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G2 Detects When Rooted and Reinstalls Stock OS
RandyDownes writes "And you thought the Droid X's kill switch was bad. HTC and T-Mobile's new G2 can detect when it's been rooted and responds by reinstalling the factory OS. This seems like a violation of the Apache license Android is licensed under and is especially ironic given Eric Schmidt's recent statement about not requiring carriers to give consumers the option to install Google's own version of the OS. Schmidt called it a violation of the principles of open source."
Update: 10/06 17:47 GMT by S : As readers have noted, the G2 is not from Motorola. Here's a better source, and here's the XDA Developers thread discussing the issue.
What is he talking about...?
You mean HTC G2 ?
for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
G2 is by HTC, and I'm fairly sure isn't running MotoBlur.
...battle for control over our mobile devices. Fuck it, I don't care anymore. The war certainly won't be won in its current direction. It needs fundamental change at the consumer level.
Droid does.... screw you over if you want to customize it.
There is a war going on for your mind.
Yet another example of why I am sooooooo glad I don't own a smartphone and won't be buying one soon.
You know how women like those drama tv shows, but discussing the shows bores everyone else to death? Yeah, smartphones are like that.
Life's better when you ignore that whole segment of the marketplace (smartphones, I mean, not women)
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
You get what you pay for.
If you really want to have an "open" device, you should have supported the various open hardware platforms that eventually failed because of your lack of support.
You can't really complain that you don't have choices when you made no effort to support the good choices that you had.
Major fail, worst article ever. Get your facts straight.
This seems like a violation of the Apache license Android is licensed under
Yes, it "seems" like a violation of the Apache license because you don't like it (i don't either for that matter), but please explain to me how it is an actual violation of that license. Have you ever read the thing?
...but now I feel bad for even supporting Motorola/HTC. We have a Droid and an Eris, which are fine, but the G2 and D2 are going in the wrong direction. I will not renew with either of these companies if they continue with these retarded shenanigans.
An article like that, with no links or other sources, is extremely questionable.
If true, though, it makes me like my N900 more and more. And for everyone who bitched at me when discussing the AppleTV and having to jailbreak it... well here's another vendor fighting you for ownership and control over your own device.
This and a number of other consumer ills I think can be reduced to a single statement: "The consumer is not the customer"
-- "Oh. This guy again."
So now layering some sort of digital safeguard is now the answer? Common how many protections have to be shot down before you realize that once it leaves the store people will mess with the device. Do these guys truly believe they can follow you home to force you to use their glass and plastic the way their marketing department intended? Well I guess they are clinging to that hope but this backup will just get hacked or jailbroken or whatever once they get access to the memory area that houses the backup data. After seeing a company the size of Intel getting shot down a la HCDP for massive clients like **AA's I am now a firm believer this is all just pissing in the wind. Notice to manufacturers the higher you build the wall just makes you look that much more stupid when I bring it down give it a break.
A loop, by its nature, continues. If that didn't make sense, start reading this sentence again.
Explain to me how this is better than the iPhone jail?
Time for Nokia to take a stand... I hate the name "MeeGo" but if it delivers a truly unlocked , I'm interested.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
I wish that Apple would embrace freedom and stop telling me what I can do with my own phone.
Wait, what, this is about the super awesome open phone that everyone here loves ?
good luck with that. Google is the advertiser. Your phone is just a screen for the ads they want you to see.
On the bright side, they might show ads you find more interesting than other advertisers.
The law says you can hack it so when it is bypassed then there is not much they can do but put out a update that blocks the hack.
So it can't be updated? Because if it can, this isn't a problem.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
But that's stupid. Why should anyone accept and further abusive practices like this? Why should you have to spend time and effort hacking a device to gain functionality that should never have been taken away? You should be able to spend your time and effort hacking it to do something above and beyond that, instead you're reclaiming lost ground.
No. It limits their ability. Not the same thing.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Agreed. What's up with all these evil hackers who think that just because you buy a physical device, that somehow gives you the right to own it? What about the corporation that made it? Why should *they* have to give up control rights, just because someone else bought it from them?
Really? Care to explain why this should be acceptable behavior from a consumer electronics device?
Yes, I did. And it was much worse. What would it take to get slashdot to stop the over sensationalizing? There needs to be a Facebook to Slashdot's MySpace.
It will be hacked in 2 weeks time. If you don't want that crap on your phone then buy a different phone. There are lots to choose from.
So, I'll take the karma hit and ask - to all the people that rant and rave about how closed and proprietary Apple is and how wonderful Android is, how does this sit within your vision of things? I thought the entire appeal of Android was that it was your phone and you could put what you wanted on it yet this is far from the first example of another Android manufacturer exerting (rather extreme, in my opinion) control over what you can and cannot put on the device.
I wonder what legal limbo you would get into if you declined the software agreement (which they like to call a contract) and yet force the software on you anyway.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
"Yet another example of why I am sooooooo glad I don't own a smartphone and won't be buying one soon."
I can't shift into drive in my vehicle unless I have my foot on the brake. By your logic I should do without all the good reasons to own a vehicle and walk everywhere instead.
Or not bother, as long as it isn't a remote hack. They don't actually care what you do to your phone.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
> Why should anyone accept and further abusive practices like this?
You don't. You don't have to buy it. Most people, however, have no desire to "hack" their phones and would be pleased to learn that they are protected against anyone else doing it.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
The problem is that companies like Google and HTC bend to the will of the carriers. They openly permit garbage on these phones. The irony here is that they're decimating their own brands this way.
The carriers themselves have this desperate hope that consumers will accept their walled garden as willingly as they accept they accept Apple's. The problem is that their garden is overrun with weeds and has an overflowing outhouse sitting right there as a centerpiece. People tolerate, even embrace Apple's practices because there's a good level of quality and consistency. A lot of money and effort is invested in maintaining this quality. These other carriers, however, cut corners everywhere they can and put no effort whatsoever into maintaining quality. All they want to do is keep consumers locked in forcibly. They're deluded into believing they can offer something competitive with Apple's app store. They might drive away that consumer at some point, but for now they've got them trapped.
This is one of the consequences of having separate companies develop the OS and the device. Beyond the problem of countless variations of the same basic thing, a user experience that isn't seamlessly integrated these companies simply don't have the leverage Apple enjoys.
This is not to say that I believe that the iPhone reflects some wonderland of technology but simply that the iPhone and the app store have become the benchmark.
Dell (of all people) had a sale -- and I got one of these at a nice discount. I've been quite pleased with it -- and have barely begun to scrape the surface in terms of what it can do (and the software that is available).
Credo quia impossibilis -- Tertullian
The geniuses and gurus are at it with the analysis and dismantling. It's actually fun for them. So when they are done, there will be a package to copy to internal storage followed by a special reboot and an "update" process. All they have to do is disable whatever it is that is checking for root and disable or deceive it in some way. After that, it's business as usual.
There's no doubt that the illegal distribution of software on the android platform is pretty high. And we could make arguments about why that is forever using all the same old arguments and excuses we always have. The fact that it is easier on Android phones than others (is that true? I am not so sure about that) is a matter for consideration. But that, in and of itself, is not the reason carriers need to get into the mix by making it less useful for users.
I suspect they have their own interests to protect such as money they get through software bundling. In the case of PC makers, there are legal issues and even laws limiting this type of behavior. Personally, I don't see much difference between a PC and a smartphone any longer and would argue that they are pretty much the same thing at this point. The right to use and remove software on any device I own is still my right. (It is their right, I suppose to make it difficult if they want to though! No law says they have to make it easy.) It is the motives of the carriers that bother me the most. Not only am I being "sold" to other parties through such deals, but those deals, which are separate from my deal with my carrier (except in the legalese fine print that says I agree to it in the past, present and future) have managed to have a serious affect on user experiences. And to me, that affect is one demonstrating the complete lack of respect for their customers.
Perhaps because while it limits the 1/10% of all users who care, it protects the rest who will only ever be rooted by malware?
... oops, I guess that "jailbreak" is evil, while "root" is good. Among Android phone purchasers.
Among Android customers (i.e. manufacturers and carriers), "rooting" is evil (along with "upgrading" and "non-bloatware").
[Android fans are just now realizing that Google's customers are the manufacturers and carriers, not end users. You may not agree with Apple's conception of an end user, and their conception may not fit you at all, but at least they are conceiving of the end user as their customer, not manufacturers or carriers. Not so for Android.]
Why should that not be (felony) violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act?
Ditto about other stuff being written here...
"My opinions are my own, and I've got *lots* of them!"
I just got a current generation Dell streak. Love it. It came directly from dell without any AT&T crapware installed and is dead easy to root. Custom firmware can be installed also.
If you don't want providers mucking with your phone OS much, try a webOS device. HP/Palm has publicly acknowledged and said good things of the webOS home brew scene, and basically said "use at your own risk."
It is just a stupid idea to begin with.
Of course it can be modified. If it couldn't be modified, they wouldn't be able to do updates.
Step 1: XDA modders hack it
Step 2: CM6.x get installed and everyone is happy.....
What percentage of G2 (or any smartphone) customers will mess with the OS? I have no idea, but IF it's very small (I'm thinking less than 1%), then for 99% of customers, if their phone gets rooted, it's almost certainly a Very Bad Thing. In which case, the OS reasserting itself is a feature. One that most customers would likely appreciate. So are the companies involved being evil, or do they just have a different perspective? I'm not saying they don't have other, more evil intentions. But I don't think this issue proves that they do.
That's kind of stupid. If I told you, hey buddy, you have free rights. And then locked you in a cage. Then you said, hey, where are my free rights?
I'm not limiting your rights, just your access to them. WTF?
Rights quality = access * amount of rights
If your access is limited, the quality of your rightship is also limited.
It's good enough. I'd like a bigger screen...but why would Nokia bother when (a) there is literally no competition and (b) the market is limited to people who know how to get the best out of it?
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
What about when the OS doesn't manage to detect being rooted? In other words, once this feature has been out there for a few weeks and the malware authors work out a way to avoid detection. Back where we started.
WHAT!? Apple is restricting what you do with their hardware? How dare they...wait... what? HTC is doing the same thing? Uh... yeah.... What? Droid will brick itself if you try and mess with the firmware?
DOWN WITH APPLE! DOWN WITH APPLE! DOWN WITH APPLE!
Because we hate a winner... because we hate a winner...
Crappy analogy. Locked in a cage you are not free to do anything. Sold a phone that doesn't do quite what you'd like leaves you free to do anything else, including throwing it away or hacking it.
You *chose* to buy the damn phone. If you now find that it doesn't do what you want (but does do as the vendor promised) throw it in the trash. If it doesn't do what the vendor promised demand your money back. "Rights" != "Entitlements"
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Everyone FUCKING says this. Each and every time. And every time yet another vendor does this, that's one less device I can opt not to buy. Eventually I will have no devices to buy. So you're saying that I can progressively pull out of the market until I am forced to opt out of technology in general because I don't agree to being abused by OEMs?
That's utterly and fundamentally fucked, sir.
1. For the typical consumer, this is obviously a good thing. A typical user wouldn't be (intentionally) rooting his own phone and therefore this would only happen if someone was exploiting the OS - in that sense it is a great anti-malware feature. For us here it is excessive and thus should include an off switch, but for the rest of the world this is a net positive. Except ...
2. What if they need to update the OS? The article and summary both say "reinstalling the factory OS", which would be the version that actually shipped with the phone (minus all updates). Droid is not so mature as to not be likely to need updates ... are they going to provide you with a new phone with all updates every time a major issue is patched? Somehow I doubt it ...
So overall - sorry, HTC. Probably seemed like a good idea on paper, but in reality it's terrible.
please, because your usage confuses me. Is the anti-rooting implemented by Google, or by the hardware manufacturer? If the latter, ur doin' it rong!
I'd love this on all firmware, provided it either had a hardware toggle switch to disable this feature or it was off by default and I could turn it on by a hardware toggle switch. This is good not only for infected firmware but for resetting a machine to a factory-fresh bios after installing a buggy BIOS upgrade, even if the upgrade was signed.
As far as being rooted goes, I'd love it if the firmware alerted me if the kernel was properly signed and if not, alert the user and if the user had asked that non-signed kernels be blocked, block it.
Now, what the firmware calls "the kernel" would in reality be the first set of non-firmware code loaded at boot-time. It would be up to that code to authenticate code further down the line during the boot process and alert the user or block its execution.
--
The right way to design a BIOS for recovery:
Have two hardware reset jumpers:
Reset jumper 1 blows away all user data on the next boot.
Reset jumper 2 blows away causes the hard-coded early bootstrap code to blow away the "main BIOS" and run a hard-coded mini-BIOS-loader program that attempts to copy a new BIOS from a known location, e.g. floppy drive 1, CD drive 1, a specific location on a specific type of device attached to a specific USB port, etc. Refuse to install code which fails an integrity check. Once the code is copied and verified, halt until the computer is powered off, the jumper is removed, and the computer is restarted.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
The logical conclusion is that mass-market devices are marketed only to the masses.
Which would bother the vendors not in the slightest, since the lost market share not supporting more tech-savvy and adventurous consumers is hugely made up for by the placement fees for bloatware and the advertising captive audience of the lock-in.
There is no market remedy for this trend. Highly-tailorable artisan electronics with complete (or significant) owner freedom will, if available at all, be very rare and expensive specialist and collector items.
Sorry. It sucks, but can you imagine something turning this around? I don't.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
So you're saying that I can progressively pull out of the market until I am forced to opt out of technology in general because I don't agree to being abused by OEMs?
Yes, that's exactly right. You don't have any right to the technology. I would love to have a magical flying unicorn, but nobody offers such a thing. I don't get pissed off when Breeders tell me "Nope, sorry. Don't carry them". You have the freedom to make any purchasing decision you like. At the same time manufacturers have the right to decide what products they sell. We can't force them to offer an open phone that meets our wants.
Realistically though you will never have no devices to buy. Someone somewhere will continue to market more open devices so long as there is a demand for it. Otherwise, you are totally free to build yourself whatever kind of phone you want.
It won't be long before the procedure for rooting the G2 becomes "step 1: attain root access; step 2: block the automatic unroot code"
Cyanogen et al are brilliant people.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
So - you have the right to do anything with your harwdare as long as you choose not to buy this hardware.
Got it.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Much like what happened to cars. Driving enthusiasts (like me) have been whining about the increasing weight and size (and uglyness, but that's another point) of cars, and the invasive nannying equipment that takes away control of our cars.
Just like this, over the years people have said "well just don't buy those cars then, stop whining, people like traction control and automatic gearboxes and top speed limiters you know"
Then in the early 2000s or so we were left with basically just Lotus and a handful of other specialty cars here and there to choose from. Of course Lotus cars are very expensive so the only affordable choice is to modify a cheaper car. This is why you see us spending so much time, effort and money to modify what "normal" people call "shitboxes."
And now Lotus has announced that they're going mainstream in 2015 with big, fat, ugly, electro-nannied cars. Now we have NOTHING to choose from that's even remotely affordable even to the wealthier of us. We have to build our own cars from scratch or perform significant hacks on existing cars. It sucks.
This shouldn't be allowed to happen to phones/PDAs.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Well said! Someone mod this guy up.
Boy-o...
Having certain access to a phone someone else created is *not* a right.
They designed it. They *did* have the right to design it as they saw fit.
You *had* the right not to purchase it.
Please stop confusing your every whim and desire as a right. It makes you appear a complete and total git.
you confuse "choice" for "rights." Common mistake.
No...you don't...
But you don't want to. It chafes your sense of entitlement.
Your desires do not trump the manufacturer's rights. They have the right to build the device any way they want to. You can then either choose to buy it...or not.
You also have the right to sit here and whine about the decision you made.
You even have the right to demand the manufacturer add a unicorn to it.
They, and anyone else who chooses to, then has the right to laugh at you mercilessly for being absurdly unreasonable.
The only time you *ever* get to dictate how a product is made...is when you make it yourself.
What can I buy then in the Android segment? The N1 has to be imported in for a price and is last generation's technology. The ADP1 and ADP2 are antiques and won't be able to run Android 3.x in any meaningful capacity? It is easy to say, "don't buy this", but when one finds there are no modern developer-friendly devices, it gets hard. Especially because Android 3.x should be due soon and will be needing a significant hardware boost than what most devices have now.
The only time you *ever* get to dictate how a product is made...is when you make it yourself.
Or the government subsidizes it. Which is the case here.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
The only time you *ever* get to dictate how a product is made...is when you make it yourself.
No, you don't. You *will* infringe upon someone else's patents, and they can legally stop you. You don't *ever* get to dictate, unless the government/corporation says you can. You can follow the rules, or break the law. That is your right to choose.
If the carrier or manufacturer of a device that I own wipes it and reinstalled the factory OS, they're the one rooting/hacking MY property. I have a right to do anything I damned well please with something I own. I have no rights whatever to what I manufacture after I sell it.
You must be an ebook publisher.
Free Martian Whores!
Still refusing to "get it"?
So what, in the subsidy, gives you the right to demand they make any product to *your* specifications, exactly???
The law, especially criminal law, ALWAYS trumps civil contracts.
Didn't you have a high school civics class where they taught you the hierarchy of laws of the land for the USA?
Oh wait... this isn't the USA anymore, it's turned into bizarro-land, where corporations are above the law.
From... http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=794053&page=49#post8490526
There IS NO REINSTALLING ROOTKIT!!!!
Don't you get it? It is simply WRITE PROTECTED with REDIRECTED WRITES!
So what, in the subsidy, gives you the right to demand they make any product to *your* specifications, exactly???
The government has far greater restrictions on what it can do than private industry so when the government subsidizes private industry the results must also conform to those same restrictions. One of which is the right to full control over one's own property. Don't like it? Don't run a business dependent on government subsidization.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
err wait.. never mind.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Sure. It protects people from malware. That's it, and it's a perfectly justifiable reason. This is intended for the people who don't even know how to protect themselves, much less how to intentionally root the phone themselves.
The only question here is whether that feature was exposed beforehand to purchasers, and whether it's possible to disable it. If the answers are no and no, then and only then can you even hope to have a case of "device does not do what I paid for" which is the core of "acceptable behavior from a consumer electronics device."
If they had explicitly stated that it could be rooted and then shipped this reafure, unremovably, instead, you could sue them and win. If you assumed it would be rootable but this was never stated, you're in murky water. If this feature was published anywhere, you're SOL - should have done your research. It's marketed as a consumer electronics device that runs apps and makes calls, not as a handheld computer you can tinker with (no matter what Slashdot leads you to think).
TL;DR: If it's not documented to be a rootable device, you have no reasonable expectation of being able to root it.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
"when the government subsidizes private industry the results must also conform to those same restrictions."
Ah. I think I see the where the logic broke down...
Couple of questions:
When did the government fund HTC? or Motorola? or Samsung? ...to produce cell-phones?
When did the government fund Verizon? or AT&T? or Sprint? ...to update software for cell phones?
All of the wireless carriers are subsidized by virtue of their government granted monopolies.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Because cell phones generally already have support circuitry built into the CPU which prevents you from changing the OS. The public key is loaded into the PROM at manufacturing time and absent the private key, you're not going to put a new OS on the phone. The Droid X 'killswitch' most likely works that way so when someone replaces a critical signed file, the bootloader just screeches to a halt. This sounds like someone added a recovery partition with the original signed files so it just grabs the files from there and tries to boot again. If the recovery partition's files aren't correctly signed, the phone's a brick. I'd give maybe a week or two before someone gets the brilliant idea to overwrite the recovery partition with unsigned files and we get a story about how the G2 has its own 'killswitch'.
"Anyone who attempts to generate random numbers by deterministic means is living in a state of sin." -- John von Neumann
With the unlocked Nexus One, T-Mobile didn't exactly offer a discount. But they allowed you to take the 500 minute package (not available for smartphones they offer). Saves you $20/month if you don't need more minutes. And, you get unlimited internet with tethering.
Maybe Google was pressured to droppthe Nexus One by T-Moble after theye decided they didn't like offering this deal. If Google just stopped offering the phone, T-Mobile doesn't get blamed for backtracking. Too bad. I think Google was really trying to open things up a bit.
So is it Google's fault, or did consumers just not get it. A noble experiment, and way too short-lived to know the real results.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
Android seems to be failing, this 'open' operating system seems to be hardly open at all.
Being Apache licensed what is there to stop the 'community' from forking android and making a truly open operating system using the GPL? Many people are already hacking roms in efforts to get things working that the manufacturers don't want us to have (and doing a brilliant job) it doesn't seem like too much of a leap to create a truly open system which people can collaborate on and use on all phones.
I care not for your karma and your mod points.
HTC and T-Mobile's new G2 can detect when it's been rooted and responds by reinstalling the factory OS.
I can't wait until Microshaft trains Windows to do this! :/
I WAS considering a HTC DeeZire Z (the generic non-carrier version of this phone) but in light of this, I am highly likely to bypass Android altogether and go for the Nokia N900. On an N900 there are NO restrictions on being able to replace files on the device. Plus, the N900 comes with Nokia Maps (unlike Android where you have to pay extra to get Australian maps for navigation purposes). And they have NO impediments to being able to install a selfbuilt kernel on the device if you choose to do so.
Of course, it may be that this was added at the specific request of T-Mobile and wont affect generic unbranded DeeZire Z handsets but even if it WAS a carrier request, I dont want to support a company that would pull this kind of crap. (even Apple hasnt gone this far)
Cars are subject to heavy government regulation that forces manufacturers to produce either millions of identical cars or a few million dollar cars. Do you want that to happen to phones?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I didn't really say anything about regulation...but anyways, plenty of good affordable cars were built in the 70s, 80s and 90s in the presence of regulation (and a few in the 2000s, although they were priced nearly out of reach of any Average Joe). If you could buy a newly built Datsun 240Z, NA Miata, AW11 MR2, FD RX-7, L88 Corvette, AE86 Corolla, or Mitsubishi Starion at the dealership today, priced the same as an Impreza or Mazda3, you'd have to get to the back of the waiting list.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Section 3, paragraph 11, about a third of the way down, "Don't be evil."
Hmmm... dont see that section...
3. Grant of Patent License. Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, each Contributor hereby grants to You a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable (except as stated in this section) patent license to make, have made, use, offer to sell, sell, import, and otherwise transfer the Work, where such license applies only to those patent claims licensable by such Contributor that are necessarily infringed by their Contribution(s) alone or by combination of their Contribution(s) with the Work to which such Contribution(s) was submitted. If You institute patent litigation against any entity (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that the Work or a Contribution incorporated within the Work constitutes direct or contributory patent infringement, then any patent licenses granted to You under this License for that Work shall terminate as of the date such litigation is filed.
Nope... Nothing about evil.
Maybe you are thinking about the yet to be released Apache_JEDI license ?
I have a right to do anything I damned well please with something I own.
I agree. Allowing the company to dictate what I do with a device that I buy is heading down a slippery slope. People who argue that it's for your own good would have been happier in the old Soviet Union.
... If you need to root or jailbreak your phone ... ... you're buying the wrong phone.
Why not just buy one that doesn't need it?
Don't reward behaviour you don't like.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
The problem is that companies like Google and HTC bend to the will of the carriers.
...in the USA, in order to secure exclusive deal.
In several European countries, the carrier don't give a damn about the phones and don't sell them directly. In fact when you sign for a plan, you don't get *a subsidized specific phone model*, you get *a rebate to use to buy any phone of your liking currently availble in the phone shop where you signed the plan*. And then you do whatever you want with this phone (you can even offer it as a present to someone else). The carrier don't care. They only care that you keep paying your montly fee. If you want to cancel early, you'll have to pay-back part of the rebate.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Try Palm WebOS.
Out of the box it's a walled garden (The default installer can only download palm-signed apps from the official repository). But doesn't require any crack/exploit/leaked key/etc. Only typing a command (konami code for the lulz-factor, or more recently also a shorter alternative) to put it into developer mode (comes complete with warning pop-up and, among other, puts the phone into a mode accepting software installation over USB). Then use another software (complete with warning pop-up) to install any thing you like. For example: SSH. Or a new package manager (Preware, the webos equivalent of synergy) enabling usage of : 3rd party repositories, package signed with non-Plam keys, non signed package, patches to the system, or even a new kernel. (And with then turn off the dev-mode, the new package manager takes care of enabling homebrew installation and SSH handles the remote shell part).
It's also un brickable (short of physically damaging the device) : even it the flash content is completely b0rked beyond any hope, a simple key combination enables a rescue mode (akin to the "BIOS recovery" jumper on motherboards), which enable to completely reflash everything over USB including kernel and firmware, and put back the device into factory state (as a bonus, as Synergy stores most of the users data on the cloud (Google, Palm, Facebook, etc.) most of the data isn't even lost). So no problem sending a device back to the manufacturer for repair.
The drawback :
- Hope that now that HP bought Palm, they'll keep that way for upcoming device (like the consumer version of the HP Slate tablet which is expected to run webOS). (That's HP, you know. Proprietary firmware inside *INK cartridges* et al. But on the other hand there are GPLv3 components in webOS)
- Although a huge part of the software is F/LOSS and GNU/Linux-based, the GUI and Apps are proprietary. But fortunately, most of it is written in Javascript (see bellow) (even more parts in upcoming 2.0 version), and thus the source is open and available for modifications (see patches available in Preware) even if not Free(dom).
- no X11 or other classical GUI. The Luna interface is entirely Webkit based. So either you write WebApp front ends (using HTML, Javascript, CSS, SVG, soon WebGL too), or make full-screen apps (using SDL or Palm's official PDK). No way to directly compile GTK apps (for example the official chat application is not a straigh port of Pidgin, but uses its libpurple with a webapp frontend).
- Instead of linux' standard Bluez, it uses some stupid proprietary bluetooth stack. And thus as with most stupid phones made by stupid USA companies bending to stupid USA carriers, it lacks critical features (for its defense, it's not only earphone, but also *DOES HAVE* networking. But *LACKS* OBEX, which is a big setback for us Europeans used to freely send us each files dating back from the introduction of IrDA and Bluetooth. It also lacks HID, which will be critical for future tablets).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
... if you happen to use Tmobile as your service provider. It even seems to work fine on Tmobile's new 3.5 system.
Credo quia impossibilis -- Tertullian
I can hope that someone is going to come up with some wonderful workaround, but until then I'm going to have to pass on this phone. I already have an N900 but I feel like I'm missing out, there's some ok apps being developed, but I want to get out and play with everyone else with their Android and iOS apps. The way carriers keep dicking around with Android and their "custom builds" with crapware, feature blocking and general skullduggery makes me glad I have an unlocked phone. It may be a little clunky, but at least its mine.
Well, yes but that leaves a huge chunk of population of both US and Canada in the cold. My city (650 thousand people) has no network capable of supporting the N900. In fact there is no such network within a 1000km radius of here.