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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.
...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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
Yes, the consumer is the customer. You, however, are not the consumer. It's intended for the 99% of users whose phone will never be rooted by anything other than malware.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
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.
"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.
This is why I'd like some type of thing akin to a seal and a printed notice, "warranty void if seal opened". The N1 had this when flipping on OEM unlock.
Perhaps this is the best compromise. To keep Joe Sixpack from getting exploited by a Dancing Bunnies exploit, what would be ideal is to require ADB to be installed, a command issued from the PC that would pop up a lengthy, scary as hell to uneducated users that they are about to cross into Mordor, and that they can easily back out right now with no harm done, or proceed and void their warranty. Some warning dialog that even someone who is drunk, baked, high, coked up, and tripping has a good chance of understanding. User clicks "proceed", fastboot is opened, signature checking is relaxed to allow any keys to sign recovery, boot, and OS ROMS, ro.secure is set to 0, /bin/su is enabled and a .apk file for the confirmation part of su installed.
Of course, there would be a method to put this all back and shut the barn door if the user wants to have the phone back for service, similar to a DFU reinstall on iOS devices, but that will be buried in the fine print. This way, if someone does hose up their phone, it isn't hard to get them back to a known good OS level.
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.
AT&T probably isn't that pissed. Due to their pricing you're still subsidizing the new phones you never got...
I'll meet you at the intersection of "Should be" and "Reality"
This is a crap argument.
The only way to 'get root' on many of these devices is to attach a cable to the phone, invoke a special command to get a root shell, and only then can things be mucked with, by using a unix command shell.
How can malware get on the phone if 99% of the users will be only using it through the phone's on-screen menu system? On Android, arn't all apps sandboxed + running as non-root? If an app can break out of this process model, arn't there more serious problems @ stake here?
How can malware 'trick' the user into 'getting root' when that same 99% doesn't know wtf that is?
I want a portable data terminal. I want to run my own scripts and programs on my portable data terminal that do what I want. I want a computer I can keep in my pocket and have it's network interface linked up to the wireless tower. I want to pay a reasonable fee for this service. Why can't any of the US carriers deliver that in a straightforward package?
Why aren't you encrypting your e-mail?
What are you talking about? This is an article where we make wild and unsupported claims about Google, Apple, Microsoft, and every major cell phone carrier. This isn't an article where we discuss facts.
Clearly, the article is confused, filled with contradictory and unsubstantiated claims. But why does that matter? The truth or falsehood of the claims will have no relationship to the content of the articles or posts you find on this website.
Unfortunately, that doesn't apply to sufficiently large corporations, at least not without a lot more stuff to actually get the ball rolling.
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.
When I rooted my Droid X, all it took was a replacement of the Busybox executable to give me all the tools I needed. It isn't Maemo, but I have pretty much everything but gpg and mutt available [1].
An iPhone just doesn't require just an exploit to UID 0, it requires one to get out of the BSD jail() with root. It also requires the jailbreak to install a complete userland including an install system (dpkg), shells, an app (Cydia) to manage everything. Even worse, the jailbroken Mobile Terminal app is barely usable, and has to be hunted down from a repo, as the one that comes as default from Cydia does not work on iOS 4.
This doesn't say that the iPhone is bad; it means that a jailbreak on this device is a lot harder to do elegantly than rooting an Android phone.
[1]: Even in the days of Web applications aplenty, there is no faster mail reader than mutt on a decently responsive system, especially if the spool file is local.
By the hardware manufacturer, of course. This has nothing to do with Google.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Installing a different OS on my PC doesn't void its warranty; why should installing a different OS have to void the warranty on my phone?
I think what's lacking here is enforcement of consumer protection laws. Cellular manufacturers/carriers are screwing around with phone owners' personal property rights, and should be punished for it!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
The right to own and do what I want with my owned property. This software is meant to prevent the owner of his property using it in the way he sees fit.