Motorola Sticks To Guns On Locking Down Android

jeffmeden writes "'These aren't the droids you're looking for' proclaims Motorola, maker of the popular Android smartphones such as the Droid 2 and Droid X. At least, not if you have any intention of loading a customized operating system. According to Motorola's own YouTube channel, 'If you want to do custom roms, then buy elsewhere, we'll continue with our strategy that is working thanks.' The strategy they are referring to is a feature Motorola pioneered called 'e-fuse', the ability for the phone's CPU to stop working if it detects unauthorized software running."

Comments

"Then buy elsewhere"

[SquirrelDeth]

Fine I will.dumbasses

Re:What a great way to die

[TheRealGrogan]

I despise Motorola and their rubbish. My parents had motorola phones previously, and they were so proprietary they wanted $90 for a program just to let us transfer pictures from the phone to the computer.

I dicked around (for hours) trying to get a home grown solution working and finally just gave up. It involved installing a driver from motorola (deeply buried on their web site), and a third party app for accessing it. All it did was hang. What I learned (but wasn't sure if I believed) was that even the USB cable was proprietary and while it was the same connection as a camera cable, it was wired differently.

So I don't particularly care what they say and do, there will be no more Motorola devices in this household anyway.

The folks have since switched to Blackberries.

Long before this, I hated Motorola for their shitty modems. Some of the worst rubbish that I have ever had the pleasure of tossing in the garbage.

Re:Is that a challenge?

[teh31337one]

The e-fuse has a 1024 bit RSA key. Good luck trying to brute force that.

But if you want to waste electricity, you can sign up for the efforts to brute force Motorola Milestone - their first phone to feature this draconian lockdown.

Re:Who should I buy from?

[teh31337one]

Go for the Nexus S - they're the most dev friendly. You'll also find that HTC phones are also supported pretty well, even though they have a similarly draconian nandlock in place. It's just been cracked :)

The word 'e-fuse' doesn't mean what you think

[pslam]

The strategy they are referring to is a feature Motorola pioneered called 'e-fuse', the ability for the phone's CPU to stop working if it detects unauthorized software running.

Oh not this bullshit again. This was first published by an ill-informed "hacker" a while back and regurgitated by every blog in the world with no fact checking.

• Here's what an e-fuse is: a write-once programmable bit.

• Here's what they're typically used for: unique IDs (serial number), RAM repair (mark bad rows etc), feature selection, keys, miscellaneous factory config things.

• Here's what you find with e-fuses in them: almost every CPU in the world, probably all of the SoCs used by Motorola's competitors, probably every SoC in every cell phone.

• Here's what they're not used for: bricking devices.

Motorola has even stated very clearly that they never intend to completely brick a device if it detects an unauthorized ROM. It'll just need restoring. The SoCs Motorola uses are in no way pioneering e-fuses. Someone just read a gigantic amount of conspiracy into the tiniest of press release. This is OLD technology. Can this lie please go away?

Re:The word 'e-fuse' doesn't mean what you think

[Tacvek]

Correct. The actual technology here is TI's M-Shield, a feature of the OMAP processors. Motorola was just one of the first to use it in a noticeable application. M-Shield which lets OEMs burn a public key into a set of ordinary e-fuses, which the processor will use to verify a boot-loader signature, falling back on a recovery firmware if the signature is not valid.

Re:Which smartphone for OS development?

[teh31337one]

Nexus S

Re:What a great way to die

[h4rr4r]

There are something like a million downloads of cyanogen mod. Even if that is the same folks downloading each release you are still looking at hundreds of thousands. That is one ROM, not all of them.

Update to article

[Georules]

This article needs an update. Motorola has already officially apologized for the youtube admin's tone.

Re:Misleading Headline.

[h4rr4r]

That you can get a Nexus and have the open experience. No iPhone model like that.

Re:welcome to the future

[M. Baranczak]

We've been over this. Torvalds can't change the kernel to GPLv3, because the copyright is owned by a thousand different contributors.

Re:Is that a challenge?

[mea_culpa]

That link is for the old project.
Here is a link to the new AndrOINC Project