command to 'blow the fuse' or 'trip the fuse.' This results in the booting process becoming corrupted, followed by a permanent bricking of the phone. This FailSafe is activated anytime the bootloader is tampered with or any of the above three parts of the phone has been tampered with."
Does your phone self destruct if you mod it? Where others don't... Droid does!
Seriously, I can understand your warranty being voided if you do unapproved modifications to a device, but designing the device so it blows up if you try to modify it is just wrong.
Why do hardware companies think they should have the right to own the device forever? Why should I buy a device that has a time bomb built in that may trip if the official software gets corrupted due to a bug?
The whole thing reeks. I'm done with Motorola. What is the point of this exactly? What does Motorola lose by you running a custom ROM? New phone sales when they decide after a year not to provide any Android updates?
In this case it's more a case of "Motorola Evil". Google provides the OS but the manufacturer still integrates it into the device.
My next upgrades isn't until December, but I can already say that Droid X is off the table. Hopefully HTC will have out something new and shiny by then. If not, I'll still go for the Incredible over the X. I've had nothing but trouble from Motorola phones anyways.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Termite? Methinks maybe thermite?
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
If I purchase the phone outright, wouldn't this be willful destruction of property on Motorola's part? Does a company have the right to destroy a purchased product - after the sale - if the consumer doesn't use it in a prescribed manner?
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
Ah... I guess I won't be buying a DroidX then. Sad, really... I was looking forward to getting one when the contract was up on my Droid.
And I've been very happy with my Droid. Now, one wonders...was this done to suit Verizon or if it was on Moto's own thinking that it was done. I might not have modded my phone when I got it, but doing things like this are a real put-off. I bought the phone, it's mine to do with as I see fit- and putting in things like this take that away from me. It turns it into Motorola's device or Verizon's device and I'm just renting it. Sorry, you SOLD me a phone guys and if you're concerned about "user experience" or "risks to the network" design the damn phone to not need to be concerned about EITHER- and anything else is lying to the customer outright.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Sure they will... But I don't appreciate having them try to transform it more into a rental of the device than a sale- and then framing it in as a sale. I'm sure there's other people that'll view it the same way as I.
Sadly, I'm fairly sure Verizon asked Moto to do this- they always seem to find a way to miss the point and try to assert "control" over everything.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Because of this setup--isn't it entirely possible that some sort of malware can be created to actually attempt to brick the phone by triggering efuse?
A hardware company actually put a self-destruct mechanism in the phone when you change the software.
A. This will get tripped accidentally, even for naive users, and will cost owners money to fix.
B. This violates the idea of ownership of the device. Motorola figures that they're licensing you parts, not selling. For an "open" OS, this is insane.
C. Once you get around it, unless you can destroy the code, you still have that thing hanging around. A mistake or bad combination later on could trip it -- there's no reason to have to put up with walking through a minefield.
All this translates to "Spread the news, blacklist the phone, send a message to Motorola." Because if this goes on as a "who cares" thing, all Motorola Android phones will have it in future and other companies will follow suit.
This needs to be a black eye for Motorola, they need to notice that, and they need to quickly backpedal.
This is just another nail in the coffin for Motorola, who becomes more and more irrelevant every year, being pushed out of the market on both sides by Apple and HTC.
HTC makes the most robust and moddable phones on the planet, and do not try to stop the modding in any way - in fact one may say they passively encourage it.
This post is coming from someone who owns a 4 year old HTC Vogue that came shipped with Windows mobile 6.0, but thanks to the modders, has been upgraded to 6.1 and 6.5, and more recently ove rthe past 3 months, has been running a fully working version of Android that is lightning fast. All on 4 year old hardware.
This is what can be done when you don't shut out your customers - I am an HTC purchaser for life now.
Compared to the eFuse, their new iFuse just works, which makes for an infinitely superior bricking experience.
There's also another OS that is based upon open source components from Mach, FreeBSD, GNU and KDE which allows me to install whatever I want without having to jailbreak, root, break bootloaders, etc...Clicky
In reality, the main appeal of Android operating systems is that they give phone manufacturers a serious competitor to Apple and they don't have to pay Microsoft. Not to mention, they probably don't care for Windows Mobile.
The problem is that what made the Android OS a serious competitor to Apple was that it wasn't locked. If a phone running Android is locked as tight as an Iphone, I may as well get the Iphone and the "coolness" of owning an Apple product.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Someone will find a way around this very quickly
It's not even clear if this information is real. TFA links to a forum post which doesn't seem to actually contain a source of the information (the OP states it's a mix of "hard information" and "conjecture"). Said forum post then links to the eFUSE wikipedia article, which lists Droid X as having an implementation of eFUSE. However, if you look at the Droid X wikipedia page linked to from there, you'll see the original mobilecrunch.com is what is cited for the eFUSE inclusion bit.
I'm not saying there is something fishy going on, but this could easily not be true.
I hope Motorola get's a nice class-action suit out of this.
Imagine a nice little virus, designed to trigger the 'self-destruct' and some innocent users getting infected.
Markus
Apparently, this is not the Droid you're looking for.
If that were in true in any way, shape, and form, then every other vendor would be doing the same. Only Motorola is taking this stance.
Which is isolated from the Android environment via serial or USB connection. This lockdown has -nothing- to do with the 3G baseband, which runs on its own processor with its own memory and storage.
That opinion... You're holding it wrong.
eFUSE can blow itself.
Lucky eFUSE!
Tom Geller
I would like to take this moment to give a shout out to T-Mobile, which actually offers a bring your own phone plan for less than the subsidize your phone plan.
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
In fact the "eFUSE" feature is present in a staggeringly common component in many different Android (and other...) devices, so the presence of an eFUSE is not in any way demonstrative of the functionality claimed.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Droid, DroidX, Droid2 and others -- they all have this efuse, it's nothing new. Perhaps rather than making assumptions based on the presence of a device, someone could do some actual research to find out if this is really a concern? Just because the chip is present does not mean it's configured to brick the phone - it certainly hasn't done so in other Android devices using it.
I've worked with security systems and I can definitely say that the guy who wrote that post doesn't know what he's talking about. I've hever heard of "resettable" eFUSEs. He keeps talking about eFUSEs as if they had some kind of power to control or supervise the boot procedure, which is bollocks - eFUSEs are storage elements, you need some kind of boot ROM to make use of the data and make decisions. And you don't "write programs in JTAG". Until someone writes something technically coherent about this issue, I'd take all of this with a huge grain of salt.
eFUSEs can indeed be used for this kind of self-destruct-on-tamper behavior, but honestly I would be very surprised if it were actually implemented this way on a retail handset. Deliberately designing brickage into a unit is just a bad idea overall (except for security devices, e.g. HSMs and smartcards).