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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.
G2 is by HTC, and I'm fairly sure isn't running MotoBlur.
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?
...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.
This is why I recently bought a n900 after reviewing the current situation and comparing many devices with articles, reviews, asking friends or colleagues about their models. Albeit with a (around) 450 € sticker price it was not cheep. But out of the box I do have to worry about changing carriers (if I do), needing to get root (if I want to), app prices, and app licensing.
Oh did I mention it has been out for little over a year and is stable and has a really cool community constantly building open source apps ?
http://maemo.org/
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, 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.
This is disingenuous. I have a Droid-X. Rooted it right out of the box and installed software that Verizon would prefer I didn't use (Wi-Fi tethering). Recently upgraded it to Froyo (Android 2.2) and was still able to root it.
The Droid-X doesn't have a "kill switch" against rooting. It has a kill switch against installing a new OS. If you want to install a different ROM image than the Droid-X isn't for you. If you simply want to customize the Android OS to do whatever the hell you want then there is nothing in place to stop you. Root it, uninstall all the bloatware, run wi-fi tethering to your hearts content.... it will do all of those things.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
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"
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!"
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.
You misunderstand. You can install "pirated", not-downloaded-from-the-Market software on ANY stock android phone. Pirating software is not made any easier by rooting. Go grab a 2GB torrent of every damn Android app out there, install on your stock phone. Not a problem.
This is all about hardware control. I have a T-Mobile MyTouch 3G, and if I had stayed stock, I'd STILL be on Android 1.6, which is fucking ANCIENT. I'm running 2.2.1, can do all kinds of actually useful stuff:
Modify /etc/hosts to block ads? Check
Over/underclock processor on demand, both increasing performance AND battery life? Check
Control LEDs and other lights (different colors for txt/email/etc notifications, blink patterns)? Check
Multitouch? Check
Optimized kernel images that run wicked fast? Check
Swap space on SD card to get some more RAM space? Check
Complete bit-for-bit backup of the internal flash memory so I can do a "bare metal" restore? Check
This phone fucking FLIES compared to the stock T-Mobile software, which is slooooow as hell. And THAT'S why I rooted.
With the first link, the chain is forged.
app prices
What is different from Maemo than Android, iOS, or WinPhone 7 (when released)? The OS vendors aren't the ones controlling the prices, the developers are.
I think he was talking about "apt-get install packagename" type applications. In that world, the price is pretty much set in stone by the license, usually GPL, and for end-users is effectively zero no matter how you measure it.
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.
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!