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Droid X Gets Rooted
An anonymous reader writes "The Droid X forums have posted a procedure to root the new Motorola Droid X, putting to rest Andoid fans' fears that they would never gain access to the device's secrets due to a reported eFuse that would brick the phone if certain boot files were tampered with. Rooting the phone is the first step in gaining complete control over the device."
Did anyone actually believe the device would never be rooted? If it is released, it will be hacked. It may not be immediate, but if there is enough interest then in time the blocks will be circumvented.
-tgpo
"The Droid X forums have posted a procedure to root the new Motorola Droid X, putting to rest Andoid fans' fears that they would never gain access to the device's secrets due to a reported eFuse that would brick the phone if certain boot files were tampered with. Rooting the phone is the first step in gaining complete control over the device."
Man.. if I had read that summary two years ago when Android was starting to take off my heart would have sank.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
They may have rooted the device, but due to the cryptographic signature on the bootloader, kernel, and eFuse watching the ROM, you won't be sticking Android 2.3/3.0 on your Droid X (or Milestone) until Motorola decides you worthy.
If this lockdown was going to be fully hacked, it would have happened to the Milestone by now.
This is the hardware manufacturer implementing Android, not Android itself, that is causing this disgrace.
I doubt that there is a better phone that is easier to play with. ;~}
And it works pretty good as a phone.
MEK
Credo quia impossibilis -- Tertullian
Why do people support companies that treat you like a criminal?
We buy things that do certain things. If they do those things that you care about well, they serve their purpose and end up being worth the money. Things like jail-breaking are just icing.
It's fun to make statements professing our desire to stick to our principles, but at the end of the day we still need email clients in our pockets.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
First of all there was never any sort of self-destruct device in the phone. The phone contains a bootloader that only loads signed roms which so far has prevented people from loading custom roms such as Cyanogen. The Motorola Milestone (european Droid) has the same issue, has been out for 8 months, and has yet to be cracked.
It's funny that the summary for this article has the text "putting to rest Andoid fans' fears that they would never gain access to the device's secrets due to a reported eFuse that would brick the phone" and links to a Slashdot story titled "Droid X Self-Destructs If You Try To Mod". So Slashdot posts a story with a bogus headline, and then later has another story saying how fear was created when it was "reported" that the phones would be bricked. Never stopping for a second to reflect on the fact that Slashdot itself was the one doing the bad "reporting".
While gaining root access is good news this particular exploit is one that has been around for a while and is ported from another version of Android on another phone. Not to dismiss the work that has been done here but the biggest problem for this device is and has always been the bootloader.
Except you don't need to root to tether an Android phone. There are many programs in the Market that will do that for you without needing root in any way.
So your completely ignorant point is completely worthless. Good thing you're a Coward.
I'll meet you at the intersection of "Should be" and "Reality"
Root is available, but not new rom images. Root is just a small first step. It will not really help in getting around the signed bootloader.
"putting to rest Andoid fans' fears that they would never gain access to the device's secrets due to a reported eFuse that would brick the phone if certain boot files were tampered with"
This in no way puts that to rest. Rooting your device doesn't touch the boot partition at all. What should put to rest the bricking issue is Motorola straight up saying it won't happen. (see here)
Unstable Apps: Our Android Apps Don't Suck
I definitely don't want or need (or have) an email client in my pocket. I hope to one day be as successful as Dr. Knuth, so I won't need any email clients at all.
Android the OS comes open but most of the phone makers lock down their hardware (likely due to pressure from carriers like Verizon and ATT). It has legitimate purposes such as making it hard for luzers to accidently do bad things to their phone. Rooting is pretty much the same thing as jailbreaking, I think there are some subtle differences.
Once you've got root you can usually (not in the Droid X or Milestone's case) run custom ROMs based upon the actual Android source (AOSP) or pretty much any other hardware too. It lets you add features to the phones such as overclocking, setting up wifi tethering, and adding newer wizz bangs to older phones that the maker no longer deems worth updating.
I'll meet you at the intersection of "Should be" and "Reality"
As far as I can tell, the real problem with the American phone market (maybe even in general?) is corporations assraping the consumer, gouging for money on features (tethering, ring tones, incoming calls/msgs etc. etc.) that are free and open to use with any sane provider (or sane country, where the gouging is regulated). So no argument there.
But really, against apple, a cheap shot it was not. Your bookstore analogy does not hold water, because bookstores in general do not set themselves up to be guardians of people's morals. I use a Mac both at work and at home and was a fanboy when most people were predicting the death of Apple, but jesus fucken christ is it ever hypocritical to allow apps with recorded speeches of a fascist, and at the same time ban:
They set themselves up for criticism because seemingly they apply a ban policy that is both very stringent and basically a "if we don't like it, we don't accept it". So without ever owing an iPhone or ever using the app store, going by the news coverage alone, Apple seems to like:
Ok, so they probably do not attempt to advance a fascist ideology, but it is totally perverted nonetheless. I'd get rid of my Macs if only they weren't so damn good products. Ironically, it is Adobe products on a hassle free Unixy platform that keep me locked to Macs. Luckily, with cell phones, there's ample choice.
This is one of the reasons Linus kept the kernel GPL2 rather than moving to GPL3. He did not like the DRM clause and the Tivoisation clause. As far as Linus is concerned the manufacturers should be able to use DRM to block you from loading an OS they do not want you to load http://www.linux.com/archive/articles/51826
It would seem that GPL3 has been out long enough that if its merits for switching the kernel to said license were so important it would've happened by now. Or is it possibly the case that not everyone has the exact same values as you and still enjoys the flexibility of using the kernel under GPL2. God forbid someone get rich off the collective works of society. Sure, they should contribute back, it's the nice thing to do, but really not everything has to be about forcing openness. I would rather a company build on a solid foundation rather than have to reinvent the wheel all the time. It tends to result in better products.
That's what phones are after all, consumer products. 99% of the world just wants a product and could give two shits about rooting or jailbreaking the device. The vast number of people who buy these phones will just be focused on comparing things like price, service, available apps and the usability of the product. There's a reason that the iPhone is/has been so successful. It came with a slick UI out of the box(and has gotten slicker). Sure it's not open, but most people don't care because it doesn't impact the way they want and expect to use said device. Sure, you're effectively renting the hardware since you can't run whatever you want on it. Sure, that's not ideal. But given the choice between a semi-locked down system that is easy to use, looks good and does what I want or an open system with a crufty UI and so-so ease of use, I'll take the first one most of the time. Especially if it's a device I don't want to have to mess with constantly.
Yes I've run Linux and Solaris and I like them for their purpose. I also run OSX on my macbook and windows7 cause they fit my purposes. I appreciate the openness of Linux and openSource, but I can also respect the decision not to be open source. And as I've spent more and more time using computers, the need for good UI design has become more and more a factor and I've come to care less and less about being able or needing to hack code to make it work.
I don't care what you say, all I need is my Wumpabet soup.
The ability to unlock your bootloader would in no way prevent it from "just working". As to why you should care even if you don't want to use custom ROMs: by now it should be clear that cell phones and their descendants are going to replace PCs for most of the population. If carriers and manufacturers are able to get away with using this transition as an excuse to take control over the hardware that we pay for, it will be very bad for future innovation and freedom.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
We buy things that do certain things. If they do those things that you care about well, they serve their purpose and end up being worth the money. Things like jail-breaking are just icing.
well said - but for me, at least, the "icing" part underestimates the value of openness.
i'm near completing my second year of owning an android G1, and the thing has been spectacularly useful things i've owned. somewhere near the beginning of my second year i was increasingly frustrated with the limited apps storage space, though, and general thrashing of the android 1.6 install (perhaps due to my crowding it with apps, but i was trying to cut out unnecessary stuff, honest). rooting with cyanogenmod became pretty easy, and enabled me to use part of my 8 GB card (now 16GB:) for app storage. i'm now running android 2.1, thanks to cyanogen, and the phone is working better than it ever did at stock 1.5 or 1.6. it continues to be spectacularly useful 2 years out, where it was running out of steam at the end of one year while sticking with the stock system.
mind you, android 2 is not likely to ever be released for my phone by my vendor, and it would have been increasingly untenable for me to stick with this phone anywhere near as long as i have - despite loving the format (really decent physical keyboard, generally decent other stuff), and not seeing satisfying alternatives. for those reasons and others i could see staying with this thing for a while more - and if htc had locked out alternative os loads, i would not have had the choice.
consequently, as far as i can tell motorola phones, with their signed-boot restrictions, offer no lasting value to me, whatsoever, and are not in the running. i'll be eventually be looking for another android-based phone with a hardware keyboard - but it doesn't have to be soon, and it definitely won't be one that limits the long-term utility of the thing so drastically.
exactly what is useful can sometimes be difficult to gauge in advance, and that's where openness - allowing more options over the life of even an appliance - can be worth a lot.
everything leaks
In relation to the Motorola Milestone, which shares the locked bootloader with the Droid X.
Motorola are now "deciding" whether to push out Android 2.2 (with, you know, the Flash support *promised on the box*) to the device at all
For me - I've "decided" that they aren't getting more of my business - as far as I am concerned, they can go f*** themselves.
From James King, Motorola Marketing Director:
Next European Milestone and 2.2 (Froyo). I have expressed over the last few days that the decision is pending. The team here has been collating key pieces of information and views from this community in the last month and providing input to relevant teams in Motorola so they are aware. I am pushing for that decision to be made as quickly as possible, and we can then all go from there. Some others ask why the decisions on upgrades take so long, and why does implementation then take much longer still. What I can say and have stated recently is that upgrades are not a walk in the park. Sure there are short cuts that people can take, but when you have to integrate software to a specific hardware, then test it and integrate with third party applications, let alone any innovation from ourselves, plus then get approvals to make this all official and safe its is a big undertaking that requires planning and resource and third party coordination to see this all through. As I say, once we have decision, we will inform. JK