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

What a great way to die

[aliquis]

Hundreds of thousands of potential costumers go "ok."

Re:What a great way to die

[Aerorae]

Right. Hundreds of thousands.

Not millions. So an enormous company like Moto can do without them no problem.

Re:What a great way to die

[Daniel Phillips]

And I go to all my friends "Samsung".

Re:What a great way to die

[chaffed]

However, for that to happen, people need to care.

For the vast majority of the smart phone crowd, they do not care. Just as long as they can get that "urgent" work email, post a picture of their lunch and tweet about how tired they are in the evening.

Re:What a great way to die

[nurb432]

Most consumers don't even have a clue what is being discussed, or care. As long as they can make calls, surf and buy stuff they wont know the difference.

Re:What a great way to die

[whiteboy86]

This approach works for some fruit related company, anyway I do not see how that fact affects average Joe Consumer, you know the 99% of all buyers.

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:What a great way to die

[Duradin]

Hundreds, probably. Thousands, possible. Hundreds of thousands? Delusions of grandeur much?

Re:What a great way to die

[larry bagina]

ah, yes, Samsung, the company that charges for updates.

Re:What a great way to die

[Asten]

I've pretty much exclusively had motorola phones since high school. Not always great, but always well built... The phones that required Phone Tools were in a time where everyone's was proprietary. A long time ago, I was trying to coax another charger into charging my razr faster. I read that the 'official' USB cable has an extra pin which is required for accessories, but any normal USB cable worked once they went to MicroUSB... I've used random cables on my RAZR, V3XX, Q9h, and Milestone and they all work fine. It was the old weird flat wide connector that was proprietary.. but then again, so was everyone's at that point. Pretty much everything these days is super easy. Plugging in the latest android phones are awesome - you simply use a web browser, or a file manager and can get to everything on the phone. That said - I'm a hacker, so I probably won't go with motorola next time around as I want to put my own roms on. This attitude of theirs doesn't really seem to have any point to it. Taking it off hurts nothing at all. Leaving it on costs them sales. Maybe not tons, but a sale is a sale. Why go out of your way to lose sales?

Re:What a great way to die

[udoschuermann]

At least they're not pulling a Sony on us, selling the things as open and then revoking the ability, after they scammed us out of our money. But it looks like I will not be buying from Motorola again from now on.

I wonder what company wants to go on my (permanent) blacklist next...

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.

Re:What a great way to die

[aliquis]

Your numbers are a little off. The Droid brand sells tens of millions of devices a year.

Someone else said 99% of the people wouldn't care.

But yeah, maybe the 1% who do care and the 0.25% who would had eventually bought the Motorola and the 0.05% who decided they won't now when Motorola decides as such won't kill it :)

Bad suicide attempt? =P

And the people who buy it to install custom OS on it or even know what an "OS" is, are tens of thousands.

Ah, ok.

Re:What a great way to die

[dudpixel]

I was just about to say what your sig already said.

They've never charged for an update for the galaxy s/nexus s...which are the phones referred to by the parent.

Re:What a great way to die

[dudpixel]

However, for that to happen, people need to care.

For the vast majority of the smart phone crowd, they do not care. Just as long as they can get that "urgent" work email, post a picture of their lunch and tweet about how tired they are in the evening.

But surely this works both ways, and is actually in favour of motorola not locking their devices down as much. Those that dont care need not worry whether it can be rooted or not, but those that do care actually have a choice now.

Re:What a great way to die

[Microlith]

And this apathy is what they're all banking on. They can tighten down the screws and leverage the masses an excuse to do so. This is true for Microsoft, Apple, Motorola, and every vendor that forces you to root.

They want to do this to PCs, and I expect the push and attack on standard, uncrippled PCs to step up in the next few years. It's far more profitable that way.

Re:What a great way to die

[isopropanol]

I was considering a Milestone as the folks at the store assure me that it can be tethered. Then I checked the manual.. no mention... so I checked the FAQ... no, it can't be tethered... So I checked and cyanogenmod supports tethering... But mods can't be loaded on Motorola... so fsck them.

Re:What a great way to die

[dlgeek]

In other words, a manufacturer is selling a product that does exactly what the vast majority of it's customers want.

Re:What a great way to die

[node 3]

This attitude of theirs doesn't really seem to have any point to it. Taking it off hurts nothing at all. Leaving it on costs them sales. Maybe not tons, but a sale is a sale. Why go out of your way to lose sales?

Support costs, the ability to charge (the carrier) for updates, and the ability to arbitrarily obsolete a handset.

Re:What a great way to die

[hjf]

I have a milestone. You have to root it (with an app, universal androot i think) and then install android tether or something, i have it (if by tethering you mean using your phone as an wifi access point to your 3G).

Re:What a great way to die

[h4rr4r]

Get another phone that is supported by CM. I will be installing gingerbread a little later tonight, CM7 nightly.

Re:What a great way to die

[exomondo]

ah, yes, Samsung, the company that charges for updates.

That was a rumor, which is apparently not true.

Re:What a great way to die

[PopeRatzo]

Are we really so weak that we absolutely cannot do without a smart phone until manufacturers actually start giving us what we want? I mean, we're the goddamn customers. Vote with your feet.

Some company's going to do the right thing and that's the phone you buy. That's all. You're not going to die if you wait a few more months to buy an Android phone. Or, you can do what I did, and buy a wi-fi only handheld device and use your regular phone because who wants a phone with 4 hours of battery life anyway? Do you really want to have to run to an AC outlet as soon as the plane lands so you can make a call just because you wanted to watch two movies on a cross-country flight?

There is power in being a consumer, and it's astounding that people have been so diddled by advertisement and marketing voodoo that they won't even consider using that power to get what they want.

Re:What a great way to die

[epyT-R]

I didn't know the costuming business had such a large impact on the economy...

Re:What a great way to die

[AchilleTalon]

Since the vast majority of the smart phone crowd just don't care, why did Motorola spent so much time to make sure they have a technology to prevent it? I mean, if peoples don't care, there is no reason to make sure they can't. And for the rest of us, what's the problem?

Re:What a great way to die

[Daniel Phillips]

In other words, a manufacturer is selling a product that does exactly what the vast majority of it's customers want.

I'm curious how you know what Motorola's customers want. Or are you leaving ex-customers out it?

Re:What a great way to die

[Daniel Phillips]

Most consumers don't even have a clue what is being discussed, or care. As long as they can make calls, surf and buy stuff they wont know the difference.

So they let others make their decisions for them, and if most of the comments are "Motorola isn't the slimmest, fastest or most open phone and misses a bunch of cools apps" then they will buy a different one.

Re:What a great way to die

[TristanThomas]

Its like there is always so form of trade of with the GREAT Android phones.

Re:What a great way to die

[SETIGuy]

Did you try Easy Tether (it's in the Market)? The Milestone is the same as the Droid, and Easy Tether works fine for me. But I use it as a tether, not a wifi access point.

Re:What a great way to die

[postbigbang]

I have a Moto Droid 2. I rooted it. It works FINE. Not bricked. It's using at most, a nice tethering app. Does all I want.

If I wanted a playground, I would have bought a park.

This is my experience. Yours will vary.

Re:What a great way to die

[Asten]

Right, but again, the people that are going to care about this aren't likely to use support... The company isn't going to update past a certain point anyway, and again, the crowd that wants to do this is going to be upgrading more than often - plus, they are more likely to be influencers - the people that provide recommendations - good or bad - to 'normal' people. I suggested to them a year or more ago - provide software that lets you unlock your phone's bootloader, but in doing so, submits the phone info to a database to immediately void 'brick' warranty claims. And lastly.. the amount of effort required to implement all of their security mechanisms probably costs millions of dollars - certainly offsetting the impact of the other things you mentioned. Anyway, I'll go with someone else next time. It's sad. I haven't had a non-motorola phone in 15 years or more. I want to support an american technology company, but damnit, they make it so #@%@# hard.

Re:What a great way to die

[anim8rr]

It was true that Motorola posted that BUT they also followed up with an apology and retraction. Someone got fired over that one I'm sure.

Re:What a great way to die

[Totenglocke]

Yea, not only is Motorola one of the worst about updating phones, but they also use the horrendous Motoblur skin and now they want to tell people "Screw you, we control your hardware, not you"? I see Motorola losing sales in the near future.

Re:What a great way to die

[Totenglocke]

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

So they're punishing themselves as well as Motorola? =D

Re:What a great way to die

[ScrewMaster]

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.

I was going to say the same thing. Sooner or later some vendor is going to release a handset with Cyanogenmod on it. Until then, if I can't run my Cyanogen, I'm not buying your handset.

Re:What a great way to die

[Microlith]

Sure, but that's no excuse for what Motorola is doing. They could deliver precisely that experience without this type of control. The only purpose of this is to allow them to use the next version of Android as a selling point for the next hardware, and to FORCE the issue.

Re:What a great way to die

[Kakari]

Out of curiosity, what wi-fi-only handheld device did you get?

Re:What a great way to die

[vux984]

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.

Most of the BS there was related to the carriers telling motorola what the software could and could not do. The carriers wanted to sell ring tones, and screen backgrounds. So motorola's phones that were more than capable were told not to. And the software that let you do anything at all to bypass the carrier etc was priced by the carriers.

As for the handsets and accessories Motorola was 'proprietary' the same as anyone else, but they were the least of all annoying to deal with. Tons of phones used the same battery, even from generation to generation. Connectors for charging were only changed 3 or 4 times over a period of 10 years. Contrast that with some other vendors who had a different charger for every 2nd phone.

Motorola was on mini usb and micro usb standards right at the front of the line, well before several other vendors finally broke down. (And even today some still require some bizarre proprietary connector.)

Motorola phones historically tended to be well built... the from the old 8000s to the DPC550/650s to the StarTACs to the Razr line. They had their misses too, and their tech has been lagging a bit lately in features. But the droids appear to be doing alright, so they are on the right path.

You are entitled to your opinions, but Motorola is not the first company I'd choose to pick on by a long shot.

Re:What a great way to die

[ThomasHoward]

I would not be adverse to a law being passed banning this use of encryption to lock down what software can be run on a platform, mainly because of the fear that other companies might follow Motorola and we might end up unable to modify the firmware on most Android phones.

Also, it seems to me that voting with ones feet no longer has any appreciable effect on large companies.

Re:What a great way to die

[the_bard17]

Problem is, you've got to get enough consumers together that actually give a shit. Seems like most folk these days just shrug their shoulders and look at me sideways when I mention why I avoid certain companies. These are the same people that go "OOooohhhh, shiny!" when some new product with new features arrives.

Re:What a great way to die

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting anonymously because I work for a company vaguely related to all this.

The only purpose of this is to allow them to use the next version of Android as a selling point ...

I'm not entirely sure that's true. I've been watching this for a few years, and I have this weird impression that this is all because wireless carriers, like cable companies, need to feel ... special. And that's really all there is to it.

Really. Take cable companies. Comcast wants to be your main squeeze, selling you a DVR and a selection of channels, and not just be a dumb pipe through which bits flow. Because deep down, that's all they are: a bit pusher. If it really came down to it, you could get (or build) any old DVR, and/or stream Hulu and Netflix, and/or do the torrent thing. It's all just data, so that's really all Comcast is: a bit pusher. And let's be clear: being your personal bit pusher would be a great job for a cable company. It's vital to the economy. But the cable companies don't want this job, even though they already have it and are making a killing on it. They think it's beneath them.

The wireless carriers are the same way: they want to be special. They're not mere bit pushers (even though you and I know they really are, and even though we know the bit-pushing job is perfectly respectable and important). No, they want you to love them. Verizon, for example, wants you to really HEART the fact that you have a Verizon phone with a stupid red checkmark as its default wallpaper. And Motorola is catering not to you and me, but to these poor, sorry carriers who don't want to accept that they're just bit pushers, and want to feel loved.

OK, end of rant.

Re:What a great way to die

[Aexia]

It's always funny how upset the free market worshiping glibertarians here get when companies pull this shit. It's almost as if corporations don't act for the betterment of society and instead for purely for profit.

A few experiences like this might cause them to question trusting the free market in matters that actually are important, like health care. But no, they'll always freak out and rant about how the free market is always right and anything else is freedom impinging socialism.

They're like abused spouses.

Re:What a great way to die

[AvitarX]

They (in the US anyway) have less than a dozen customers. Without convincing the networks their phones will make people happy, there will be a harder sell. With half-generation old HTC phones, Samsung phones, and LG competing in the low-end and HTC and Samsung on the high (well they only really compete in the high-end on Verizon) they are very replaceable.

This thread https://supportforums.motorola.com/thread/31532 and it's follow up, as it was causing stability issues on motorola's server due to it's size have over 1,000,000 combined views and 7,000 replies (last comment in that link is a link to the replacement).

Note this isn't too many people, but they are grabbing cheap top of the line phones (people offered MyTouch 4G, or G2 to stay with Tmobile over it).

My girlfriend was given 2 G2 phones for $50 each, one was replacing a 20 day phone (highly subsidized phone not to be turned down), the other only 7 months.

When she said "I have a cliq XT, do you know why I'm calling" to customer service the guy responded "Yes, what do you want"

Were the phone hardware not locked down, it would have been a non-issue. Really even upgrading to Android 1.6 would have been nice (free navigation), and certainly provided by the community (looks like it even is now, though I failed to find a ROM without tons of issues a month ago).

Motorola needs to be concerned about their customers, not consumers, and they don't appear to be doing that. Tmobile didn't even try to use another Motorola phone as the replacement. And maybe people don't care about versions, but they do care about Angry Birds, and Navigation.

Re:What a great way to die

[isopropanol]

Can you do port forwarding? I need to allow SSH into my laptop.

Re:What a great way to die

[AvitarX]

Droid is no Motorola, it is Verizon.

Re:What a great way to die

[rk]

What's wrong with Angry Birds? I run that all the time on my Droid running CyanogenMod-6.1.2 when I have a few minutes to kill and don't feel like reading, thankyouverymuch. Rooting your phone and mindless entertainment are not orthogonal activities, after all.

Re:What a great way to die

[mcrbids]

Same phone, didn't root it, don't really care to. I got the nice tethering app without rooting it - EzTether is your buddy!

Truth is, I want a phone that does stuff I like, at a price I can afford, without compromising my personal security. And for now, it works! The percentage of people who want to root their phones is somewhere less than 1% or so, so Moto can more or less ignore those of us who want a more "hands on" approach to their phones. Mostly it's about reducing tech support calls.

But over time, markets tend to either open up and/or commoditize, or disappear. Android is a market, one with openness built into its foundation. Moto can ignore us geeks for now, but once Android becomes commonplace and/or boring, the more locked-in approaches will tend to become disfavored over more open choices that will also be generally cheaper due to their commodity/open status.

Microsoft has almost lost the mobile phone market - I give it less than 20% chance of existing in 5 years, because a cheaper/more open and viable option already exists. I predict that iPhone will get a short term boost lasting somewhere between 6 months and 2 years as it becomes available on other networks, and then will slowly lose share to Android as its more open approach leads to a death by a thousand cuts by the iPhone.

Windows/Office itself remains because it's a commodity - despite the slow rise in price, it's still cheaper than any viable alternative.

Re:What a great way to die

[DerekLyons]

Are we really so weak that we absolutely cannot do without a smart phone until manufacturers actually start giving us what we want? I mean, we're the goddamn customers. Vote with your feet.

And who says Motorola isn't giving me exactly what I want - a phone that works and does the tasks I demand of it.
 

Some company's going to do the right thing and that's the phone you buy.

For the vast majority of their customers, Motorola *is* doing the right thing. You're a tiny, almost unoticeable minority. Grow and deal with it rather than whining your every whim isn't being catered to.

Re:What a great way to die

[Kitkoan]

Thats a small part of the problem. The big issue is that without a LOT of research the consumer wouldn't know about this. Motorola isn't going to print this as a selling feature, in fact they won't mention it on the product at all, and neither will the reviews about this phone. When I'm looking about upgrading to a new electronic device, searching Google for something like "What software hacks will cause this product to self-destruct" isn't on the list of things I'm going to research. What needs to be addressed is that the consumer should be able to be notified about these issues before they are allowed to buy it, not find out from buyers remorse. This was the same issue that came up a while ago with DRM on music cd's. People wanted to be able to know which ones had DRM and not learn the hard way and the companies don't want to make this information available because people will vote with their feet so they prefer to try to hide it (the companies claimed they didn't want to make the information known because people would only buy the cd's they claimed that would be able to easily pirate if I remember right).

Re:What a great way to die

[mcrbids]

MORE: What's interesting to me isn't my $600 Droid II as much as my *wife's* phone. She loved my Android phone so much that we went out and got an LG Optimus Android phone for her, costing HALF as much as my (business-subsidized) Droid2. It does basically everything that my Droid II at HALF the price!

The truth is that there isn't a big benefit in buying the Droid2 vs the LG Optimus at half the price! Yes, the Droid is nicer, has a keyboard, and a sharper screen. None of which really makes much of a difference. The LG Optimus' driving directions are just as useful as the Droid's. It's maps function works just as well, the EzTether app works the same, the games play just as well (Angry Birds and Spider Solitaire!) and the only meaningful difference that we have seen so far is that videos load faster on my phone than hers at home. (Different cell network)

Even with the business subsidy, I'm going to be a bit more conservative with my next phone, and so will everybody else as they commodity effect kicks in on the smartphone market!

Re:What a great way to die

[Anonymous Coward]

The Droid 2/Droid X do not use eFuses to disable modified phones. On their own, eFuses can't - they're just write-once memory next to the application processor. They can be used to prevent downgrading, if your updater blows one when an update is written successfully. But to prevent a jailbreak/root/hack, you have to be able to detect an exploit in progress and then blow the fuse. The only way to detect an exploit in progress is to use a hypervisor (since if it's at kernel-level, it's not going to be able to do shit) to examine pages in memory and detect if the kernel's gone rogue somehow. ARM doesn't even support hypervisors. The kind of virtualization magic that separates all the security code out of the kernel on the 360 and (ostensibly, but not really) the PS3, is a feature of the POWER architecture, which stopped being able to fit into laptops around PowerPC G5 in around 2003-ish.

If instead you decide to put your magic anti-exploit code in kernel level, then you're just tripping up hackers who will have to find a way to disable the part of the kernel that writes to eFuses. Then their exploit code will work as normal (find a stack overflow, get your payload in memory, etc) and the eFuses are worthless.

BTW, how the hell would some code detect an exploit in progress, anyway? If you're using W^X then you're still vulnerable to ret-2-libc attacks, unless you're willing to trap every write instruction and trace where ARM's link register is stored which will make your phone stop working.

Re:What a great way to die

[shellbeach]

In other words, a manufacturer is selling a product that does exactly what the vast majority of it's customers want.

s/want/don't care enough about/g;

The two are not quite the same ...

Re:What a great way to die

[eggnoglatte]

Yeah, you can keep telling yourself this - everybody who doesn't want exactly what you want clearly doesn't have a clue.

Here is a reference point: I am a computer scientist, I've been using Linux both professionally and privately on the desktop for almost exactly a decade now. But the very last thing I want of a phone is yet another device to upgrade or configure a kernel for, or worry about malware and viruses. Locked down sounds pretty good to me. I just want to have access to email wherever I go, I don't buy a lot of apps (I have 4 total), and I am not going to start developing for the darn thing. There is only so much time in a day, and the phone is one device that I don't want to have to fiddle with to have it work.

Re:What a great way to die

[eggnoglatte]

Really now? Because I do want my phone to be locked down, actually. I want a mobile device that allows me to read email, but doesn't force me into regular OS upgrades, patches, or software upgrades of any other form. I am willing to give up the ability to install software in exchange for never having to worry about the darn thing not working or having a virus. So there.

Re:What a great way to die

[ChunderDownunder]

Support a manufacturer that actually encourages you to root your phone.

The Geeksphone One is out of stock but if I was in the market for a new phone, I'd give those Spaniards a call (pun intended).

Re:What a great way to die

[bemymonkey]

You may have root access, but you can't put any of the fantastic community builds of Android on there. CyanogenMod on the Droid 2? Never gonna happen.

And how long is Moto going to take to upgrade to Android 2.3? 2.4? You'll be lucky if you get more than one upgrade cycle... and forget upgrading yourself - that bootloader won't let you.

Reply to this exact thread again in a year and tell us if you still feel the same way ;)

I've learned my lesson with the Droid 2's predecessor (or rather the international version, the Milestone): DON'T BUY MOTOROLA ANDROID PRODUCTS.

Re:What a great way to die

[Anne Thwacks]

And who says Motorola isn't giving me exactly what I want - a phone that works and does the tasks I demand of it.

You have obviously never owned a Moto phone.

Just wait for e-fuse II - which bricks the phone if there is a bug in an app. Then we will see who has a successful business model.

Re:What a great way to die

[Anne Thwacks]

Some users are running apps that need root to do something useful. Other users will see them and want to do the same. In a couple of years

- people will come to expect this. Moto phones will be found to be defective by design and shortly afterwards, Moto will be bought by HyPhone Ltd, or The Chung Wah Corp, for $1.

I know: I have been in computing since EDSAC II.

Re:What a great way to die

[thegarbz]

There is NO inherent power in being a customer. Power comes from numbers, numbers in people (which translates to money) or numbers in money itself. If you're going to spend $100million then yes you most definitely have a shitload of power. If you're buying from a company who relies on a small number of high profit margin sales a year then again you have a shitload of power. If you are one of millions of other customers, or 100s of millions of potential customers and your spend is small (we're talking less than the price of a house small) then you have ZERO power. Absolutely none.

For the most part voting with your feet will register as a rounding error in their balance sheet. Organising a large boycott will also register as rounding error. Ultimately regardless of what impact you think you have on a company it's much like politics, there are countless people who don't give a flying fuck about the Droid 2 being locked down. They will keep spending their $400 or whatever these things cost anyway.

What you do have (in this case luckily) is choice. Feel free to buy whatever the heck you want, but don't pretend that this is any form of power that would cause Motorola to even remotely rethink their position. But even that choice often doesn't exist when I see people like you saying vote with your feet due to monopolies, duopolies, corruption, or other things.

Re:What a great way to die

[Draek]

You may notice how, as upset as they may get, they don't call for the government to intervene in such situations. You may also notice how, when asked as to how such things would get solved under a free market, they specifically cite customers complaining to the manufacturers about their perceived problems with the products.

That's not a coincidence.

Re:What a great way to die

[Draek]

Just like I'm willing to give up my mouse wheel in exchange for getting clear sound out of my speakers.

Seriously, WTF? software upgrades and patches are completely orthogonal to having an open or closed OS, and I truly cannot grasp the logic of why you'd think otherwise. Are you, perhaps, working under some obscenely twisted version of "security through obscurity", thinking that if you can't freely write apps (actually, this only concerns alternate OSes) any exploit will stay hidden and therefore keep you safe? it's the closest I can get to a logical argument, and it still doesn't make a bit of sense whatsoever.

Re:What a great way to die

[thegarbz]

Judging by their Q3 sales from 2010 ($5.8bn US) one can assume that Motorola is delivering the products its customers want. Either that or it doesn't care.

We spent just shy of $800000 with them early last year, with another $350000 spend likely to happen in the second half of this year. That's radio infrastructure and some 350 handsets. We tried the Motorola headsets for their radios, they are the most uncomfortable pieces of shit I have ever worn. Most of the users couldn't wear them for 12 minutes let alone a full 12 hour shift. Theses headsets, dumb headsets with no electronics in them other than a microphone and a speaker run for $500. When we complained to Motorola that we weren't going to spend $175000 on these things, they just told us to look elsewhere.

Motorola didn't care about $175000 of products with huge margins, they won't care if all of slashdot's readership denounced the Droid 2 and Droid X, devices with tiny margins.

Re:What a great way to die

[Agret]

I'm guessing iPod Touch, it's a smartphone without the phone

Re:What a great way to die

[eggnoglatte]

If you can't install software then you can't install malware.

Re:What a great way to die

[MareLooke]

If this would happen a certain supposedly irrelevant phone company (let's call it Nokia), would be smiling...

Re:What a great way to die

[arkhan_jg]

My galaxy S lasts 2 days in normal use, no problem. I just carry an additional battery when on long trips. Lighter and way cheaper than another phone and call plan. Why the additional call plan? Well, I like being able to use the internet and email when away from my own wifi. After all, that's *why* I bought a smartphone. I used to do the PDA and small phone combo for years. A single smart phone in your pocket is way simpler and more convenient.

I mod my phone though - the galaxy S isn't as easy to mod as say, the Nexus 1, but it's still simple enough, and there's so really nice tweaks in the custom roms. There are plenty of android phone makers who don't make life hard for people who want to use their own hardware their own way - so vote with your wallet, don't buy Motorola.

Re:What a great way to die

[gmack]

They have that and it's called GeeksPhone. The price for mine was better than Google's developer handset and even though it originally came with Android 1.5 they have provided 2.2 (Froyo) and 2.3(Gingerbread). It comes rooted and their forums will happily help you with whatever mod you want to attempt.

I no longer care what Motorolla or anyone else does because I have a phone that does what I want.

Re:What a great way to die

[ArsenneLupin]

If you can't install software then you can't install malware.

Can you say "Apple Appstore"? There've been multiple cases where malicious apps made it to the appstore, only to be pulled after a public outcry. The "vetting" of the apps is only done to protect Apple's bottom line, and not to protect the customer's security and/or privacy.

The same can be expected from these Motorola locked down phones. Eventually, the malware authors will get hold of the signing keys, or find and exploit to install there code without these keys, and there goes the security.

Re:What a great way to die

[CptNerd]

I know my life won't be complete until my smartphone can grate cheese, do my laundry, and change my car's oil. Who needs a phone that can only make phone calls?

Re:What a great way to die

[Haeleth]

Some company's going to do the right thing

I admire your faith in humanity.

Or, you can do what I did, and buy a wi-fi only handheld device and use your regular phone

Which is totally useless if the reason you are interested in a smartphone is so you can, I dunno, use the internet everywhere or something. Maybe you live in some magical land with free wifi everywhere and you never go travelling at all, but most of us aren't so lucky.

Do you really want to have to run to an AC outlet as soon as the plane lands so you can make a call just because you wanted to watch two movies on a cross-country flight?

You watch movies on your phone? How strange. Most of us use the movie-watching device handily built into the seat in front, or a laptop if we want to bring our own.

There is power in being a consumer

Yeah, like there's power in being a voter. But I don't see many supporters of minority parties celebrating because their interests are being represented in Congress.

Re:What a great way to die

[Eraesr]

The problems is that consumers, on average, indeed do not give a shit. How many people go out and buy a phone to install a custom firmware on there? Only a tiny portion of their (potential) customers.

I'm a pretty tech savvy guy, interested in gadgets and tinkering with them. But in all honesty, so far even I have had absolutely no desire to install a custom firmware on my HTC Hero, even though it's still running Android 2.1. I just don't see the direct benefit of it right now. The phone does what I need it to do, so I'm fine with that.

Most of the people will think like that. Well, in fact, most people don't even know there's such a thing as custom firmware or other hacks for their phones. And even if someone told them, they'd probably not even be interested.

This whole outcry against Motorola for locking down their phones is typical nerd-niche anger. But I guess that's why we cling together at /. eh?

Re:What a great way to die

[Eraesr]

lol, I just noticed I posted exactly the same thing as you. Although with a slightly different undertone. I don't think that this should be blamed on dis-interest of the average consumer, as they are simply right in being not interested in this. Why should they be? The device does what they bought it for, so there's no injustice done if they're not interested in firmware hacks.

Re:What a great way to die

[AmiMoJo]

And at a price that they can afford. Blocking rooting reduces their support costs because people don't brick their phones and then try to return them. They don't phone up tech support saying their phone is broken because the signal is poor when in fact it is down to an old or broken driver in a custom ROM. You might think people savvy enough to root wouldn't do those things but rooting many phones is as easy as downloading an app from the Android Market.

That is how I did my Galaxy S. Check the XDA developers forums for endless threads about hardware issues relating to custom ROMs.

Re:What a great way to die

[MemoryDragon]

Add to that the word of mouth power, I noticed quite a while ago, that the geek crowd usually is 2 years ahead of the curve of the general people technologywise, this must be the so called word of mouth delay. I assume if a device constantly is bad mouthed by the so called technology savy normal people after a while start to notice and will start buying something else. Motorola should be really worried! They only have one year left in europe, but the no buy effect here has been kicking in for a while!

Re:What a great way to die

[sveinungkv]

What do you think is the most likely reaction of a politician when he hears about this technology that makes it impossible for a user to change the software on his devices? Will it be to ban it or to make it obligatory so the government can put stuff in your firmware. (Only to be used against terrorists and pedophiles of course. (At least in the beginning. (At least officially.)))

Re:What a great way to die

[uglyduckling]

Has it occured to you that people might by products because they like them? I spent GBP 600 last year buying my iPhone 4 outright. It wasn't becuase I was 'deceived', it's because it helps me manage my life, stops me missing meetings, keeps me connected and entertained. Since I first bought a Palm m100 10 years ago, I've always invested in technology that will do those things. Right now, nothing has been released that gives me a compelling reason to switch away from my iPhone, and my iPhone does everything I want it to do, never crashes and never gets in the way. You might have reasons why you care about how 'open' your phone is, but the vast majority of people are no more bothered about that than they are about how 'open' their microwave oven is.

Re:What a great way to die

[uglyduckling]

How about a third type - people who understand all of this but just don't care. I like my iPhone. If I was buying an Android phone for some reason, I'd look at all the available models and try them out and buy the one that worked best. I wouldn't care if the kernel was locked down or whatever, even though I completely understand what that means.

Re:What a great way to die

[tigerblood]

fuck off Motorola, I will go buy elsewhere.

Re:What a great way to die

[sveinungkv]

There is power in being a consumer

Yeah, like there's power in being a voter. But I don't see many supporters of minority parties celebrating because their interests are being represented in Congress.

The beauty of the free market compared to democracy is that you don't need to be in the majority to get what you want. The majority can buy from Motorola and others while you can freely buy from the those that cater to you. Personally I have an OpenMoko Freerunner. If you want something newer you could have look at GeeksPhone, Nokia 900 or one of the many other phones out there to see if they are free enough for you.

Re:What a great way to die

[PsychoSlashDot]

Are we really so weak that we absolutely cannot do without a smart phone until manufacturers actually start giving us what we want?

As with most things in life, it's not that simple.

This isn't a question about what we want versus what we don't want. It's a question about what we want versus what we want more. If there's a product out that does most of what I'd like it to do, in most of the ways I'd like it to do them, do you really expect me to not purchase it in the hope that the manufacturer will read my mind and somehow know I'm holding out for a couple function changes? Boycott doesn't work in and of itself.

Re:What a great way to die

[Mysticalfruit]

My wife also got droid envy and ended up with a HTC Eris and she loves it.

Here's my take on this argument. It's really all about choice. Even though we've got two Android phones in the house, I've never upgraded either. What bothers me is a company purposely engineering my personal choice out of the equation. If I'm spending ~$300 on a phone, I better have the ability to modify/upgrade it at my leisure.

I can slightly understand my cell provider being twitchy about zillions of users suddenly running possibly sketchy versions of software on their network.

However, when a company takes choice out of my hands, they've lost my business.

Re:What a great way to die

[DJRumpy]

The problem here being that the vast majority of users simply don't care if it's open. Some may fine they like it because it's not Apple. Some just like the commercials. Some like the touch features, or the '4G' (ahem) ads. I don't recall any of the major vendors loudly proclaiming it was based on FOSS in their commercials. It's simply not a selling point and I think that the /. crowd vastly over rates open-ness. The buying public at large doesn't care if they can hack their phone. Hell, most of them don't know what it means and probably visualize axes when you say the term.

It isn't some travesty that they don't see this. It simply is not important to them. The /. crowd has turned into those weird creepy flower people pushing peace at the airport in those 70's movies. You are fringe in this apsect and you simply refuse to see it.

Re:What a great way to die

[PopeRatzo]

I bought an iPod Touch on woot for $129 and I've got a nicer Archos at Christmas that my daughter seems to have appropriated a few days ago.

I'd buy a wi-fi only iPad if it was $300, but I won't at $500. I figure the walled garden means about a 40% price penalty. I also wouldn't have bought a Touch at the full price.

Re:What a great way to die

[ChrisCampbell47]

I don't understand ... "what the vats majority of it is customers want"?

My sig is for you, sir :)

Yeah, it does matter. Cognitive speedbump.

Re:What a great way to die

[PopeRatzo]

Good point, but I'm not talking about just a boycott.

I'd bet nearly everyone on Slashdot is somebody's go-to guy for information about which products to buy. I'm less concerned about what the average consumer has been sold, than what L2 marketing has done to technology opinion-makers like us.

For example, how often do you see the assumption here that having a more open platform automatically means it's going to be a less slick user experience?

There is the effect on mass marketing on the general public, and then there's the effect of targeted marketing on opinion-makers.

Anyway, the notion that the current crop of handheld devices do "most of" what we want is strictly a product of their advertising campaigns.

"Most of what I want" is for a smart phone to have 14 hours of battery life. I'd gladly carry a 3/4" thick tablet if it could deliver that.

Re:What a great way to die

[mcvos]

Even so, it's bizarre for Motorola to invest so much energy in alienating customers. How does it actually help them to restrict their customers so much? If it was at least a sane business decision, I wouldn't complain.

Then again, the main reason I'm complaining is that they weren't so open and honest about this when I bought my Milestone. I'm glad they're honest about it now, because I will avoid their products like the plague from now on.

Re:What a great way to die

[mcvos]

For the vast majority of their customers, Motorola *is* doing the right thing.

Motorola is investing time and money in features that can only harm their customers. In what world can that possibly be "the right thing"?

Re:What a great way to die

[penguinchris]

Likewise, some of the most popular *paid* apps in the app market are ones that require root access - they're literally at the top of the most popular list. That tells you two possible things - one is that it's true that android users really don't pay for any apps, or that they do, but tons of people have at least rooted (not necessarily custom roms) and find these apps useful.

Re:What a great way to die

[mcvos]

This sounds great. For a while now I've been fantasizing about what I'd do if I had any way to get into the smartphone hardware business, and I was planning on the name: Ultimate Geek Phone. Apart from being completely open, big capacitive touch screen, etc, it'd be a bit heavier than other smartphones because of the much bigger battery, and have a sturdy steel casing (one of the things that I really like about my Milestone).

This one has the openness right. Now if only they made it from metal instead of plastic, and put a bigger battery and more powerful chips in it, I'd gladly pay EUR 600 for it. (Just not now, because I'm really broke at the moment.)

In any case, I hope they get really big.

Re:What a great way to die

[ThirdPrize]

This is good for Apple. You mate tells you the latest iOS update added x new features, for free, and you are stuck 2 versions behind. You are going to think, why didn't i get one of them.

Re:What a great way to die

[oh_my_080980980]

But wait Droid is open.......suckers.

Re:What a great way to die

[mjwx]

What PopeRatzo said.

Every one of your tastes is influenced by marketing. The only difference between you and I is that I recognise this fact.

Re:What a great way to die

[subsonic]

THIS, a million times.
Lazy/apathetic consumers have themselves to blame. I have a phone that lets me tether right out of the box. It was no magic trick, do the research and refuse to settle because someone, somewhere probably made the product that fits your needs.
Whenever people ask me about phones they usually just phrase it along the lines of "iphone or Droid" (implying Verizon and Motorola). They really are not that aware of the range of devices out there.

Re:What a great way to die

[Zenaku]

You're a tool of the doghouse companies, Marge. You've been brainwashed by all those doghouse ads on TV.

Re:What a great way to die

[pak9rabid]

I dicked around (for hours) trying to get a home grown solution working and finally just gave up.

I guess you never came across this?

Re:What a great way to die

[uglyduckling]

Rubbish. I would go for "every one of your tastes in consumer products is influenced by marketing". And, ouch, I wrote 'by' instead of 'buy'. Trust me, marketing alone would not entice me to spend GBP 600 on a phone. That's nearly twice what I spent on my TV, and I've seen plenty of marketing for TVs too. I've also seen plenty of adverts for Windows 7 yet have no desire to buy or use it.

Marketing is definitely relevant for all people, but claiming that's the only reason someone would buy a product in such a competitive marketplace is ridiculous. There's plenty of advertising for other smartphone products. There's plenty of advertising for other areas too: I would like to get a tablet in the medium-term, the Samsung Galaxy Tab is being marketed like crazy here in the UK, I've looked at the specs and have no desire at all. I'd buy an iPad if it was half the price or had twice the feature set - in other words, if it had the features of my iPhone 4 in that form factor - which is what the iPad 2 will probably be, and I will probably buy it (and, note, there is 0 marketing for that at the moment).

Re:What a great way to die

[hjf]

You guys don't speak spanish and you don't know about the motoFAIL issue.

The Motorola CEO for Latin America said they were not going to upgrade the Milestone to Android 2.2: http://www.celularis.com/motorola/motorola-milestone-no-tendra-la-actualizacion-de-android-2-2-en-america-latina.php (Article date: Aug 24 2010)

His words? "This is business", and he spoke about the 1% of customers who wouldn't like that, if they wanted Android 2.2 they would have to get a Milestone 2 or fuck off. See here: http://www.celularis.com/motorola/motorola-sobre-la-falta-de-actualizaciones-android-esto-es-un-negocio.php .

Basically they insulted every Milestone customer from Mexico to Argentina, including Brazil. So everyone started complaing at Motorola's facebook page, and twitter (see #motofail ), customer service phone and mail... and we got this: http://www.celularis.com/motorola/motorola-vuelve-a-evalar-la-actualizacion-android-2-2-para-milestone.php (Article date: Aug 26 2010)

A few weeks later, Motorola finally gave in, and we're going to get the 2.2 update: http://www.celularis.com/nokia/actualizacion-android-2-2-para-motorola-milestone-confirmada.php

So it's not like companies "don't give a fuck". They do.

Re:What a great way to die

[hjf]

I don't think so. I can't find an option for it.

But there are other reasons why I don't recommend the Milestone. Bootloader locking. Crappy keyboard (which interacts with Android's own keyboard handler and sends multiple keystrokes). The camera button peels off (it was gold, now it's white. I don't use the camera!)

Re:What a great way to die

[nickmalthus]

Why is supporting what end users want and what developers want mutually exclusive? If power users are attracted to a platform they will inevitably bring along regular users. I can see how artificially restricting the capabilities of a product increases a companies control over the market but I do not see the value for customers. In a free market once one purchases a product it becomes their property to do with as they please. While I love my rooted droid and rave about the device to the others it will be my last Motorola device unless Motorola provides an affordable open device.

Re:What a great way to die

[postbigbang]

You have time to waste on it. I don't. 2.3 or 2.4 would be lovely. I have no reason for it. Nothing compels me because I don't want my phone to time-suck my life. I'm not a phone developer although I'm a reasonable coder.

My phone is a phone, not an entertainment system. I get mail through a web page. I get gmail links. There's a game. Otherwise, like most phones, the screen is too small and it's ugly. The keyboard is for elves or marmots. The sound quality is for people working on printing presses.

Re:What a great way to die

[heckler95]

They're not worried about their relationship with the handful of end-users who brick their phones and jump ship to another handset maker. Their concern is appeasing the carriers, much of whose revenue stream depends on keeping the operating system (and it's many locks and blocks) intact. Here's a perfect example: carriers charge extra for tethering, you're not paying for *more* data, but rather for the *privilege* to use that data in a different way. If Motorola can say to Verizon that their phones can't be rooted, and therefore users can't tether them to another device without Verizon's knowledge (and getting paid for it), Verizon is more likely to carry their phones. They're doing "the right thing" for their business and their shareholders. While this has a negative impact on a small percentage of their customers, it is essentially neutral/transparent to the vast majority of them.

Imagine you're a widget-maker and a very small percentage of your customers (1%) tell you that they won't buy from you any longer if you decide to sell to WalMart. You've got a multi-year multi-million dollar PO from WalMart sitting on your desk that would grow your business significantly. What do you do?

Re:What a great way to die

[karnal]

wqvga and 528mhz processor kills that phone for my $$.

Re:What a great way to die

[geekoid]

What do you mean 'we', kimosobe? Some people want a locked down phone. A locked down phones does have strong advantages.

Re:What a great way to die

[geekoid]

true. OTOH, with a locked device you have no option to know how else it could help you manage your life.

For me, having the added ability to use my phone as a flash drive, drag and drop music onto it from any computer just using the file manager is far more useful.

Funny note:
I was looking at iPhone and while talking to the Apple 'dood' it completely froze. I laughed and laughed. I do know it was a demo, the first patch hadn't been released yet. SO that had nothing to do with me decision to not buy it. Still it's funny.

Re:What a great way to die

[geekoid]

what harm?

Re:What a great way to die

[mcvos]

Yet the Droid (Verizon's version of the Milestone) does not have the encrypted bootloader that the Milestone has. And despite the encrypted bootloader, the Milestone can still be rooted. You tether with it, install kernel modules, even. You just can't update to Android 2.2.

Re:What a great way to die

[slapout]

I rooted my phone (Droid Eris) because Verizon stopped providing updates for it -- if I wanted to upgrade the OS, I had to root it. At some point Motorola is going to drop support for the Droid 2 and people's only option if they want an updated OS will be to install it themselves.

Re:What a great way to die

[angelasmark]

Hundreds of thousands may honestly be pushing it. I've worked in customer surveying (not the multiple choice type surveys either) and I assure you there aren't many people complaining about this outside of /. Thats why Motorola is more then happy to say to take your business elsewhere. Its not worth it to them to vs. locking their platform down.

Re:What a great way to die

[geekoid]

"I want of a phone is yet another device to upgrade or configure a kernel for, or worry about malware and viruses. Locked down sounds pretty good to me. "

Why do you think those things are mutually exclusive?

To be clear, I'm not making some 'point' about you making a 'wrong' decision. I'm just curious. Also, what phone do you have to compile the kernel for? 'Open' smart phones are kind of the best of both worlds. You can use it just like a locked device, but if you decide on a feature you do want, you could open it.

Re:What a great way to die

[Verteiron]

And, like all forms of this type of restriction, it was bypassed. It's already possible to run custom ROMs on the DroidX.

Re:What a great way to die

[Sky Cry]

Do you really want to have to run to an AC outlet as soon as the plane lands so you can make a call just because you wanted to watch two movies on a cross-country flight?

Well, if you're willing to buy, charge and carry around an extra phone, why not just do the same for an extra battery for your smartphone? It's both smaller and cheaper.

Re:What a great way to die

[ShakaUVM]

>>In other words, a manufacturer is selling a product that does exactly what the vast majority of it's customers want.

Everyone I know with a Droid X or Droid 2 (N = 4, myself included) hates the preinstalled software. In other words, they don't care about the fact that it's locked down so much as the fact that Motorola can put apps on it that the user cannot disable or delete. This pisses everyone off, especially when it's essentially advertising (Blockbuster) constantly running (Skype) or takes up a fair bit of memory (Need for Speed).

They also spam your applications list with these uninstallable apps, which is quite annoying.

I downloaded root software for my Droid X solely to be able to uninstall these applications. I have no other compelling reason to root my phone, as it otherwise does what I want.

Re:What a great way to die

[TheRealGrogan]

No, that wasn't the one I had tried but had I known about it I would have tried it (They use Windows but I could have set it up on one of my rigs).

What I tried was a solution I got from a phone enthusiast forum. All I knew was that we sure as Hell weren't paying $90 for functionality that should have been a given. It wasn't even that important, it was more like a "it would be nice if we could do that". The folks weren't really in to taking pictures anyway.

Anyway... at the time (~ 2 years ago) other phones you just plugged in and they were detected as USB storage. Sorry, but we disliked those motorola phones. (Nothing to do with the quality of the hardware, they didn't fail or anything). This is likely the carrier's fault, but the folks complained about shitty signal/coverage with those phones too.

Very happy with the Blackberries now. (I don't really like any such gadgets personally, but I haven't had any trouble making my parents happy with them and they don't pester me. Mom is doing all kinds of stuff she never thought about doing with a phone)

My only exposure to Android has been an ArchOS tablet and it seemed OK. I was easily able to poke my way around knowing nothing about it.

My netbook is about as gadgety as I get. I don't have a cell phone personally, I don't like them because I don't want one more way for people to annoy me. I've debated getting one and only using it for road side emergencies and the like, but I've not had one of those (I mostly just drive locally and it wouldn't be hard to get to a phone if I did)

Re:What a great way to die

[eggnoglatte]

If you can't install software then you can't install malware.

Can you say "Apple Appstore"?

Installing an app from the Apple app store counts as installing software. As far as I am concerned, they should burn the OS into ROM, and have an MMU that physically prevents code execution outside that memory region. If you really want apps, they can run in a Java sandbox, rather than native assembly code, which has access to all the hardware.

The same can be expected from these Motorola locked down phones. Eventually, the malware authors will get hold of the signing keys, or find and exploit to install there code without these keys, and there goes the security.

Let's assume I actually install apps written in native assembly, which I don't. Even then, it is unlikely that the phone would get cracked within its normal lifetime (3 year contract). After all, there are many phones from many vendors, they would require different binaries, presumably signed with different keys. It is not like the game console market, where there are only 2 or 3 high-value targets for a crack.

Re:What a great way to die

[uglyduckling]

Really, there were no Android devices on the market last summer that had anything like the spec of the iPhone 4 for half the cost. With a contract maybe, but that's not a proper comparison.

Re:What a great way to die

[sogon]

People don't know what they want except sex and money. Ask 50 people you'll get 50 answers. People don't really know what they want until they see it. Whether that is because the thing is cool or whatever. Look at the music industry, they have been pumping out that pop shit for decades and people still buy it. Sorry to be the one to break this to you but, PEOPLE ARE STUPID.

Re:What a great way to die

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

But installing whatever software you want on a device that you own, and that everybody is telling you that you bought (not rented or licensed it) is something that nobody should resign to, no matter if you want to use that right or not.

You barely OWN anything in the USA anymore.

With the DMCA for computers, media, etc.

You don't even OWN a house, even if there is no mortgage on it, you still have CC&R's if you have an HOA, and if you don't the county codes are often almost as restrictive (look at California), and you pay "taxes" on the same property over and over (more like rent). The IRS only taxes you once on your money, btw (and they allow deducting state/city taxes so you don't get multiply taxed).

Re:What a great way to die

[s73v3r]

Some company's going to do the right thing and that's the phone you buy

Possibly. There's no guarantee that this will happen. The companies will do what's profitable to them. It isn't clear if making an open device for geeks is profitable yet.

There is power in being a consumer, and it's astounding that people have been so diddled by advertisement and marketing voodoo that they won't even consider using that power to get what they want.

There's only power in it if you are part of the target market. If you aren't, then the companies really don't care.

Re:What a great way to die

[s73v3r]

They'd only be smiling if they could actually get their smartphones in the US Carrier's stores.

Re:What a great way to die

[Velex]

It's always funny how upset the free market worshiping glibertarians here get when companies pull this shit.

The owner of a Dairy Queen once called the cops on me because I was disappointed about the quality of his product. That made me upset.

Now here's the real trick: I don't go to Dairy Queen anymore, but I still get ice cream. Life goes on. Someone else gets my money instead. Would I like to see Dairy Queen go out of business or at least give me some free food to keep me as a customer? Sure, but it's not going to happen.

That's the beauty of the free market. I can visit any number of other places to get my ice cream, and if Dairy Queen doesn't need my money, I don't have to give it to them. Problem solved.

(I actually do have a Motorola phone, not a droid, but I will never buy Motorola again for other problems with the phone.)

Re:What a great way to die

[s73v3r]

Yeah, you just lost any and all credibility with that post. You went from trying to be a consumer advocate to a tinfoil hat wearing wacko.

Re:What a great way to die

[s73v3r]

PopeRatzo said that every one of your tastes is the product of marketing. As in, you had no choice, you were just a sponge.

Re:What a great way to die

[s73v3r]

Point one out. And remember, he bought it outright, off contract. Find an Android device with comparable specs, available contract free, for half the money.

Re:What a great way to die

[josepha48]

Yes and then say good bye :)

I think the idea of locking it down would work if they would give people the upgrades on the phones to the latest and allow people to uninstall things like amazon store or some of the other crapware that they install on those phones.

Sorry, I'm just a little peaved at them as I bought one of their cliq xt's with the understanding that it would be upgraded in June 2010 and still no upgrade. Soon I think I will be able to get away from this phone and say bye bye to motorhola.

Re:What a great way to die

[PopeRatzo]

The companies will do what's profitable to them.

So it's up to us as consumers and as opinion-drivers (yes, we Slashdot readers are) to make doing the right thing profitable and to make doing the wrong thing unprofitable.

If someone asks me which smart phone to buy, I give them all the reasons why I don't think they should buy any smart phone right now.

There's only power in it if you are part of the target market. If you aren't, then the companies really don't care.

But our opinions as tech-heads actually have great influence over the target market. That's why there's so much money spent marketing these products to us.

It's also why you see so many obviously-mistaken opinions even among us. You have people here who believe there is some technical reason why more open operating systems on smart phones means automatically that they won't be secure, reinforcing the notion that it's "reasonable" for AT&T to not want unsanctioned software running on their devices. We see people around here saying that there are "technical reasons" for why having a more open operating system necessarily means the "end-user experience" won't be as slick as that of a phone behind a walled garden. There are many other market-driven fallacies that have been seeded into the tech-head community which serve to reinforce what the companies want the end-users to ultimately swallow.

Just look how far the Apple fanboys among us have set back the development of openness in the smart phone market. These fans are created by marketing which targets the "non-target" market. Apple realizes that if they can create fanboys, they act as force multipliers for their ultimate marketing strategy.

Many of the things we think of as absolutes, like the notion that the "design" of Apple products is "more beautiful" than other products, is strictly the result of marketing. Yes, our very concepts of beauty are driven by ad-men. Why glass and aluminum is preferred to nubby rubber or why rounded edges are preferred to angles or why razor-thin is preferred to thicker and stubbier. These are not things that occur naturally, they are created by marketing.

Think of the design of an iPhone or iPad. The iPad requires a protective case. This in itself is bad design. If it was designed properly, there would be no need for users to wrap it in something else to keep it from getting scratched or dinged. Yet, we hear gushing reviewers talk about the amazing design of the iPad.

Re:What a great way to die

[s73v3r]

For example, how often do you see the assumption here that having a more open platform automatically means it's going to be a less slick user experience?

I think that stems from the fact that most people who are interested in things being open, are much, much less concerned with the UI. They don't really care about things being easy to use, as long as they can do what they want with it.

Re:What a great way to die

[PopeRatzo]

Previously this was not possible on any large scale, now days we cannot underestimate the power of viral marketing, see the United Breaks Guitars song

Unless we get net neutrality laws in place, that kind of consumer-driven viral messaging will be a thing of the past.

Re:What a great way to die

[PopeRatzo]

People don't know what they want except sex and money.

That's why each and every one of us is susceptible to marketing.

Re:What a great way to die

[s73v3r]

The dispute is that they are charging the carriers for updates to Android 2.2 on their phones.

Re:What a great way to die

[aliquis]

These are not the droids you're looking for!

Re:What a great way to die

[s73v3r]

No, shut up with your retarded "Wake up, Sheeple!" rants.

Re:What a great way to die

[aliquis]

It is open.

Motorola can do whatever they want. Almost.

Suck to be the consumer though.

If only the openness was enforced =P

GPL 3 extreme please? :)

Re:What a great way to die

[s73v3r]

You may have root access, but you can't put any of the fantastic community builds of Android on there. CyanogenMod on the Droid 2? Never gonna happen.

And how long is Moto going to take to upgrade to Android 2.3? 2.4? You'll be lucky if you get more than one upgrade cycle... and forget upgrading yourself - that bootloader won't let you.

Not everyone cares about these things. You have to accept that some people have different priorities than you. And in a year or so, he may have moved on to another phone.

Re:What a great way to die

[Anonymous Coward]

Since the vast majority of the smart phone crowd just don't care, why did Motorola spent so much time to make sure they have a technology to prevent it? I mean, if peoples don't care, there is no reason to make sure they can't. And for the rest of us, what's the problem?

Making things that can't be broken means fewer support calls from bozos who screwed around and bricked their phone.

Re:What a great way to die

[s73v3r]

You talk a lot about rights. But you forget, one of the rights he has, is the right not to exercise or care about those rights.

Re:What a great way to die

[s73v3r]

If someone asks me which smart phone to buy, I give them all the reasons why I don't think they should buy any smart phone right now.

And you've not helped them out at all, so they're going to go to either another geek who will help them out, or just go to the store and ask them.

It's also why you see so many obviously-mistaken opinions even among us.

Yeah, I didn't need to read past this. Just because someone has a different opinion, doesn't mean its "mistaken."

And your whole rant about marketing is equally as stupid. People have found things like these visually appealing since before you were born. Since long before marketing was commonplace. Dismissing all appeal of visual design to a few Madison Avenue suits is completely shitting all over the work that designers have done throughout history.

Re:What a great way to die

[postbigbang]

Sadly, among other things, the Internet and forums have become the big crying rag for many things you weren't supposed to do, gone wrong, as you cite. They'll aim the pistol between metatarsil #1 and 2, and pull the trigger, then complain about subsequent need for crutches. So it goes.

Re:What a great way to die

[aliquis]

Are we really so weak that we absolutely cannot do without a smart phone until manufacturers actually start giving us what we want? I mean, we're the goddamn customers. Vote with your feet.

Already done.

My phones:
* Ericsson GH688, 500-800 sek used, back when Ericsson was king.
* Ericsson T28s, 1 sek + 24 month @ 149 sek subscription. Most beautiful phone I've ever had. Quality was shitty though.
* Siemens C55, bought with one year subscription. Don't know if the phone was for free, probably was. Can't say it was much better. Had JAVA but I didn't used it. Much longer battery life, killed by water from food in a plastic container.
* Sony-Ericsson z300i, 250 sek used. Best phone I have. Reliable and would probably take a three story fall right into stone and survive with no issues whatsoever. Replaceable shell which would take the impact. (The T28s is aluminum frame/backplate so pretty solid to .. GH688 got metal frame as well.) I've thrown it with full force over three rooms into my bed back plate, made a dent in the wood but nothing happened with the phone.
* Motorola w220, 350 sek with pre-paid card. Don't ask me why. Because I could get a phone for cheap? Similar battery life to the z300i but it's hard to say it's better. Worse battery life, probably worse sound quality, shitty tones. Got FM-radio but requires hands-free.

So there you go =P

After the T28s with two years subscription I was waiting for something cool to come up, nothing did. Or well, there was the Ericsson T66i which was amazing but I didn't got it back then. Small buttons and not much of an improvement over my T28s. Better than the three phones following it though ;D

Was waiting for an Android phone which was actually open and with all future upgrades because I don't see the need to replace the hardware all the freaking time. But Google didn't sold the Nexus one here so. The Nexus S would solve that but whatever. Would get an HTC phone for Android I guess because their track record is the best.

Currently own Nokia stock though for some stupid reason so ATM I would obviously want to help them out ;D. The N900 is a little too old even though the screen and such still make it top among the crop. It can also run the early versions of MeeGo (plus someone ported Android to it, don't know if everything work?) The N8 obviously comes with Symbian^3, I would had preferred if they had given an offer to upgrade it to MeeGo once released. Worse resolution than the N900 and cost more but it got HDMI output, supports UMS for harddrives, USB memory sticks and what not, can play HD video for 6 hours and got "Big screen" software where you use the phone as a remote for the video/music content on screen. It also supports USB OGT so you can hook up an USB HUB with USB keyboard and mouse and then the HDMI to a screen and you get your own very portable desktop computer. Probably quite cool and convenient for say GPG keys with e-mail, Irssi if someone ported it and what not =P

But use QT.

Preferably I would get something like "N9" with N900 resolution or better, E7 keyboard and which ran MeeGo with complete openness and user replaceable firmware.

Pretty please? =P

N900 - http://smartmobile.nu/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/nokia-n900.jpg
N8 - http://blog.phoneslimited.co.uk/files/2010/05/n8-colours-pl1.jpg
E7 -

Re:What a great way to die

[a_nonamiss]

As an academic exercise, go ahead and get onto their website and try to buy one. I'll wait...

Are you back? Now, I haven't even begun to ask/answer the question of which U.S. carriers will support this phone, if any. I'll get to that once I could possibly buy one.

Re:What a great way to die

[PopeRatzo]

I mod my phone though

Yes, the galaxy is an attractive device.

If it wasn't for the fact that I'm locked into a goddamn contract, I'd switch. That's on me, though.

Re:What a great way to die

[PopeRatzo]

The beauty of the free market compared to democracy is that you don't need to be in the majority to get what you want.

The weakness of the mythical "free market" is that you cannot get what you want at any price.

Re:What a great way to die

[PopeRatzo]

A locked down phones does have strong advantages.

That you believe that shows the power of level 2 marketing.

Re:What a great way to die

[PopeRatzo]

I think that stems from the fact that most people who are interested in things being open, are much, much less concerned with the UI.

But my point is that "openness" has nothing to do with the quality of the UI. Yet, you'll hear that idea advanced here all the time, as if there was a negative correlation between openness and interface quality.

Re:What a great way to die

[gmack]

Thankfully I got mine before they sold out but knowing them the next phone will be GSM only.

Re:What a great way to die

[zeroshade]

Not that I want the government to swoop in and intervene, because I don't, but it's funny how you never notice the free market people pimping out situations where customers complaining about their perceived problems actually erects meaningful change instead of the company just ignoring the vocal minority....

Re:What a great way to die

[bemymonkey]

Just saying, there are far more reasons to root Android devices than just SuperUser access...

Re:What a great way to die

[h4rr4r]

Looks neat but way under-specced. My droid beats that thing.

Re:What a great way to die

[sveinungkv]

The weakness of the mythical "free market" is that you cannot get what you want at any price.

That's a "weakness" of life in general, not just the free market.

Re:What a great way to die

[s73v3r]

It does have a correlation in that, those that are concerned with openness are usually less concerned with UI. That's not what matters to them, and to the people that make open software. And usually, the programmers who build open software, do not have a good sense of design aesthetic. Not really their fault, as they care less about UI/UX than a regular user. People who care about design aesthetic are usually willing to pay more for something that is pleasing to the eye as well as functional.

Re:What a great way to die

[ChunderDownunder]

agreed but it was spec'd in 2009 and a reasonable effort at the price for a first offering. A new model is in the works.

Re:What a great way to die

[AK Marc]

That's simply impossible, in that I've tried things I've never seen any marketing for (features, and products).

That you are so much a moronic weak minded fool that you are incapable of forming a coherent thought without having it fed to you doesn't mean the rest of us are the same.

Re:What a great way to die

[KClaisse]

heh yeah I read this article and thought, damn im sure glad I got my Droid 2 before they started doing this. I sure as hell didnt have any trouble rooting my Droid 2. I didnt even read anything in the rooting instructions that warned there was an efuse. Guess its not a big deal for people who design the root tools anyway. They just work around Motorola's crap. :/

Re:What a great way to die

[KClaisse]

Meant: Read the headline. Missed it in the preview.

Re:What a great way to die

[dudpixel]

ah, must be a US-only thing. I think we have the reverse situation here in Australia where the carriers wipe their hands of the update and point customers to samsung instead.

actually I think that is the "right way" to do it, but it may take a while for some carriers to agree.

Re:What a great way to die

[Deliveranc3]

My concern with this whole locked down phone thing is that it seems prone to vandalism from the company itself. I'd much rather update my phone when I need a feature then fear losing features from manufacturer updates.

The next generation of phone technology seems to be VOIP, but if you go with these companies you're going to continue to find that there are problems or the apps are removed from the store or whatever.

By buying into a closed ecosystem we're reverting to the feature creep, poor code quality, costly proprietary codecs, slow manufacturer updates and all the other hurdles that we're still overcoming pulling our PCs out of the clutches of business.

It's not that it hurts you per se, it's that it prevents US from getting the things we know WORK.

Re:What a great way to die

[Vastad]

Wait what? Even if it is locked-down, you can still install software. They are called "Apps". You get them from a place called "Android Market" or "The iPhone AppStore" or even "Ovi".

I don't care how Guantanamo-Bay-Lock-Down your cellphone is, you can still download 'Intifada Birds 2012' by 'MOSSADSUX-NET Free Software' that promises free pictures of boobs and get a virus that kills your centrifuges.

Surely you mean firmware? And the roms and other output from XDA Developers and CyanogenMod is generally by enthusiasts and developers....not East European digital mafia.

Wait...are you trolling? I really can't tell anymore.

Re:What a great way to die

[Jaxoreth]

I had already ordered a Droid X when I learned about the anti-hacking measures. So I returned it without activating it, waited a couple months, and bought a no-contract Nexus S.

Re:What a great way to die

[pak9rabid]

I don't have a cell phone personally, I don't like them because I don't want one more way for people to annoy me.

You haven't worked in the tech support industry by chance, have you? ;)

Re:What a great way to die

[I8TheWorm]

Some company's going to do the right thing

I admire your faith in humanity.

I wouldn't think that a company would do it for humanity's sake. Rather, because there's profit to be made.

p.s I watch movies on my phone. I also carry a spare battery.

Re:What a great way to die

[I8TheWorm]

That's a little odd, and a bit of a misrepresentation. If people could get what they wanted at any price, everything would be free.

The free market says the market determines the price based on availability and consumer demand.

Re:What a great way to die

[Ledgem]

That's an interesting way of looking at it, but I don't think it's a matter of the company feeling that it's "beneath them." It likely has to do with marketing. They want you to associate the service with them, specifically, so that you'll stay with them and buy more things from them. Unlike electric and water companies, these companies do face competition (at least, in certain regions). Competing on price alone can not only be difficult, but it becomes fickle - if these companies are just dumb gateways to the internet, what's to prevent customers from switching over to another service that becomes cheaper? More importantly, the company that remains silent and stays out of their customer's way also stays out of their customer's mind. You and I may appreciate that (and wouldn't forget the company), but it seems like many people need something loud, flashy, obnoxious, and in-their-face to register it at all.

That's advice for the work force, as well...

Re:What a great way to die

[PopeRatzo]

The free market says

Stop right there. There is no such thing as a "free market". Never has been such a thing. Prices have never been less linked to availability and consumer demand.

Re:What a great way to die

[I8TheWorm]

Free markets exist all over the place, and have for a very long time.

Take a look at the auto industry. You have quite a few choices between brands, and deeper than that, models within brands.

You can choose any or none of them. And the auto manufacturers ply very hard for your purchase. Price competition, marketing, innovation, etc...

The beauty of that particular market is how US makers lost the edge to eastern Asian makers in quality, and since the 80s have vastly improved their quality. They understood that in a free market they had to compete or perish.

An even better example of free markets would be your local farmer's market. They compete with each other for your business based on price and quality. Also, a low availability drives price up if there's demand for the product.

Just look around. Free market examples are everywhere.

Re:What a great way to die

[PopeRatzo]

Take a look at the auto industry. You have quite a few choices between brands

If you believe "free market" just means having choices, then I think you've got some homework to do before we can continue this discussion.

Re:What a great way to die

[I8TheWorm]

And if you believe all I pointed out was choices, you have some reading comprehension to learn before we can continue this discussion.

Is that a challenge?

[intellitech]

Don't test the masses, especially the ones that know what they're doing.

Re:Is that a challenge?

[Seumas]

The ones who know what they're doing aren't the masses. They're the ignorable minority.

Re:Is that a challenge?

[intellitech]

The /. masses, though..

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:Is that a challenge?

[rebot777]

No mod points so I thought I'd just give a thumbs up! I'm signing up.

Re:Is that a challenge?

[dudpixel]

and their statement pretends that this lockdown is the feature that is bringing people to their phones ?!

I challenge Motorola, if they want to stand by their claims, ask your customers the following:

Did e-fuse contribute to you buying this phone?
A: yes
B: no, I bought it despite e-fuse.
C: didnt care either way.
D: what is this "e-fuse" you speak of?

I'd expect a lot of D's and maybe C's, and a number of B's as well. And there will be 1 person who ticked A (there always is).

Re:Is that a challenge?

[Desler]

Because the ./ masses are the vast majority of their customers? Yeah right...

Re:Is that a challenge?

[teh31337one]

The locked bootloader helps them control what version of android you're using. You're stuck with however much support Motorola provide. If they decide that their shiny new Atrix will only be updated to Gingerbread, and Honeycomb, not Ice Cream, you can't do anything about it. If you want the newer features it provides, you have to upgrade.

The Geeks/hackers are a minority. Motorola probably see loosing their support an acceptable loss. Taking the example of Atrix again. It's a powerful device, with 1GB RAM. It'll be ahead of the curve for a while, and should be able to run versions J/K/L of android as well as Gingerbread/Honeycomb. But how can they then convince someone to upgrade from Atrix to Atrix 4G or w/e?

Locking the bootloader probably also reduce the number of bricked devices they see, lowering the repair costs.

Re:Is that a challenge?

[teh31337one]

Urgh. Hit submit instead of Continue Editing. I repeat myself a bit, but it seems coherent enough.

Re:Is that a challenge?

[node 3]

Exactly.

Re:Is that a challenge?

[phorm]

I have a hacked up 2.2 on my milestone right now. It was a real bitch to get it installed, since motorola hasn't actually released the update for my region.

I had already decided quite awhile back that I wouldn't be buying any more motorola phones, and if possible no more motorola products.

Fuck them and their shitty lockdown.

Re:Is that a challenge?

[mug funky]

i get quite annoyed at the constant arrogance and elitism on /.

sorry to burst your bubble - this isn't an elite site, and the "99% of the masses" argument is pure shit that i hear everywhere all the time, in many different disciplines.

whenever someone asks me to recommend them a TV, the conversation will lead to "nobody would ever notice that", but yet we're talking about it and a choice about what to buy is being made based on it.

what do the masses do when they need advice? they ask that nerd friend of theirs. if the nerd has communication skills slightly above the lower end of the Autism Spectrum, the masses will even get a useful answer.

be honest, how many times have you heard a friend say something to the effect of "i'm looking for a smartphone but i don't want an iPhone... what should i get?".

consider each time someone asks that as a lost sale for Motorola...

i don't think it'll kill their business, but their overall crap products certainly are having an effect, and political issues such as this (yes! political! not technical and therefore outside the grasp of the average simian on the street!) will certainly make a large dent in the long run.

Re:Is that a challenge?

[mea_culpa]

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

Re:Is that a challenge?

[teh31337one]

Mod parent up.

Thanks for the correct link, I saw the project recently, and had actually seen in from the page you linked. I thought I had the correct one, and assumed the server was down or something.

Re:Is that a challenge?

[Seumas]

Yeah, you're totally right. The masses really truly care about these things. I mean, just look at the backlash when Sony removed "other OS" support. Or the uproar from the masses that don't know any better than to buy $80 Monster Cable products. Or the masses that will buy a television because because it says "LED" and they aren't aware that a LED light source is not the same as an LED display panel. Or the masses who get upsold on needless crap every time the go out to purchase something at an electronic store.

The overwhelming majority of consumers do not know any better and those are the people companies care about. They don't care about the small percentage of trouble-making knowledgeable people who want to tweak things, have higher expectations, use more resources, and so on.

The masses don't even know what the fuck a "custom rom" is, much less want to use one.

Therefore, they don't give a damn about "the ones who know what they're doing". They want those masses who don't care about such things. If the masses gave a damn, they wouldn't be making the statement that people who want that sort of thing should find another company to do business with. They're making the statement precisely because what I said is true. The majority of people don't know what they're doing -- about most things. Especially when it comes to technology. They just want stuff and they want it to work and their expectations are minimal.

Nobody says they have to care any more than that, either. The point is that they don't and because the vast masses do not, companies feel no need to cater to or tolerate the small percentage of knowledgeable people. Those people are a nuisance to their business.

Re:Is that a challenge?

[Opportunist]

Quite the opposite, we're very uninteresting as customers.

Do we buy ringtones? No, we know how to make our own (provided we care about them altogether).

Do we buy background pics? No, same applies.

Do we buy applications? Rarely. More often than not, we'd know a free alternative.

We're not really the dream customer of someone trying to peddle phone crap.

Re:Is that a challenge?

[westlake]

sorry to burst your bubble - this isn't an elite site

Of course it is.

No one but an elitist uses language like this:

political issues such as this (yes! political! not technical and therefore outside the grasp of the average simian on the street!) will certainly make a large dent in the long run...
   

Re:Is that a challenge?

[Draek]

Funny, but I've always considered that attitude rather arrogant for the "other" side, so to say. Essentially, a not-so-hostile way of saying "nyuk nyuk, you're still a dirty, smelling geek and as such unfit to tell us, normal people what to do, because we matter and you don't".

I agree with the rest of your comment, though.

Re:Is that a challenge?

[thegarbz]

$5.8bn in sales Q3 of 2010 apparently driven by an increase in smartphone sales would say otherwise. You're right, people would ask their nerdy friends, but the result is often "don't care" because people don't ONLY ask their nerdy friends. You get a group of 4 close friends 3 of them have iPhones, is the 4th going to care what you think of them? And sorry but a lot of people will simply shop based on a TV add too. You may be surprised to realise just how many people DON'T ask you for advice, and instead will talk to a salesman at a shop.

Re:Is that a challenge?

[minorproblem]

I would say we are quite good for customer referrals though.

Re:Is that a challenge?

[backwardMechanic]

I agree with all your points, but who writes those applications? It's certainly not moto.

Re:Is that a challenge?

[kangsterizer]

it's usually because they don't have a nerdy friend.

Re:Is that a challenge?

[teh31337one]

I haven't signed up for the brute force attempt, and it most likely won't work. People aren't doing it to make the products of a company better, they're doing it to unlock the full potential of their hardware.

Re:Is that a challenge?

[bemenaker]

The Droid X was locked down this way, and guess what, it's rooted. There's numerous ROM's for it. Just means it will take a couple of months from release before it's running root is all.

Re:Is that a challenge?

[Opportunist]

No. Sorry, but no. If the music and movie industry didn't drop the ball badly on this one, file sharing would not be a problem AT ALL.

What got file sharing so big? The price? Please, these people buy ringtones for 5 bucks. They wouldn't care about 10 bucks a music CD or 20 for a movie. And they didn't for the longest time.

What made filesharing big is availability and convenience. I.e. what we get NOW from the studios. Why did most people start to reach for torrents?

1. Their favorite new hype song wasn't for sale for another 6+ weeks 'cause the studios still clinged to their dated "hype it, and when the hype reaches the peak, start selling it" model. People don't like to wait, so they turned to torrents.

2. It's more convenient to click a button than to run to the store. iTunes et al now offer this, but too late to stop torrents from becoming popular.

3. Copy protection that caused people to be unable to use what they bought also aided in the whole deal.

All that does not apply here. What is advertised is instantly available, all the current music is available as a ringtone, it's available at the click of a button and since it's pretty much dictated what kind of hardware you have, the copy protections are also quite compatible. The main reasons for filesharing to grow large, availability and convenience, are no problem here. Quite the opposite, it's more convenient to simply click and add it to your phone bill than to download it, attach your phone to your computer and transfer it.

Re:Is that a challenge?

[Opportunist]

Not in my experience. Aside of your friends, there are thousands of users out there who rely only on one thing: The salesperson at the store where they'll get their next phone contract. And they will sell whatever their store has stocked.

Re:Is that a challenge?

[teh31337one]

Any 2.3 ROMs? Any of those "ROMs" using an unofficial base? No.

Re:Is that a challenge?

[Kenshin]

"The masses" and "know what they're doing" are two phrases I would be very careful about putting together.

Re:Is that a challenge?

[bobetov]

I don't buy crap from phone companies, but I advise dozens of people on what phone to buy, and THEY buy crap. Thought leaders often care about issues the herd doesn't. Doesn't mean you can ignore those issues if you want positive word-of-mouth.

Re:Is that a challenge?

[izomiac]

That's only about equivalent to an 80-bit symmetric key. Back in 2003, RSA itself predicted that RSA1024 would only hold until approximately 2006 - 2010, though we're a bit behind that as the largest key thus factored (by civilians) is RSA768.

There are also other attacks, such as exploiting the probabilistic primality tests used in key generation, and hash collisions with the MD5 or SHA1 hashes used for key signing on OMAP hardware.

Re:Is that a challenge?

[mug funky]

way to understand sarcasm. i think my point is proved.

Re:Is that a challenge?

[dudpixel]

well, for the group that are forced to buy a new phone, this may well make them reconsider buying another motorola phone and instead look elsewhere.

the geeks/hackers would probably research the phone first and steer clear of it in the first place...if not - its a lesson learned and they will not buy from motorola again.

so really the only ones that will continue to buy motorola are the ones who didn't care about software updates anyway, hence my reasoning for saying that their logic is flawed if they think e-fuse is "working" for them.

The public will treat it the same as DRM, and eventually the public will learn to only choose "unlockable" phones, or knowingly give up that "right".

Re:Is that a challenge?

[Deliveranc3]

If Slashdot is too low brow they can limit mod points, force more meta-moderating, etc. It is a brilliant system.

Dump your Motorola stocks

[Ariastis]

A company who tells its clients to go buy from someone else is usually on the way out...

Re:Dump your Motorola stocks

[Bogtha]

Apple have this exact attitude and they just posted a record revenue of $26bn for this quarter, beating Wall St estimates by $2bn. Looking at their iPhone sales alone, they are the largest mobile phone vendor in the world by revenue. They have $60bn in cash reserves and no debt.

All other things being equal, sure, more customers = more profit. But all other things are rarely equal, so summing an entire company's future up into one single factor is idiotic.

Re:Dump your Motorola stocks

[aliquis]

So what you are saying is that a few bad Apples doesn't necessary stop you from making Apple pie?

Re:Dump your Motorola stocks

[vikstar]

Apple has the opposite attitude. They don't say "buy elsewhere" they say "by our stuff instead because ..." and then continue with 20% truth.
Motorola's mistake is that they're telling people to "buy elsewhere" instead of just lying to everyone like Apple does.

Re:Dump your Motorola stocks

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be trivial for Apple to do so much more. For example:

1: AT&T/Verizon intercept network to Cydia sites other than Web traffic, ban that IMEI/ESN from their network, then ban all Apple IDs associated wih the device. Customers can try to sue, but this can be done after a simple EULA change of "unauthorized/tampered with devices can be tossed off the network at any time". Valve does this with Valve Anti-Cheat, and you see only some people wailing on their boards about their account getting smacked down.

2: State that for JB-ing to be done, bypassing of Apple's app antipiracy mechanism has to be accomplished. Then go sack the Dev Team for DMCA violations.

3: Have another baseband-like chip that functions as an integrity checker and bricks the iPhone until it is taken in if it notices an app or code that isn't in the manifest list running as root or outside a jail.

4: Change the term that devices are leased, not sold. This way, the JB exemption to the DMCA does not matter.

Re:Dump your Motorola stocks

[Daniel Phillips]

Apple have this exact attitude and they just posted a record revenue of $26bn for this quarter, beating Wall St estimates by $2bn.

And despite that AAPL is off 2% today. One word: Android. You could also say it is about Steve booking out sick but the subtext is obviously "how is Cook going to handle Android?"

Re:Dump your Motorola stocks

[fredmosby]

Do you have examples of Apple lying about their products?

Re:Dump your Motorola stocks

[vikstar]

I was mainly referring to Jobs' attempts on Android (here's an audio clip). Also, you've probably heard of the iPhone 4 antenna problems. I don't bookmark these stories, so try google.

Re:Dump your Motorola stocks

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple has the opposite attitude. They don't say "buy elsewhere" they say "by our stuff instead because ..." and then continue with 20% truth.
Motorola's mistake is that they're telling people to "buy elsewhere" instead of just lying to everyone like Apple does.

Citation needed for Apple's lying. Thanks.

Re:Dump your Motorola stocks

[fredmosby]

Calling those examples lies is a stretch.

In the first example the TweetDeck CEO said that developing their product for Android wasn't a nightmare. Of coarse Steve Jobs never said it was. He cited a report by TweetDeck about how manny different versions of Android their software was tested on.

I don't think apple ever denied that holding the iPhone 4 a certain way could harm reception.

Re:Dump your Motorola stocks

[thegarbz]

A company with a revenue of $5.4bn and a net profit that has consistently risen since 2006 on the other hand is usually NOT on the way out...

Ever considered that maybe they don't care about a few geeks who want to root their phone? My company spent $800000 with them last year on equipment with huge margins. How much profit did they lose from you not buying a Droid? Multiply that by all of slashdot and they probably still wouldn't care. I mean what are we a pool of 35million people many of whom wouldn't be potential customers even if this story didn't run?

Re:Dump your Motorola stocks

[thegarbz]

I don't think apple ever denied that holding the iPhone 4 a certain way could harm reception.

No they simply lied by saying all other phones have the same problem. The lie is that it's not the same problem. I certainly don't suddenly drop my call when I pick up my phone. My father's iPhone 4 does, and he spends his time upstairs with better reception.

Seriously even fanboi elitism should have a little meat to back up the argument.

Re:Dump your Motorola stocks

[ToasterMonkey]

Apple has the opposite attitude. They don't say "buy elsewhere" they say "by our stuff instead because ..." and then continue with 20% truth.
Motorola's mistake is that they're telling people to "buy elsewhere" instead of just lying to everyone like Apple does.

Oh right, they lie and that is why they are successful. They fooled us into thinking iPhones are built with pixie dust and unicorn horns. But there's no rhetoric coming from the Android camp, no sir.

Re:Dump your Motorola stocks

[Custard Horse]

I believe that Motorola is learning by Apple's mistakes. If you are upfront with the customer and tell them that circumventing the system will brick your device the customers cannot complaint when they do just that.

However, Motorola is no Apple and the product has to be largely bug-free and user-friendly otherwise the customers will be throwing it back and seeking a refund in the absence of any other option. From experience, Motorola products - particularly cell phones - are not bug-free and are never user-friendly.

Re:Dump your Motorola stocks

[ToasterMonkey]

Apple have this exact attitude and they just posted a record revenue of $26bn for this quarter, beating Wall St estimates by $2bn. Looking at their iPhone sales alone, they are the largest mobile phone vendor in the world by revenue. They have $60bn in cash reserves and no debt.

Pffft, take your "reality" and shove it, because that doesn't fit our opinions. It's all RDF maaaannnn, the iPhone is a lie.

Re:Dump your Motorola stocks

[MemoryDragon]

Motorola has been saying the same thing for almost a year, I can remember the same when the first complaints started about the Motorola Milestones bootloader in Europe. This is official company position or at least has been. Needless to say, Motorola is drop dead regarding Android over here for most people. Once screwed with a Milestone never another Motorola phone again, that sums it up!
And those were the hardcore customers constantly buying expensive phones if they are good!

Re:Dump your Motorola stocks

[the bluebrain]

Apple have this exact attitude [...]

Hum ... no. The main difference is that Apple locks down their phones, and then provides timely updates. Motorola locks down their phones, and then provides updates for a minority of devices, for a minority of users (if you're outside the US you basically don't get any), and late.

Re:Dump your Motorola stocks

[MrHanky]

Pretty much continuously:

http://lowendmac.com/hodges/06/0817.html

Re:Dump your Motorola stocks

[Attila Dimedici]

If Steve Jobs does not return to Apple look for Apple's profits to fall off rapidly. Without Steve to tell them that they need the latest Apple product in order to stay cool, Apple fanbois will gradually drift away. As the fanbois drift away, so will many others.

Re:Dump your Motorola stocks

[mcvos]

No, that's really just the cult worrying about the health of its leader. Jobs did more than just the iPhone. Apple shares have been going up continuously since his return. It's not about Cook handling Android, it's about whether Cook is as awesome as Jobs. And that's rather unlikely.

Re:Dump your Motorola stocks

[scot4875]

Seriously? Just about every one of the claims made about features in the "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" ads was, at best, a half-truth, if not an outright lie.

iPad ads are marginally more truthful; they can indeed do most of the things that they claim. I argue that content creation on an iPad is not going to happen though, making that claim pretty much bullshit.

--Jeremy

Re:Dump your Motorola stocks

[fredmosby]

Apple said the iPhone isn't the only phone on the market with signal problems when held a certain way, which is true. They never said all phones have the exact same problem.

"Then buy elsewhere"

[SquirrelDeth]

Fine I will.dumbasses

Motorola Xoom

[teh31337one]

Hopefully, Xoom won't be the same. Andy Rubin said that Google are using a Motorola device to build honeycomb, and it's likely the Xoom. If it is, it won't be e-fused.

Re:Motorola Xoom

[green1]

I second that, I have a Motorola Milestone right now, and because of the valiant efforts of others, and despite Motorola, I have it rooted and love it.

I have been drooling over the Xoom and hope to be able to buy one as soon as possible... but if I can't have root, I may have to try for a different tablet.

I'm sick and tired of companies who think they can tell me what to do with MY hardware after I have purchased it from them, it isn't theirs anymore, I'm ok if they won't support any changes I make, but I'm not ok with them actively blocking them.

Re:Motorola Xoom

[teh31337one]

Root is fine. Root access exploits are a dime a dozen.

A locked bootloader is - for me anyway - unacceptable, hopefully they don't half ass their new policy on it: http://moto.ly/bootload

Re:Motorola Xoom

[h4rr4r]

This has nothing to do with root.

This has to do with loading another OS via the bootloader. Your Milestone is locked down the same way.

The More You Know....

Re:Motorola Xoom

[teh31337one]

Google will probably want to release a tablet version of Nexus, and that is the device that they designed the system on. So, it'll be in conjunction with Motorola.

It'll be the Xoom, unless Motorola release two tablets. The Xoom, and whatever the Nexus tablet is.

Re:Motorola Xoom

[green1]

I'm a practical person, and as much as I love the theory of truly open, I also buy the best tool for the job. If I can get root, I'll likely buy it, even if I can't install something other than Android. If I can't have root though, they can't have my money. (and they tried that on the Milestone, but people managed to get around it)

Re:Motorola Xoom

[teh31337one]

Root is not the issue. A locked bootloader is. With a locked bootloader, you're stuck with whatever version of android Motorola leave you with. If they decide that Atrix will only be updated to Gingerbread, and not Honeycomb/Icecream, you can't do anything about it. Unless someone cracks their 1024 bit RSA key... (very very very unlikely. Think billions of years of computation time.)

Re:Motorola Xoom

[teh31337one]

If and when Google release a Nexus Tablet(or w/e) it'll be made by Motorola, because Google have partnered with them to develop Honeycomb using their hardware. Droid OG didn't have a locked bootloader, and was used by Google too. Xoom may be the same. If it's not, we'll have another Moto Tab manufactured by Motorola, marketed/released by Google.

Second, what part of "we're not abandoning a strategy that works" was not clear?

They're not abandoning it for their phones. Doesn't have to apply to Xoom too.

Re:Motorola Xoom

[russotto]

Unless someone cracks their 1024 bit RSA key... (very very very unlikely. Think billions of years of computation time.)

How much rubber hose time? Can we put up a collection to hire the good folks at hired-goons.com? (oh, who am I kidding, I have a Nexus S...)

Re:Motorola Xoom

[teh31337one]

Meh, HTC Magic (G1 without keyboard) got an official 2.2.1 update. o_0

If honeycomb launches on a moto tab, (probably will) I'll consider buying one motorola android product - the honeycomb tab. If it's similar to Droid OG, Nexus One, or Nexus S it'll have a decent amount of dev support.

Re:Motorola Xoom

[Daniel Phillips]

The backlash against a locked down Android tablet will be much stronger than a locked down phone because if it looks like a computer people will expect it to act like a computer with all the freedoms that entails, not like a phone. The target market is not Apple customers, who are highly unlikely to give up their brand loyalty, but those who otherwise would buy a netbook or laptop.

Re:Motorola Xoom

[teh31337one]

I can still see them locking it down. Locking it down allows them to control what version of android it has, and when their support for a product ends.

Re:Motorola Xoom

[Daniel Phillips]

I can still see them locking it down

In that case I can see it falling behind somebody else's tablet with the exact same specifications except for not being locked down. Some history: IBM originally attempted to keep the PC proprietary by copyrighting the bios and waving lawyers at anyone who would dare to use the same bios in a clone. then Compaq came along with a reverse engineered bios provided by Phoenix and after a few years was outselling IBM's PC (the beginning of Wintel really, but that's another story). I don't see a whole lot of difference between that and the current situation. The world in prefers open over proprietary when it has a choice, which it clearly does in this case.

(Later IBM tried to take the PC private again with its new, improved and proprietary PS/2 bus, and failed again.)

Great!

[fotbr]

Let 'em fail. It wasn't that long ago that motorola could barely GIVE their phones away.

Dumbfounded...... Can anyone explain?

[Proudrooster]

Why would Motorolla do this? Are they experiencing warranty returns on bricked phones? Are carriers pressuring them not to allow unlocks? What is the driver behind this decision? I think it is reasonable to put in a warranty void e-fuse if the phone gets bricked by another O/S, but why do they care?

Re:Dumbfounded...... Can anyone explain?

[LBArrettAnderson]

Carriers who don't want you using more bandwidth than you are paying for.

Re:Dumbfounded...... Can anyone explain?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm gonna go with planned obsolescence. At some point, Motorola will stop supporting a phone. Normally enthusiasts like the folks at the XDA might take over and cook up a custom ROM to keep a device running with the latest android OS drops. With a signed bootloader, your options are either to live with outdated software, or upgrade to a newer model of phone.

Re:Dumbfounded...... Can anyone explain?

[Spykk]

e-fuse doesn't stop you from rooting your phone and installing wireless-tether. e-fuse is there so that Motorola can stop releasing kernel updates when the droid 3 comes out so that you are forced to buy a new phone if you want the latest version of android.

Re:Dumbfounded...... Can anyone explain?

[CharlyFoxtrot]

Probably legal reasons. Maybe if somebody loaded a custom OS on their phone and caused mayhem on a cellular network in some way they could be held liable because they didn't take reasonable precautions to prevent it ?

Re:Dumbfounded...... Can anyone explain?

[h4rr4r]

Stop, just shutup. This cannot happen. The OS just talks AT commands to the cellular modem. It can't do any magic bad stuff.

This is FUD you heard, no reason to go spreading it.

Re:Dumbfounded...... Can anyone explain?

[mirix]

My assumption, which may very well be wrong, is that all the software bits are separate from the radio bits, and presumably talk to each other with AT commands or so. I seem to recall that's how a lot of older devices were set up, at least.

Anyone know how it's set up on android rigs?

Re:Dumbfounded...... Can anyone explain?

[h4rr4r]

That is exactly how it works. Android has no functionality to do anything else. My android phone is no different than my linux laptop with a USB cellular modem in this respect.

Re:Dumbfounded...... Can anyone explain?

[CharlyFoxtrot]

Admittedly I don't know a lot about this sort of thing. But couldn't it be possible to spoof a sim or an IMEI number or whatever and perform a denial of service that way ? Also ass-covering by legal departments isn't always rational and well thought out.

Re:Dumbfounded...... Can anyone explain?

[mlts]

What a fair compromise would be is Motorola having a model of phone just for the modder crowd. Hell, charge full price and have it unlocked. Sell it as the hacker's dream toy, similar to a N900 where (assuming it came with decent specs), people can go ape with it, and have it do new and cool things.

It doesn't just have to be aimed at the percent of the buyers who just mod. Aim it at people who are tech savvy and/or creative. If someone buys it and keeps it stock, unrooted, with full MotoBLUR, that's great. If someone else fastboot oem-unlocks it to stick a full Debian distro on it, rock on.

Re:Dumbfounded...... Can anyone explain?

[h4rr4r]

No, it speaks AT commands to the cellular modem. The cellular modem is what is in charge of that stuff and no AT commands would let you do such a thing.

Stop spreading FUD.

Re:Dumbfounded...... Can anyone explain?

[CharlyFoxtrot]

No, it speaks AT commands to the cellular modem. The cellular modem is what is in charge of that stuff and no AT commands would let you do such a thing.

Stop spreading FUD.

OK, thanks for the explanation.

Re:Dumbfounded...... Can anyone explain?

[Kakari]

What h4rr4r is saying above is that the baseband (radio) ROM that is the modem firmware (because yes, phones are still basically PDAs duct-taped to a cell modem, albeit a high-speed one) is not beat on by hackers (at least not the ones in the light).

The PDA's ROM (Android+apps) is what makes up a custom ROM. Could you still spam out lots of SMS messages and cause havoc on a US network by clogging the control channel - probably, but then again you don't need a smartphone for that.

On the flipside, I'd love to see more baseband/radio hacking (antenna and amplifier compatibility be damned) for swapping phones from XXMHz to YYMHz.

Re:Dumbfounded...... Can anyone explain?

[eggnoglatte]

I don't know specifically about the Motorola phones, but in many phones the "modem" is really just an FPGA that can be reprogrammed for different protocols on the fly. If you can change the OS, you can make it upload FPGA code that CAN wreak havoc with the network.

Re:Dumbfounded...... Can anyone explain?

[allanw]

Really? I wouldn't think that'd be a good idea for power consumption reasons.

Re:Dumbfounded...... Can anyone explain?

[eggnoglatte]

Actually, it is good for power consumption. By being programmable, the FPGA can be smaller than an ASIC - since it doesn't have to implement all protocols at the same time, just the ones that are used on the current network.

Re:Dumbfounded...... Can anyone explain?

[MrBandersnatch]

"e-fuse is there so that Motorola can stop releasing kernel updates when the droid 3 comes out so that you are forced to buy a new phone if you want the latest version of android"

They don't need e-fuse for that; they simply either cancel any update plans for the phone or make you wait so long for an update that your contract expires before they deploy it to the phone. I've had this happen with my Milestone and x720 and believe me that these will be the LAST Motorola phones that I buy for myself or my family or allow any friends to buy. While the argument may be that the masses don't care, when looking at phone options there often is very little difference between 1 model and the next, hence a reputation for prompt, frequent and long terms support for a handset IS going to feature in the purchasing decision on a large number of users and Motorola have shot themselves in the foot from that standpoint (i.e. They will not supply updates and e-fuse will prevent (in theory) users from updating their hardware).

e-fuMoto!!

Re:Dumbfounded...... Can anyone explain?

[SharpFang]

Interestingly, I have an ancient Motorola phone with "field engineering options" menu enabled. The menu not only reveals a lot of info you won't get on a normal phone (pings, signal strengths, IDs from separate base stations), it also allows to do some "nasty" stuff like switching the radio on at full power (and back then full power was much more than nowadays) and broadcast noise, jamming any other cellular communication.

Re:Dumbfounded...... Can anyone explain?

[makomk]

Actually, usually it's an ARMv7 processor with dedicated radio hardware running some RTOS, I think. More importantly, the firmware update mechanism pretty much always has vast amounts of security protection to stop you running unauthorised radio firmware.

Re:Dumbfounded...... Can anyone explain?

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

Huh? They own the network so they can know and control how much you use. Sprint lets you know how many K you've used even on an unlimited plan, just by dialing *4.

The power company doesn't have to go into your house to meter your power and turn it off if you don't pay.

Re:Dumbfounded...... Can anyone explain?

[Proudrooster]

Seriously, have you ever tried reprogramming an FPGA and getting it to work properly?

Why U.S. Galaxy S Phones run Android 2.1 Still

[Vandil X]

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=913045

Samsung isn't exactly treating their Android phone customers well either.

Re:Why U.S. Galaxy S Phones run Android 2.1 Still

[teh31337one]

While their froyo rollout in America has been delayed, and far from smooth in Europe, that thread you linked to is complete utter bullshit.

Re:Why U.S. Galaxy S Phones run Android 2.1 Still

[h4rr4r]

So root and install it yourself. This is about locked bootloaders not if they give swift updates.

Re:Why U.S. Galaxy S Phones run Android 2.1 Still

[teh31337one]

Root isn't even needed If you're still on 2.1, you can flash unsigned update.zip files on Galaxy S 2.1 using recovery 2e

Re:Why U.S. Galaxy S Phones run Android 2.1 Still

[exomondo]

Samsung isn't exactly treating their Android phone customers well either.

The fact that it's only the U.S. certainly makes it seem like a carrier issue than a Samsung issue.

Re:Why U.S. Galaxy S Phones run Android 2.1 Still

[wesleyjconnor]

im running a 2.2 mod on my Galaxy S and LOVING it

Re:Why U.S. Galaxy S Phones run Android 2.1 Still

[msmalin]

I have a Captivate (a Galaxy S phone) and the delays on the 2.2/Froyo update have been very frustrating. I heard it was coming in September, then October, then November, then December, then January. The latest I've heard is March now. I gave up and got Cognition 3.02 (Froyo) plugged in on mine. The speed difference between 2.1 and 2.2 is very noticeable.

Re:Why U.S. Galaxy S Phones run Android 2.1 Still

[shellbeach]

Samsung isn't exactly treating their Android phone customers well either.

But you can at least root the phone and install an AOSP ROM, whether it's Froyo or Gingerbread. I'm lost as to why anyone would stick with the stock ROM -- the AOSP ROMs are much more functional and user-friendly.

In any case, surely the most pertinent attitude is that of Google, who have allowed rooting out-of-the-box on their Android phones, advocated the use of community ROMs and publicly defended this position. Who cares what moto does? All they're doing is making sure I don't buy one of their phones ...

Re:Why U.S. Galaxy S Phones run Android 2.1 Still

[PrimaryConsult]

Regardless of the truthfulness of that thread, I had a HTC WinMobile phone for 3 years before switching to the Samsung Moment. Lets just say... if it weren't for all the community support (custom ROMs, m900-only implementations of tethering, flashlight and other important root apps) I would have jumped ship within the 14 day "grace period".
The stock ROM had a bug where the sensor would lock the screen when you put it to your ear. This created a two-step game:
1. To turn the screen back on, sometimes you would need to hit the on button... which is also the 'end call' button. So if the sensor decides your face is no longer there as you hit the button to turn the screen on, you hang up.
2. Lets say you win that bet. Now in order to enter numbers (say you're using a touch tone menu) you needed to double tap on the phone icon in the middle... which sometimes resulted in you pressing 5.

Repeat this process every time you put the phone to your ear to hear the menus.
Sprint was useless regarding fixing this - The Update to 2.1 did fix #2, however, in that at the very least the interface unlocks with sliding instead of double tapping. It still blanks out though, which causes the same end call button dilemma.

Apparently 2.2 is even better in that you can set an inactivity timeout independent of the timeout for the screen blanking out for when it "locks". So I would be able to turn the screen on and off and I wouldn't need to slide / enter the password every time. However there will never be official support for this, which makes me sad.

Next phone is definitely not going to be a Samsung. I have to find one that doesn't use the 'end call' button as the 'screen on' button. Several important incoming calls have been lost due to me hitting it to turn it on to check the time as the call came in.

Re:Why U.S. Galaxy S Phones run Android 2.1 Still

[realityimpaired]

Next phone is definitely not going to be a Samsung. I have to find one that doesn't use the 'end call' button as the 'screen on' button. Several important incoming calls have been lost due to me hitting it to turn it on to check the time as the call came in.

Maybe it's phone-specific, but my LG Shine Plus (also known as the Aloha in some parts of the world) uses the accelerometer to detect when you pull the phone away from the ear. It works a lot more reliably when I use my right hand than when I use my left, but it does turn the screen on and unlock automatically when I take the phone away from the ear. I'm running the stock OS that came with it (Eclair), and while I've unlocked the phone to use on a different provider, I haven't made any other major modifications to the system.

Re:Why U.S. Galaxy S Phones run Android 2.1 Still

[s73v3r]

I'm lost as to why anyone would stick with the stock ROM -- the AOSP ROMs are much more functional and user-friendly.

To you, perhaps. Some people actually like TouchWiz, or the other eye candy that manufacturers place on their phones.

Re:Why U.S. Galaxy S Phones run Android 2.1 Still

[shellbeach]

To you, perhaps. Some people actually like TouchWiz, or the other eye candy that manufacturers place on their phones.

Fair call :)

Re:welcome to the future

[nurb432]

Remember that we are talking about PHONES here, traditionally a locked down *appliance* for several reasons, not desktop or laptop computers. Just beacuse they are now much more functional doesn't mean the market mentality has changed.

Once they start locking down general purpose computers,then we can talk.

Who should I buy from?

[hawguy]

So who is more ROM friendly? Samsung? LG? HTC? Someone else?

Re:Who should I buy from?

[nschubach]

I hear the Samsung are alright if you can get past the RFS (not Reiser) issue.

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 :)

Re:Who should I buy from?

[teh31337one]

RFS is only the beginning of the problems, and has been eliminated. (Voodoo, speedmod, z4mod, tegrak etc)

Propitiatory drivers and Samsung messing around with the code are the main problems

Re:Who should I buy from?

[teh31337one]

HTC has a lot of devs working on their devices. They have history going back to the good ol' days of hacking windows mobile.

Samsung are opening up to some of the opensource community, and the signs are good :-)

Re:Who should I buy from?

[eggoeater]

The Nexus S (which is made by Samsung and fairly similar to a Galaxy) is only 3G and (currently) only with T-mobile.
Wait until the end of February and the Samsung 4gLTE will be out on Verizon.

Re:Who should I buy from?

[Daniel Phillips]

I'm pretty happy with the G2 but I'm not happy with HTC for trying to lock it down. Probably Samsung for me next time round. My choices are a little limited because I want a physical qwerty if the phone is going to be big and bulky anyway. Maybe Samsung will wake up to the Blackberry replacement market.

Re:Who should I buy from?

[ErikZ]

4G doesn't matter if there are no 4G towers for you to access.

Sprint tried to sell me a 4G phone here in Colorado. Not only did it cost an extra 10$ a month for 4G, but only one street in downtown Denver actually has 4G.

Re:Who should I buy from?

[nathana]

Nexus S is Samsung, not HTC.

Re:Who should I buy from?

[ChunderDownunder]

Geeksphone, a Spanish startup that crowdsources development. Their handset is out of stock at this stage.

Either that, or wait for Golden Delicious' Beagle/Pandaboard update to openmoko.

Re:Who should I buy from?

[bemymonkey]

May be dev friendly, but the specs sorta suck. It's a Galaxy S with a few refinements...

Now the Moto Atrix, THAT is what the Nexus S should have been - dual core, a gig of RAM, higher res, INNOVATION with the docks.

Too bad I'm never buying Motorola again... I just hope HTC follows suit (in addition to using BETTER SPEAKERS) soon.

Re:Who should I buy from?

[Magada]

Don't buy Samsung yet. They're pretty bad with the lock-down and they almost never release OS updates. I got burned, so I know of what I speak. It was "Yay, 2.1 in spring, no summer, no, wait, you'll get 2.2 directly at some point... oh hell we're having some unspecified trouble."

Re:Who should I buy from?

[jonwil]

Get a Nokia N900. No firmware locks at all and more open than any Android handset.

Oh and if you do for some reason want Android, there is a N900 port at all.

Re:Who should I buy from?

[rrohbeck]

Only buy a device that's open or that has been permarooted, i.e. where a hack is available to overwrite the bootloader.
Then load your own OS and disable OTA updates.

Re:Who should I buy from?

[teh31337one]

meh. HTC hardware (screen, speakers) are subpar. Especially when compared to Galaxy S devices. And Samsung are going to unveil their dual core successor to the Galaxy S at MWC.

Nexus S is the best phone that you can get right now. It's also Google's phone, so you'll get updates the fastest.

Re:Who should I buy from?

[teh31337one]

I know that. I said You'll also find - i.e. if you don't get a Nexus S, but get a HTC phone.

Re:Who should I buy from?

[teh31337one]

HTC screen and speakers generally are subpar. Desire/Nexus one had a crap touch sensor, that had limited dual touch. Nexus One also had wonky capacitive buttons. Their newer phones like Desire HD are improved, but the screen and speakers are still shit.

Re:Who should I buy from?

[teh31337one]

meh. T-mobile's "4G" is over-rated. And the Samsung 4G LTE phone is old news. Single core, etc. Problem is, there's always a newer, better, faster product on the horizon.

Samsung will be unveiling their dual core phones in under a month at MWC.

Re:Who should I buy from?

[nathana]

Ah. Sorry. I misread the beginning of that second sentence as you offering a second point in favor of the Nexus S (as in, "they're the most dev friendly, AND they're supported pretty well, too").

Re:Who should I buy from?

[bemymonkey]

Speaker, yes, the rest, bull.

Screen: AMOLED uses too much power displaying bright backgrounds and the pentile matrix makes text horrible to look at, the Nexus/Galaxy only have about 330mb of RAM available (Desire & Nexus1 have ~415 and the desire HD has 600+), the processor will be outclassed by, well, every high end handset coming out this year...

Re:Who should I buy from?

[teh31337one]

I've used the desire hd's super lcd screen. It's horrible and washed out. Super AMOLED plus doesn't have pentile.

Re:Who should I buy from?

[teh31337one]

It was late, I didn't proof read properly. It did seem a bit ambiguous

Re:Who should I buy from?

[Daniel Phillips]

It was "Yay, 2.1 in spring, no summer, no, wait, you'll get 2.2 directly at some point... oh hell we're having some unspecified trouble."

I tend to believe the unspecified trouble claim, for now. Probably Samsung just needs to learn to let go and enlist the aid of the community in adapting the generic distribution to their hardware. According to Rasterman Samsung is beginning to get it. Of course, there will be conflicting forces within the organisation.

Re:Who should I buy from?

[Magada]

He's working for them now, so... I don't know. Maybe. Possibly. That's why I said don't buy _yet_.

Re:Who should I buy from?

[bemymonkey]

No more pentile? Sounds usable :)... might even be in the running again for my next phone ;)

Re:Who should I buy from?

[teh31337one]

For my next phone, I want: more than 512mb RAM, super AMOLED plus, hardware divx/mkv playback and higher than WVGA screen res. Galaxy s2 may fit the bill, since the video playback support and super amoled plus are a given.

Re:Who should I buy from?

[colinnwn]

From experience, Samsung is not a preferable alternative to HTC when speaking of locking down, and failing to upgrade smart phones. Unfortunately HTC, and some models of Nokia are best, and that's it for the big boys. I loved my first Samsung LCD computer monitor I bought in 2002. Since then, it has been all down hill, and I would prefer other vendors to Samsung.

Re:Who should I buy from?

[bemymonkey]

Heheh, think bigger!

        * True Multi-Touch
        * 2GB+ Internal Storage
        * WSVGA (1024x600) or higher resolution
        * 1024MB or higher RAM, 800 or higher available for apps
        * Decent speaker (speakerphone!)
        * Front camera
        * Camera LED
        * D-Pad on front
        * CyanogenMod Support
        * 1600mAh+ battery
        * Hardware keyboard w/ D-Pad
        * Notification LED
        * Wireless charging (Inductive or similar)

I'd pay well over $1000 for a device that meets those specs, and I probably wouldn't mind it being close to an inch thick to accomodate it all :)

Re:Who should I buy from?

[teh31337one]

A few of those things are standard, and a few won't be included. (imo)

True Multi-Touch (Galaxy S has a digitiser capable of tracking 10 fingers, though it's configured for only 5), 2GB+ Internal Storage, Front Camera, Decent speakers (wolfson audio chip - best in a mobile device) are all present in current Galaxy S. (for me, with the international i9000 model anyway.)

Camera LED will make it into the next Galaxy S phone, there should be a version with a hardware keyboard, but it'll likely be on only 1 US carrier. International version may see both slate and slide out keyboard. CyanogenMod support is a mixed bag, and depends on how locked down the device is, any changes made to it by the manufacturer, dev support for it, and number of proprietary drivers/software. 1GB RAM would be ideal, but 768MB should be the least amount. WSVGA would be great, or even 720p, but I'll be happy with a qHD(540x960) res screen.

D-pad on the front seems to be an old trend, and I doubt the new Galaxy S will have one.

Re:Who should I buy from?

[Deliveranc3]

http://wiki.cyanogenmod.com/index.php?title=Main_Page
Big and growing community.

Misleading Headline.

[mjwx]

This is not locking down Android, this is locking down a Motorola Handset.

Hardware lock down, not software. Pretty big distinction.

But Motorola has jumped the shark. HTC are offering better handsets and MotoBlur is a complete joke. I liked my Milestone too, but due to Motorola's insistence on locking it down I wont be buying the Milestone 2. HTC Desire Z looks a lot better.

Re:Misleading Headline.

[Microlith]

This is not locking down Android, this is locking down a Motorola Handset.

To a great degree it is locking down Android, as you cannot upgrade to a new version of Android that requires a new kernel, not to mention that this could easily be extended to defeat pretty much any permanent root process.

This is why I'm sticking with my N900 until I see where these shitty companies fall out. At this rate I'll never buy Motorola hardware, and supposedly Samsung is rolling out something similar in Galaxy Tab devices (though only reported in Europe so far.)

Re:Misleading Headline.

[CharlyFoxtrot]

What's the practical difference though ? The big advantage of Android compared to iPhone, I'm always told, is that it's open and there are so many different models to choose from. But what remains of those advantages when you have to eliminate a lot of phones because they are just as locked down and then have to research the remaining models to see which can be rooted, what the difficulties are, etc. ?

Re:Misleading Headline.

[h4rr4r]

Android is an OS you can go download right now. No matter what moto does that is not changed. These are their phones that are like this not the OS.

I hope Nokia eventually releases something to replace the N900, I will be getting that or a Nexus for my next phone. It seems the Droid 1 was the last decent phone Motorola wanted to release.

Re:Misleading Headline.

[h4rr4r]

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

Re:Misleading Headline.

[mjwx]

What's the practical difference though ?

Please tell me I don't have to explain this to you.

Sigh

Because other Android models are not affected. Very big difference there.

The big advantage of Android compared to iPhone, I'm always told, is that it's open and there are so many different models to choose from. But what remains of those advantages when you have to eliminate a lot of phones because they are just as locked down

Well this sends a message to the manufacturer that something is not right with their product.

It's called the positive benefits of compeition. It's not just Motorola and HTC, there's aslo Samsung, SonyErikson, Huawei, Meizu and so forth. Where one vendor fails, the others take over.

This is so completely unlike IOS where the manufacturer dictates what you cannot do on every IOS device it's not funny.

Besides, Motorola have already retracted their previous statement so it looks like the system(TM) is working. Motorola is responding to outside pressure and changing their policies, this is something Apple never has to do so if Apple screws you, you stay screwed.

Re:Misleading Headline.

[mjwx]

To a great degree it is locking down Android, as you cannot upgrade to a new version of Android that requires a new kernel, not to mention that this could easily be extended to defeat pretty much any permanent root process.

So Motorola locking down the bootloader of the Milestone 2 affects a HTC Desire Z how.

Both run Android, so it is to no extent locking down Android and is instead locking down Motorola hardware. Very misleading to say that it is locking down Android in any fashion.

This is akin to saying because Apple wont allow bluethooth FTP that there is no bluetooth FTP mobile phones at all. Quite misleading.

Re:Misleading Headline.

[CharlyFoxtrot]

That's still either "open" or "choice." Don't get me wrong I'm glad Google makes a handset that's more open but if there's only 1 good option it makes the difference between the iOS and Android platforms that much smaller. Apple is in this personal computing thing for the long haul, how long will Google make its own handsets and what happens to the openness of the Andoid platform if they stop ?

Re:Misleading Headline.

[CharlyFoxtrot]

Well this sends a message to the manufacturer that something is not right with their product.

It's called the positive benefits of compeition. It's not just Motorola and HTC, there's aslo Samsung, SonyErikson, Huawei, Meizu and so forth. Where one vendor fails, the others take over.

I hope you're right but those companies don't exactly have a great track record in the listening to customers department. I've owned phones by several of them (competition sure didn't stop them making shitty phones then) and I'm skeptical their attitudes have changed since because they've started shipping Android on their phones.

Re:Misleading Headline.

[mjwx]

I hope you're right but those companies don't exactly have a great track record in the listening to customers department.

Personally I've got quite positive experiences with Huawei and HTC customer service. Granted you've got a good point about Sony.

They do however, listen to bad press which is why Moto is backpedaling.

There's a reason HTC is going gangbusters at the moment.

Re:Misleading Headline.

[Daniel Phillips]

Hardware lock down, not software. Pretty big distinction.

To you maybe, but you're the only one.

Re:Misleading Headline.

[mjwx]

To you maybe, but you're the only one.

The only one on Slashdot that knows the difference between "hardware" and "software"?

Really?

We live in a world where my mother understands her computer is made by Acer but Windows is made by Microsoft. The separation of OS and hardware has been around long enough that people now know there is a difference. It's like saying that Ford made your Kenwood stereo, even the dumbest hick will now correct you.

Re:Misleading Headline.

[Daniel Phillips]

Oh wait, there are two newspeakers now.

Re:Misleading Headline.

[bemymonkey]

There are hardly (or probably none at all) any Android handsets available that can't be rooted, as in getting access to the system as SU. However, "rooting" on Android is much more than that, as it usually comes with installing a custom recovery and allowing the user to flash pretty much anything he/she wants... kernels, baseband, a completely new operating system...

The problem on Motorola devices is simply that the bootloader only accepts signed kernels, and Motorola is the only entity with the ability to sign the kernels. This doesn't necessarily limit moddability (you should have seen the crazy ass hacks people resorted to on the Milestone...), but makes it a lot more difficult, and completely disallows home-brewed OS upgrades, unless you build them around the existing kernel of one of Motorola's builds. Don't feel like waiting for Moto to get off their ass and push an Android 2.3/2.4/3.0 OTA? Install one of the many custom ROMs that would be available if Moto didn't lock down their handsets.

Hell, half of all Android enthusiasts are probably running Gingerbread on their (non-Nexus-S) phones right now - not possible with Moto's handsets, since you'd need an official Moto upgrade to get past the bootloader. :(

Re:Misleading Headline.

[thegarbz]

The point is there is more than 1 single choice. There isn't for the iPhone. There's MANY phones out there that will literally let you install anything. I could write my own program right now and have it running on my phone without issue and it's not a Google Nexus S. I may get told what OS I run on my not rooted phone, but that's where things end. I'm free to install what I want. Heck just for giggles I typed "porn" into the app market search box. 180 results, one of which turns the phone into a vibrator, the other changes the wallpaper to a different naked ass every hour. Didn't find what I'm looking for? Fuck it I'll go to a different app store.

Not being able to completely dissect every intricate bit of code in the OS is NOT the only reason that Android is a more open platform.

Re:Misleading Headline.

[kangsterizer]

Well if you take 25 models and you remove 5-8 of them.. that's still way more than 1 model isn't it? :p
Actually it's pretty simple if you want an open phone and have no issues you always take the Nexus series. But if you wanted you could take another one, and yes, you have to read the specs in that case.
I've one of these Galaxy S, it's not perfect all around but close enough. I run my own kernel (minus a few Samsung drivers), my own apps and OS, and all of this *was easy* as a developer. I did not need hand holding, or people to do it for me working several weeks on it.

With a Jailbroken iPhone, you require people working weeks and weeks to crack it, release a decent crack that is simple enough to install and so on. And even then, you can't modify most of the system easily - it's not open source. I can recompile my dialer and add a monkey on it if i want.
That's what open source is about. Then again it's not perfect. FAR from it. Some parts are NOT open source even on the Galaxy S. But it's THAT MUCH better than iOS on that subject.

Direct profit for developers. Side effect: profit for regular customers, who can install dev's stuff easily if they want modifications (such as call recording, etc)

Re:Misleading Headline.

[Alanis Morissette]

An open box inside a locked box is still effectively locked, so I see little difference. Google collude with the handset manufacturers on this because they don't explicitly forbid this practice in their legalese.

Re:Misleading Headline.

[drinkypoo]

I've always loved Motorola hardware, if not their software. I got burned on the last HTC phone I bought. So what should I buy if I want a powerful Android phone and want to run custom roms?

Re:Misleading Headline.

[andydread]

If the choice was only between 1 handset and Apple the Nexus S is Open and Iphone is closed. Thankfully there are more than one choices to get an open phone. The Dell Streak is also open. No locks. Dell is not going anywere anytime soon either.

Re:Misleading Headline.

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

Apple is in this personal computing thing for the long haul, how long will Google make its own handsets and what happens to the openness of the Andoid platform if they stop ?

Apple is a Steve Jobs personality cult, and he has pancreatic cancer, got end stage liver failure and needed a transplant and is now out on sick leave.

When he dies what happens to Apple?

It is quite likely to be quite soon.

Google is not dependent on any individual.

Re:Misleading Headline.

[CharlyFoxtrot]

Apple is a Steve Jobs personality cult, and he has pancreatic cancer, got end stage liver failure and needed a transplant and is now out on sick leave.

When he dies what happens to Apple?

I don't believe this even though it is the popular perception and Apple seems happy to feed into that because it makes for good PR. Part of how Jobs saved Apple is because he brought back a lot of talented engineers when Apple bought NeXT, people who had fled Apple years before. That's what saved Apple: the ability to convince the talent to come back, not some cult.

Google is not dependent on any individual.

I have this suspicion that Google's stock price would move more than Apple's did on the Jobs news (less than 3%) if Larry and Sergei had to leave. In fact Google's stock moved 6% when they announced a major stock sale in 2010.

Re:Misleading Headline.

[CharlyFoxtrot]

Dell is not going anywere anytime soon either.

Sure ? What happened to the Axim ? Johnny-come-latelies rarely make enough money to keep up interest in a market segment. Apple has made iOS the centrepoint of its strategy, how important is the Streak to Dell ?

Re:Misleading Headline.

[andydread]

The Axim went the way of PDAs. U know like the Newton did. Like Palm did. PDAs are a dead technology. PDAs were replaced with smartphones. I understand the point you are making but I think its invalid. Many Many people back in the day said similar things about IBM and the PC. "Is Compaq going to be around?" "Is Wang going to be around for ever." "No one ever got fired for buying IBM" Then in the 90s "Apple is dead" "Apple is dying" "Windows is the future" And now look where we are now. Apple is very very far from dead. Wang and Compaq is but that didn't kill Windows. Even IBM stopped selling desktop PCs and Windows kept on trucking. So the idea that Android has have the backing of only one company does not even apply to the closed vs open argument here.

Buy elsewhere.

[crhylove]

For all of you who are tech savvy at all, the message is clear "Buy Elsewhere". I for one fully plan on joining MOTO in their boycott of..... MOTO. Smart move guys!

Re:Buy elsewhere.

[Seumas]

That's the opinion that most companies have. Your ISP doesn't want a bandwidth heavy advanced tech savvy user. They want grandma to pay $60/mo to get her five emails and read the church newsletter online. Companies want the overwhelming masses of users who don't put a strain on services, are happy with what they get, and won't play around with firmware, roms, torrents, etc.

Re:Buy elsewhere.

[crhylove]

You are no doubt right. But when Grandma asks the tech savvy grandson which phone to buy, my answer will be, "Anything but Apple or Motorola". And that while I may not be fighting in the trenches in Germany, we CAN do something for freedom RIGHT NOW with our money.

or not

[richie681]

Http://on.db.me/dEwySY maybe Moto has seen the light.

Re:or not

[richie681]

Http://on.fb.me/dEwySY is what that's supposed to be.

Atrix

[data2]

The Atrix looked exactly like what I needed, especially with the netbook like dock. But if they are so intent on not getting my money, then they won't. I was already doubting my decision, because I would like the Android version after the current one, and now the risk is just too great for not getting it.

i have a custom rom on my D2G

[jupiterssj4]

See their forums about the push email not working, huge problem for a supposed "Business Phone". Also, my Droid 2 Global is rooted and has a custom ROM installed, seems to work just fine except for the email issue, even with TouchDown for email.

Re:i have a custom rom on my D2G

[h4rr4r]

You don't have a real custom rom, you are using kexec if you even run a non-stock kernel.

So what should I buy?

[rsilvergun]

It's tough to keep track of which phone's a Motorola, since the companies tend to brand stuff weirdly in the Cell phone world.

Re:So what should I buy?

[cnkurzke]

For people who want to compare Android phones in the market, take a look at:

http://www.google.com/phone/#

If you need (or want) a phone which is completely open to reflashing, I highly recommend to buy the "Nexus" brand devices.

Nexus One and Nexus S are both the Google "gold standard" and come with a completely open boot loader.
http://www.google.com/phone/detail/nexus-s

Re:welcome to the future

[Renegade Lisp]

99.997% of people don't care about this kind of thing. In a decade or two it'll be almost impossible to buy computing devices that aren't locked down. There are advantages for the vendor, and whatever disadvantages there are for the customer require specialized knowledge to even understand, so there is no market force to balance.

Thus dies the freedom that led many into computing in the first place. It was a good run while it lasted.

Thing it sounds crazy? Well not that long ago, the very *idea* of such a locked down device was crazy. Today they are all over the place and people snap them up.

Understand your sentiment, but keep in mind that one of the reasons Android is selling so well these days is because it is considered an open system, even by those who don't really understand the implications, as opposed to iOS. So, in a world where everything is totally locked down, a product that is not locked down might actually appeal to enough people that they would vote with their wallet, and ensure at least a niche for that product, if not more.

The "market" is just not something that will stay in any one corner for eternity.

Well

[Antisyzygy]

I always have liked Samsung and HTC products, never had a problem with Motorola since Ive never owned one, but now I won't ever buy one. Congrats Motorola.

Bootloader Feedback Policy

[Vap1d-]

Seems that sentiment was pretty quickly retracted. http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=495971028278

Re:Bootloader Feedback Policy

[BabySledge]

As well as a compromise mentioned...http://www.androidcentral.com/motorola-disavows-youtube-comment-says-its-working-bootloader-compromise

Re:Bootloader Feedback Policy

[green1]

except what it says on there is "we're trying our best to lock down what end users will get, but hope to have some difficult to obtain developer only version that won't be locked down"

That doesn't make it even the slightest bit better.

Re:Bootloader Feedback Policy

[h4rr4r]

Which probably means paying 10 times as much to buy a device that you can't use with actual service or something like that.

Re:Bootloader Feedback Policy

[Vap1d-]

I suppose it could be paraphrased and read how you have quoted it above. On the other hand they could take a cue from both Nexus One and S and add the fastboot oem unlock command. People who are interested in unlocking security mechanisms and tinkering with the device could do so- voiding the warranty in the process, people who are 'end users' wouldn't be the wiser.

It would be great if all android devices had this capability.

Re:Bootloader Feedback Policy

[MemoryDragon]

They can retract what they want, their go buy your phone elsewhere if you dont like the locked bootloader stance has been their official position for over a year now, and they said it multiple times in Europe when people started to complain that the Milestone bootloader was locked while the Droid ones was not. Needless to say the Milestone only was a mediocre success over here and almost anyone who has bought the Milestone will never ever buy another Motorola phone again, because additonally to that Motorola left the Milestone owners hanging for months with updates which the Droid got rather in time!
I have yet to meet a single Milestone user who has not been severely pissed at Motorola. This is the book example on how you kill your own success upfront by your own arrogance! Motorola is Dead over here in Europe as far as people are concerned, because it is not only the die hard geeks who wont buy their phones they word of mouth spreads, and whatever desaster recovery Motorola now tries over Facebook they cannot really recover unless they really change their ways regarding their users! But even then it probably is too late, Samsung and HTC have gotten their acts straight with their hardware now, and the Nexus S is the current top notch open phone and as far as it seems Google will continue the tradition of offering one open phone, so in the end Google probably will win the game after all, it just will take some time!

Re:Bootloader Feedback Policy

[MemoryDragon]

Or in other words, if you are under heavy competition, you can win by being better, but you cannot win by screwing your own customers, trying to nickel and dime them out of their purchases and in the end insult them with arrogant company remarks if they rightfully complain about a defect of you product!
I get the feeling that some people inside of Motorolas mobile phone divison need a serious influx of reality or should get rid of their cocaine habits! They seem to live in a total reality disortion field, and it is not in engineering where this field is located because the hardware usually is top notch!

Re:Bootloader Feedback Policy

[VortexCortex]

Or, in laymen's terms: The squeaky wheel gets the grease.

I've seen comments in this topic about how only a small percentage of people actually want to root their Android devices. Sure, it's a small percentage, but its a very vocal percentage and their sentiments are infectious (I've heard outrage against Motorola's e-fuse from people who don't even know what a ROM is).

If a portion of your platform's developer community is adamantly against e-fuse, then in may make sense to take heed -- especially if apps are important to the success of your device.

TL;DR: Percentage of users that want root != Percentage of people pissed off about hardware DRM.

Redundant

[Rennt]

It doesn't take a statement from the company. Just look at the devices they are offering. Users who want to run custom firmware aren't the kind to walk in and say "one android please". You do basic research. You check if custom ROMS are known to work. You don't buy Motorola.

Re:Redundant

[treeves]

AFAIK custom ROMs do work on D2 and DX. Ask the guys over at droidforums.com. I don't get what all this is about. Is this e-fuse something that is triggered within the device or does it have to be triggered by the carrier?

Re:Redundant

[bemenaker]

Motorola thumping their chest and trying to say you can't do that with our phones. When you can. It just means when a new phone comes out it takes a little longer. It's probably more sucking up to the PhoCo's than it has anything to do with the endusers. I'm sure Motorola really doesn't even care. After all, including efuse increases complexity of design, increases cost of production, creates more points of failure, ect, ect. There is no real reason for them to want that feature, other than Verizon and the likes saying if you don't include it we won't buy it.

Re:Redundant

[h4rr4r]

They have to kexec into another kernel. They are not replacing the base OS.

Re:Redundant

[treeves]

Does that affect performance or matter some other way?

Guess ill be shopping elswhere

[corvax]

all those people lined up to buy the xoom tablet just got the major incentive not to. This is what they call artificial obsolescence, they used to do it with feature phones youd have to get the newest hardware to have the newest software.(the old phones end up in landfills) But we all know now that our old hardware is more than capable of running the newest software. This is done to drive sales and to force you to keep lousy things like moto blur. The the votes are in motorola and no one wants motoblur they want stock android!

Re:welcome to the future

[cptdondo]

Well true. But the lock down feature will appeal to the corporate types. So a few individual customers walk and instead they pick up Megacorp.

Not a bad exchange.

WTF?!

[thisnamestoolong]

What are they hoping to accomplish here? What do they have to lose by people installing other O/S'es on their hardware? They are spending all this time and money engineering a solution to... what? Keeping legitimate consumers from wanting to buy their product? I have a Moto Droid, and was planning on upgrading to the Droid X, but I will most certainly be going HTC for my next phone purchase.

Re:WTF?!

[Asic Eng]

They want a way to obsolete phones. Users might want to have a new Android version, and Motorola wants to be able to force a new sale. Maybe not every time, but whenever they choose to. That's also something ordinary users can understand, even though they might not care about installing some custom version of the OS: this phone may not be upgradable, a phone from another company would be.

Re:welcome to the future

[martin-boundary]

That's why the GPLv3 is so important. There are two trends going on here: there's locking down of software to prevent hacking and keep monopoly control on the devices, but there's also the use of free software components.

Without free software to do the heavy lifting, the phone manufacturers wouldn't be able to compete at the same price point in the market, so free software developers actually have some leverage to prevent lockdowns in the future.

But for that, the community must be smart and use the right kind of license, eg GPLv3, but not BSD. If the Linux/embedded systems developers drop the ball and continue to use the wrong kinds of licences (GPLv2 is not good enough), then the future you talk about will certainly happen.

I'll vote with my wallet

[peloy]

What a dumb move. "Buy elsewhere". Like if anyone can afford to be elitist these days of bloody competition.

But of course I'll vote with my wallet and buy elsewhere; they don't deserve my money.

Re:I'll vote with my wallet

[Virtucon]

That's the right idea however Motorola is a appealing to mass market appeal and really, how many of the customers who buy a Droid-X want to root it or violate the terms that Motorola is defining. If you think about it how many millions of people who buy an IPhone don't jailbreak it? Yes, they're not enlightened but they're just looking for "good enough" and to be able to do e-mail.

Sure, Support in the long run is important as well and if Motorola stops supplying upgrades to their Android phones I'm sure a market solution will arise. I for one gave up on Moto a long time ago and will never buy another one of their devices again. As for me, there's HTC, Samsung and a lot of tablet vendors coming online that will support the Android O/S so Motorola isn't a major player in anything I'll buy in the future.

Why didn't Google make Android GPLv3?

[yuhong]

Sure, the kernel must continue to be GPLv2, but the user mode components can still be GPLv3, and it is compatible with the Apache license.

Re:Why didn't Google make Android GPLv3?

[Microlith]

Because companies that insist on TiVOizing shit would have stayed away. Remember that Motorola bought their own Linux-based OS vendor. Nothing's come of it, but I'm sure they were hedging their bets.

Re:welcome to the future

[h4rr4r]

And remember that you can still get an OG droid, or a brand new Nexus S.

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

[multipartmixed]

What's the big deal with e-fuses that warrants a special name? This sounds like regular old EPROM to me. You know, like we had in the 70s? Except on a processor.. Like flavones of the MC68hc11 and such. What am I missing?

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

[greed]

As an electrical engineer, with very fond memories of hacking with the MC68HC11 MCU, I'd suggest you're missing a degree in marketing.

'Scuse me, I've got this uncontrollable urge to get some Freeduino hobby boards....

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

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

You need a catchy new name if you want to patent something for which prior art exists.

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

[Tacvek]

e-Fuses would be PROMS, not EPROMs (although many later generation PROMS were EPROMs without the window for erasing.)

But e-fuses are just PROM bits found on a chip that also contains digital logic (so would not be using a PROM specific fabrication process.)

Re:Minority Opinion...

[h4rr4r]

or maybe just buy a Nexus S.

Fuck them, they are dumb pipes and should not have a hand in what is on my phone. If they want to sell me 5GB of data they should have no say in what device I use it on or how I use it.

Re:Minority Opinion...

[stoborrobots]

Carriers get to decide which devices are allowed on their network.

In the GSM world, carriers don't get to decide which devices are allowed on their networks. They get to issue subscribers (people) with identification modules (SIM), which can be placed into any compatible device (phone, computer, or otherwise) and the device can then authenticate and talk to the network.

And,

[unity100]

i will buy elsewhere. thanks. though, you didnt need to give the advice. the expression of your stubbornness in locking down your customer, was all that i needed. next time, dont waste sentences in your precious press release - realize that saying one thing may directly imply another and economize words.

Re:welcome to the future

[CharlyFoxtrot]

Without free software to do the heavy lifting, the phone manufacturers wouldn't be able to compete at the same price point in the market, so free software developers actually have some leverage to prevent lockdowns in the future.

Here's a newsflash for you: Google created Android to make sure they have a presence in the lucrative mobile market and could care less about "open" and "free." The reason Android was released as open source is to take advantage of the geek word-of-mouth (or geek internet press) and the geek anti Apple backlash. There won't be any "leveraging" done. I guess this is the point where a a bunch of disillusioned geeks get together and vow to create a 100% pure open(tm) alternative (ETA: 2015.)

Bad news

[gmuslera]

... for this guy. Software is increasingly detaching itself from the hardware is bundled into. Open enough operating systems, like Meego, or Android, are start to being installed in phones that had something else bundled, like Android on the N900 or some Windows phones, or Meego in the HTC HD2 or Samsung S. Would not be surprised if the same trend become for other open enough operating systems, like WebOS, Bada, or even future Symbian releases. Phone makers should focus in making the best hardware, bundle a reference system, but let users decide how to use it better, if it becomes more useful because what others do, they will sell more.

Re:migamix

[h4rr4r]

No. The whole point is to force you to buy a new one. Next time do a little research before buying a smartphone.

Re:welcome to the future

[MoonBuggy]

Once they start locking down general purpose computers,then we can talk.

I don't think the prospects are anything like as dire as the GP post suggests, but things aren't looking entirely rosy.

Take the iPad, for example. However much Apple want to classify it as a new device, it's still a tablet computer, and we had them running general purpose OS's for a good few years before its release.

Re:Which smartphone for OS development?

[teh31337one]

Nexus S

Re:welcome to the future

[h4rr4r]

So then why do they release the Nexus line of phones that are the most open smartphones on the market?

Re:welcome to the future

[bill_mcgonigle]

create a 100% pure open(tm) alternative (ETA: 2015.)

oooh! The Hurd is almost done!?

Re:welcome to the future

[icebraining]

On the other hand, there's a reason even Stallman agreed Vorbis should be released with a BSD license - if you restrict too much, you might simply make them switch to another OS.

While I can't be sure, I wouldn't be surprised if with all the carriers' pressure, Android with a GPLv3 licensed kernel was disregarded by phone manufacturers. Torvald's decision of keeping the kernel under v2 may not be very 'pure' to some, but it's very pragmatic and can possibly achieve more.

Re:welcome to the future

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

A techie high school friend and my not so tech oriented boss both own HTC EVO devices.

The reason why they buy these phones is that they work better than windows mobile or blackberry. Basically. They're good enough.

Openness has nothing to do with it.

Speaking of which,

[unity100]

Does motorola have any advice and price/performance comparison and info on good android deals for buying elsewhere ? its a shame they left the press release without that info after going all the mile to tell us to buy elsewhere.

koush's bootloader

[bobbutts]

Running fission http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=851623 rom on my Droid 2 now.. these phones are ok for running roms with koush's bootloader http://www.koushikdutta.com/2010/08/droid-x-recovery.html

R-e-fuse as in garbage

[syousef]

That's a threat?...I for one am fine buying elsewhere. Motorolla can rot for all I care. Bye bye.

Re:welcome to the future

[icebraining]

Android's core is composed of the Linux kernel and the Apache Harmony libraries. They don't get to decide the license of those - and any code of the kernel they modify and distribute _must_ be released under the same license (GPLv2).

If Torvalds et all changed the kernel's license to GPLv3, Google and the phone manufacturers would either have to comply with it or stop upgrading.

So thinking that Google holds all the keys is wrong.

Re:welcome to the future

[CharlyFoxtrot]

Because if they didn't there would be no decent dev handsets. The likes of Motorolla, Sumsung and HTC sure don't look to interested in platform building, they just want to shift some phones. You could say the fact Google has to release its own handsets shows the fragility of Android as a platform with only Google pushing the platform and their partners just pushing phones (and thus not caring about old versions, upgradeability, etc.)

Yep...

[rastoboy29]

That's why I won't be buying one.

Update to article

[Georules]

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

Re:Update to article

[John Jamieson]

I think they said they were sorry... is that the same as an apology?

I really think they are only sorry that this is a big black eye, and is going to hurt in the morning.

"The response does not reflect the views of Motorola." can be translated as "our responses should not piss off customers"

This just seems like damage control to me, an apology means they are sorry about What they have done, not just sorry about the consequences of a poorly worded but truthful response.

Re:Update to article

[wrook]

They say they will offer a development version, but give no details. The stock versions will be locked down for "protecting our users' interests".

I wonder who they think their users are? If they mean users of the handsets, in what universe is locking down the phone in their best interest. I suspect they mean the carriers.

The other thing that interests me is the idea of an unlocked version being available (presumably at a higher price). At least they understand that freedom is a value-add :-P Honestly, I'm willing to pay a premium for the freedom to run whatever software I want on the device I own, but I'm disgusted that I have to.

Re:Update to article

[Zebedeu]

Agreed.

I think this is actually a very good development. If the other manufacturers follow suit, it might become possible to get an unlocked version of any Android device.

Then my choices wouldn't be limited to the Nexus devices, or the HTC with the best community support.

Re:Update to article

[bemymonkey]

Unfortunately the original Youtube comment was much more in keeping with Motorola's actual policies... the apology is weak, hinting at the possibility of there some day being a development platform. Too late for the thousands of locked down pieces of crap they've sold already.

Hell, when the Droid X was hot in the blog-press-o-sphere, I spent hours commenting, telling people not to buy the damned thing... nearly all of the people commenting said they didn't care, and that they would buy anyway. Now, as I read the blog posts about this little fiasco, I'm seeing 70%+ of the comments saying "The Droid X is my first and last Motorola phone!"... why won't people learn from other people's mistakes? :(

Re:Update to article

[MemoryDragon]

They can apologize what they want, go buy your phones elsewhere if you dont like the encrypted bootloader has been the official company position over here in Europe for the last year pretty much since the first complaints about the Milestones bootloader started. Add to that that they left the milestone owners here hanging dry with by months delayed updates over the Droids, and you have hundreds of thousands of ex Milestone owners who probably will never buy another Motorola phone again. The Milestone initially sold in huge numbers due to the Droids openness and its really good hardware, that is until people noticed they were screwed over!
As far as Europe is concerned, Motorola is dead for the forseeable future regarding phones!
So dont blame the admin he was just defending the official company line, and this apology only will be marketing bullshit until they really improve their ways!

Re:Update to article

[Georules]

I agree completely.

Fractional Users

[Roger W Moore]

That isn't what they are saying, it is just what the 0.0000000000000003% of users that might want to install their own OS

Got a little carried away with the zeroes there did we? Even if everyone on the planet owned a Motorola phone that would be about 20 billionths of one user who is understandably going to be rather upset when several thousand brain cells attempt to install their own OS.

Re:Fractional Users

[exomondo]

where for art thou modpoints...+funny

Re:welcome to the future

[h4rr4r]

Good point.

It also means I will be quite happy to replace my original Droid(easy to flash, running CM6 now, installing CM7 nightly later) with a Nexus.

Well Good For You Motorola...

[BrendaEM]

Go out of business.

Why is Nokia still sleeping?

[2Bits]

With all these manufacturers working hard on locking down, why is Nokia still sleeping on N900 and its successor and Meego/Maemo? Nokia should have taken its leadership with a series of N900 followups. That thing is the best ever.

Re:Why is Nokia still sleeping?

[MemoryDragon]

Not all of them, Samsung is pretty open, the Nexus line probably always will be, HTC only does what they have to do but nothing more because they know that their core customers are the ones hacking the device to pieces, so they only put some makeup like protection onto their devices. The only ones who play the hardball game with a go screw yourself if you dont want our ways attitude are Sony and Motorola. Needless to say that in many countries those phones are under the radar of most people or on the do not buy if you need a new device list!

Re:Why is Nokia still sleeping?

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

Plus Nokia phones were (anyone know if they still are) nearly physically indestructable, even if thrown, you could just put it back together.

Why I don't buy vendor supplied phones

[woboyle]

I have made it a policy that my hardware is MY hardware, and if I want to futz with it, then that is my prerogative. So, now that I have an unlocked Nexus One, I have decided that I will NEVER purchase a phone from my mobile service provider again. Unfortunately, that kind of makes it necessary to use GSM phones since I can simply stick my SIM card in the phone of my choice. But, as far as I'm concerned, that is a small price to pay for freedom of choice on the hardware side of the equation.

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.

Motorola Sticks To Guns

[Culture20]

"We are saddened, saddened, that samzenpus would use this vitriolic language in today's uncertain political atmosphere, and hope to impress upon all slashdotters that he was not expressing a desire for Motorola to glue deadly murder devices to their buttocks. Thank you."
-FakeCmdrTaco

Re:Minority Opinion...

[triffid_98]

In the GSM world, carriers don't get to decide which devices are allowed on their networks. They get to issue subscribers (people) with identification modules (SIM), which can be placed into any compatible device (phone, computer, or otherwise) and the device can then authenticate and talk to the network.

Yes and no. Yes you can take a SIM and plug it into any random GSM phone. BUT your model id is passed to the carrier when you use it. If they see an id that doesn't match your registered device/isn't one they support they can lock out your phone, send you bills, and/or whatever their craptastic EULA happens to say.

Re:welcome to the future

[symbolset]

They don't have to know why. When we tell them "Yeah, the droid is nice but you will like the Samsung better." They go buy the Sammy usually. They trust us because we don't lead them wrong.

Re:welcome to the future

[node 3]

Understand your sentiment, but keep in mind that one of the reasons Android is selling so well these days is because it is considered an open system, even by those who don't really understand the implications, as opposed to iOS.

I highly doubt that even 5% of Android sales had "freedom" as a significant factor. Most people don't care. They bought Android phones because they were the best phone at the lowest price on their carrier. Never once do they intend to run an Android update. In fact, if even half that could tell you which dessert name they are running, or what the next one is, I would be amazed.

Re:welcome to the future

[tepples]

we are talking about PHONES here, traditionally a locked down *appliance* [...] Once they start locking down general purpose computers

Then why isn't there much of a market for handheld general purpose computers?

Re:welcome to the future

[Nyall]

Motorola just demo'd a new phone at CES that docks to become the brains of a laptop.

http://www.technewsdaily.com/ces-2011-motorola-dock-turns-your-android-phone-into-a-laptop-1944/

So I guess we can talk in a couple of months?

Re:Minority Opinion...

[mlts]

That is the rub. I've learned that the ONLY handsets which will guarantee ROM updating will be Google's reference models, the ADP1, ADP2, Nexus 1, and Nexus S.

What I'm hoping for is that Google can get a reference model made for Honeycomb that has a decent sliding keyboard and a MicroSD card slot. 24 GB just doesn't cut it, and even then, it is nice to be able to stick a card in, nandroid backup your ROM and titanium backup all your apps before hitting the road for a long trip with the SD card that holds all your MP3s.

I just hope the Nexus S's successor has at least has SDXC card capability. If not, guess it will be time to wait for the reference model when Ice Cream goes GA.

Re:welcome to the future

[westlake]

But for that, the community must be smart and use the right kind of license, eg GPLv3, but not BSD. If the Linux/embedded systems developers drop the ball and continue to use the wrong kinds of licences (GPLv2 is not good enough), then the future you talk about will certainly happen

There is no "commmunity" here. There are only developers who need to keep a roof over their head and food on the table. Developers who will program for any platform - open or closed - that promises a decent return for their time and effort.

Re:welcome to the future

[Daniel Phillips]

The reason why they buy these phones is that they work better than windows mobile or blackberry. Basically. They're good enough. Openness has nothing to do with it.

Incorrect. The reason these phones are good enough - and cheap - is that they are running Linux. Linux only got good enough because it is open. Also, a lot of the best apps are open in my experience. And who wants stacks of shovelware and adware applications running on their phone that they can't get rid of, which is exactly where locked down phones are headed. Open matters, even to people who don't know what it is.

Re:welcome to the future

[Daniel Phillips]

Google created Android to make sure they have a presence in the lucrative mobile market and could care less about "open" and "free."

Speaking as someone who would know, there is a significant faction at Google that actually cares about open and free. Larry and Eric sometimes lose the plot, but they get reminded.

Re:welcome to the future

[Daniel Phillips]

He says he can't. Different thing entirely.

Re:Minority Opinion...

[stoborrobots]

Agreed. In fact, they not only get the model ID, they also get the IMEI ("equipment identifier" roughly equivalent to a serial number), so they can choose to lock out this specific piece of hardware just because they feel like it, even if they let others of the same model through...

Re:Sticks to guns?

[nitehawk214]

"If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun," Obama said in Philadelphia last night."

It's the Chicago way.

It's also the Indiana Jones way.

Re:welcome to the future

[CharlyFoxtrot]

Haha, well do everyone a favor and keep them honest. Who knows, I might need an Android phone one day :-)

Makes sense

[Corson]

This makes perfect sense to me. Mobile phones are resource hungry, so running antimalware on them is not an option. Managed software (.NET, Java) is only half the solution, with some authority controlling which software that gets to run on those gadgets being the other half. Sorry folks if you thought you could just switch from laptop to smartphone and enjoy the same perks.

Re:welcome to the future

[triffid_98]

Because if they didn't there would be no decent dev handsets. The likes of Motorolla, Sumsung and HTC sure don't look to interested in platform building, they just want to shift some phones. You could say the fact Google has to release its own handsets shows the fragility of Android as a platform with only Google pushing the platform and their partners just pushing phones (and thus not caring about old versions, upgradeability, etc.)

I agree. They need legitimate dev phones. There certainly are plenty of non-Motorola android phones that can be flashed to a custom OS. But only after exploits are found... The EVO had one at release, the Incredible had one within what, 4 months? Samsung Galaxy didn't have one at it's European release but it had one before the North American release(as the Vibrant/Fascinate/Epic/etc)...all plenty powerful phones, but legitimate is not a word I would use to describe them.

Dirty Secret - Carriers want this, not Motorola

[Anonymous Coward]

Motorola does not want to lock them down, the carrier(s) are forcing them to. I have inside info from a dev about this, and I've argued with him about it at length angrily. Unfortunately, their hands are tied, it's the carrier's way or the highway.

If you want to be upset at anyone, be angry at e.g. Verizon. People need to fight the carriers on this, it's about our freedom!!

Re:Dirty Secret - Carriers want this, not Motorola

[ToasterMonkey]

People need to fight the carriers on this, it's about our freedom!!

You guys are really sucking the life out of that word

Re:Dirty Secret - Carriers want this, not Motorola

[crashumbc]

Except other manufacturer aren't being forced to lock their phones down and Motorola's own press releases indicate its their choice. I call BS on your DEV.

Re:welcome to the future

[exomondo]

Here's a newsflash for you: Google created Android to make sure they have a presence in the lucrative mobile market and could care less about "open" and "free."

It would seem they do, to an extent. They have released all their code and they created the nexus phones, but they seem unwilling (or unable) to strong-arm the phone manufacturers who would likely go another route if they were forced to relinquish control. In the end the user has a choice, go with an iphone-esque locked-down system from some manufacturers or choose a more open handset like the Nexus phones.

Why shouldn't you be able to lock it down?

[SuperKendall]

Freedom means nothing if you don't also include the freedom to lock others out.

Hint: They Ain't Sleepin'

[SuperKendall]

You might want to hold a mirror up over Nokia there.

Yes the body is still warm, but that doesn't mean much.

Oddly, I think you'll find that the rigor mortis was cause of death, not caused BY death...

Re:welcome to the future

[exomondo]

He says he can't. Different thing entirely.

Unless all the developers of any code specifying a version number of GPL come around then he most certainly can't change the license, and given the response from a number of key devs that is unlikely to happen.

Only for tone, not for content

[SuperKendall]

Right, they've apologized for tone. But it's not the tone that has people upset, it'e the locking down. That they have not said they will change...

They say they are working on a way for developers to be able to load custom roms on the phone but that's a far cry from consumers being able to do so.

Personally, I don't think there's anything wrong with vendor trying to lock a platform down a bit more to improve security for the people who need help...

Re:welcome to the future

[Daniel Phillips]

He says he can't. Different thing entirely.

Unless all the developers of any code specifying a version number of GPL come around then he most certainly can't change the license, and given the response from a number of key devs that is unlikely to happen.

That survey is almost 5 years old. A lot changed in the interim. GPL v3 got widespread uptake, showing the mood of the developer community, and a number of companies have taken high profile and flagrant advantage of apparent loopholes in GPLv2. It's usually a mistake to speak in absolutes about what Linus will or won't do. There is nothing stopping change of license for *new submissions* in files where all authors of that file agrees. If Linus rules this is allowed, then it will be allowed. And bad actors like Motorola are just bringing that day closer.

Re:welcome to the future

[the linux geek]

N900 would like a word with you.

Re:welcome to the future

[Opportunist]

C'mon, we're talking about real, useful products here, not toys.

Re:welcome to the future

[Opportunist]

Because most people don't really need or want a GP computer.

Let's be honest here, what do people do with their phone? Make calls, browse the web, write some mails, listen to music, take photos. And what do they do with their computers? Essentially the same, but only if the computer has a webcam.

People don't miss anything in phones and their limited capabilities because they don't come even close to using the capabilities of their general purpose computers.

Re:welcome to the future

[fandingo]

Exactly. And furthermore, even if all the authors changed their license, Google and Co. would still have the previous release under the current license: GPLv2.

Many people who were critical of the Oracle buyout of Sun with respect to MySQL favored this exact same approach. The difference was a worry by the community that Oracle would (and who knows, might still) make MySQL less free. The interesting part about this is that Google and phone manufactures want a different kind of "freedom." The community wants copyleft licenses like the GPL because it preserves the community's access to code. Developers would rather use something closer to BSD where they can pick and choose what source is distributed.

Sure a GPLv3 Android (either through direct license or forced sub-system license) would be great for the community. However, I think that would destroy the very manufacturers that make Android possible.

I can't say that I happy with manufactuer's and Google's practices with releasing devices before open source code (like the GPL'd kernel). However, I'd say the situation is okay. There's not much that can be done about it, so I don't get too worked up about it.

There are plenty of tech savvy who don't care

[Brannon]

I'm one of them. I want a phone that works for what I want and I don't care if I'm forbidden from compiling and running SETI@home on it.

Re:There are plenty of tech savvy who don't care

[ppanon]

Sure, but we'll see whether you still feel that way if Motorola stop supporting your phone with upgrades after 2 years (or less), telling you to upgrade and leaving you stranded at whatever version you're at, even though newer versions would run fine.

I'm using a stock 2.2 Froyo ROM on my Canadian Galaxy S and I will probably keep it that way until either the warranty runs out or Samsung refuses to make an upgrade available. At that point it will be nice to know that I can flash a newer custom ROM on it and either continue to use it or pass it on to my sister or my son. While security is the claim for ROM-locking phones, in the end it's just too useful to manufacturers to enforce planned obsolescence for it to not wind up being used that way.

Re:welcome to the future

[exomondo]

That survey is almost 5 years old. A lot changed in the interim. GPL v3 got widespread uptake, showing the mood of the developer community, and a number of companies have taken high profile and flagrant advantage of apparent loopholes in GPLv2.

Still, anyone that hasn't used the boilerplate FSF license and/or state 'any later versions', will have to agree to the change in licensing of their code. That is an enormous job in itself.

It's usually a mistake to speak in absolutes about what Linus will or won't do.

I didn't say anything about what he will/won't do, it's the fact that - like i said - he can't just re-license linux because there is code there that is not his to re-license. It's not just up to Linus.

Motorola = slow, bad updates

[t2t10]

If Motorola actually did a decent job at rolling out software updates that they committed to, this would matter less.

But Motorola often rolls out buggy updates and fails to provide the updates that they said they were going to provide.

So, Motorola: either clean up your act and provide timely upgrades and updates, or get out of the way and let other people put usable software on your hardware.

they can

[t2t10]

Freedom means nothing if you don't also include the freedom to lock others out.

Where does it say that they don't have that "freedom"? Is anybody suing them for a license violation? Motorola has the freedom to do something stupid, shoot themselves in the foot if they like, and no license or legal restriction is keeping them from doing that.

But the freedom to do something stupid doesn't mean freedom from criticism or bad publicity for your products. That's the way free markets is supposed to work: companies that make bad choices go out of business.

Re:Sticks to guns?

[Duradin]

Someone must have never seen The Untouchables.

Motorola is correct

[droidsURlooking4]

I should know

Re:welcome to the future

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Wrong.

Bsd is also free(as in beer). This could've been done on bsd with a restrictive license.

Right, because Moto is Apple

[dysonlu]

Using Apple as an example is stupid. For one thing, does Motorola have a cult following?

I wonder if your post was just an excuse to boast about how great Apple is.

Re:welcome to the future

[WGFCrafty]

I believe that's why he wrote "Torvalds et all(sic)"

Re:welcome to the future

[Anonymous Coward]

It does not have to be the whole kernel. _If_ the linux developers were actually interested in it, they could make using linux without GPL3 very difficult very fast: pick an important component that is estimated to have lots of cool new features in the future, and start relicensing files in that component and only accept new GPLv3 code there. Pretty soon the delta between the "clean" GPLv2 version and the new GPLv2+3 hybrid is so big that backporting changes is a major pain.

GPL is a source code license: licensing some source file with one license and another file with another license is just fine. This is not a case of "can't do it", it's a case of "not interested, not now at least".

Re:Sticks to guns?

[Anne Thwacks]

Or a Jackie Chan movie

Apple doesn't sell a commodity

[rsborg]

Motorola plays in the commodity Android space. You know, where features rule and competition is fierce.

Apple doesn't play by those rules and makes up their own... but they write their own OS, design their own chip, and create a unique product out of the whole mess.

Apple "gets away" with their arrogance because they have something other companies don't... and consumers like what they have.

What has Moto done lately that HTC or Samsung can't match?

Re:Apple doesn't sell a commodity

[h4rr4r]

Write their own OS? It is Next.
Design their own chip? It is a fucking A8 from cortex like everyone else. Their product is not unique either.

Re:welcome to the future

[Magada]

I think you're wrong. Google sells eyeballs. From their point of view, the cheaper the bandwidth, the software and the hardware required to get at those eyeballs get, the better.The software is free so it's one out of three already. Two out of three if you count the el-cheapo Chinese Nexus clones (as well as the slightly better offerings from HTC, LG, Samsung).

The carriers are all that's standing between Google and its goal. Sooner or later, one of 'em is gonna blink.

Re:welcome to the future

[jonwil]

Yep, the N900 is far more open than ANY Android handset (Nexus S included)

They are certainly provocative

[kikito]

Motorola has just halved the hacking time of their phones to a half.

Nothing excites hackers more than a challenge!

different from my experience

[batistuta]

I'm by no means implying that you are wrong, just that my experience is usually different so I wanted to share that. Guys typically listen carefully for advice and if they're buying online, they tend to get what you recommend them. But if they go to the store and the sales guy tells them "this is like the one you wanted but cheaper", then they buy their suggestion without consulting back. Women are in my experience a complete different story. I have been asked many times for advice when purchasing a computer, digital camera, external hard drive, etc, and the experience can be quite frustrating. Sometimes I spend hours researching the best option of them. Then they go to the store and buy a Casio camera because it was a nice "red" color or a Sony Vaio because it was slim, purple, and has a nice pattern on the lid. Now I don't spend so much time researching for them anymore. I let them get advice from the store and ask them to just double check with me. If the product is acceptable, I tell them to go ahead as long as they like it. I don't let them buy crap, but I don't fight for what I consider the best option either. And not because I've become a jerk or something, but because I've learned that the most important thing is that *they* are happy. And if a red camera makes them happy, then they should go for it.

Re:different from my experience

[mug funky]

i would love to be able to afford a RED camera...

Dear Motorola

[MemoryDragon]

I dont have a problem with your attitude either, I simply dont buy the droid phones because of it. Last year you probably lost 1200 USD on phone sales to HTC by me alone, if you can live with it then look at your european sales numbers they are mediocre at best and ask yourself why is that so?
In the meanwhile phones from HTC, Samsung etc.. sell like crazy!
Droid doesnt for me and neither will be the upcoming Tablet!

Re:Which smartphone for OS development?

[Anonymous Coward]

N900 or OpenMoko

Open mouth... bite their own ass.

[Stumbles]

Some one will figure out a method when you read an email it will brick the POS.

Advice from my side

[MemoryDragon]

If you want an open phone and if you want kickass hardware, then always buy the latest Nexus which is offered or branded from Google. So far every Nexus had an official way on unlocking the bootloader. I have bought a Nexus One last year and I am still happy with it, but I will skip the Nexus S. The N1 serves me well and the community rom support still is top notch thanks to its openness. I expect the Nexus S will be similar in this regard.

Doesn't surprise me

[rec9140]

Lets look at another sector of the Motorola phone division, iDEN..

i1 - V1.5 when 2.1 was just released
i886 - About to be released, and guess what... V1.5! AGAIN!

Oh.. an update to the i1, fixes some bugs.. but STILL 1.5!

The reason... motorola is too lazy to update 2.2, 2.3 to work with the iDEN baseband.. so they just keep releasing devices with this.

The outcry from the iDEN crowd about this was not pleasant and then the efuse crap hit the Droids and the bad 'tude at M started to really kick in!

So the OS that SAVED THE PHONE DIVISION is going to RUN OFF CUSTOMERS ! ?! ?!?!?!? Is that really a good marketing strategy?

WE don't want you to purchase our phones! Go away! ! !

I was looking at a Droid Pro.. but the "go away" 'tude..

OK I will! And did... I got an LG! And saved $150!

Bad move motorola... kiss the phone division goodbye!

Re:welcome to the future

[SharpFang]

If Torvalds et all changed the kernel's license to GPLv3, Google and the phone manufacturers would either have to comply with it or stop upgrading.

Or fork. Never forget this option.

Re:welcome to the future

[kangsterizer]

unfortunately the N900 is bulky and very last year.
but yes, if anything was near the N900 *today* i'd take it. but there is nothing. the best you can get today toward openess that has decent hardware specs is the Nexus S. Still a far cry from the N900. But at least it's fast and slim.

Re:welcome to the future

[kangsterizer]

But for that, the community must be smart and use the right kind of license, eg GPLv3, but not BSD. If the Linux/embedded systems developers drop the ball and continue to use the wrong kinds of licences (GPLv2 is not good enough), then the future you talk about will certainly happen

There is no "commmunity" here. There are only developers who need to keep a roof over their head and food on the table. Developers who will program for any platform - open or closed - that promises a decent return for their time and effort.

Not quite true, and that's why open source works at all. Because it's not quite true :p
Most developers code closed source for a living and open source for fun.. and this has resulted in open source taking over a lot of stuff.

Re:welcome to the future

[Alanis Morissette]

Google and google alone chose to base Android on the Linux kernel and apache harmony libraries so yes, they are entirely responsible for the resultant license. Correction: they bought Android in order to claw their way back up with Apple as quickly as possible.

Boy, the Google apologists are rapidly catching up with the Apple apologists and may even surpass them in a future release ;)

Re:Sticks to guns?

[zippthorne]

IIRC, it didn't work out so well for Sean Connory's character...

Supportability

[brunes69]

The argument against allowing custom ROMs usually comes down to one of supportability. A company can not be reasonably expected to sit back and honour their warranty while you go around flashing custom modem firmware that could brick your device at any moment.

What they should come up with, is a hardware-level version of the water immersion sticker. An eFuse write-once-only bit that, if an unauthorized firmware is detected, gets set. From that moment on, your warranty is void.

This solves all problems. Hackers can install their own ROMs if they want, and Motorola does not have to worry about support fees.

Google would just fork it.

[bledri]

... If Torvalds et all changed the kernel's license to GPLv3, Google and the phone manufacturers would either have to comply with it or stop upgrading. ...

Google would just fork the latest GPLv2 version, maybe call it Antix. The 2.6 kernel is not going anywhere soon, companies that use Linux would continue to contribute to the GPLv2 fork and use it. There would be screaming and gnashing of teeth and then everything would be about the same. The embedded companies like MontaVista would switch to the GPLv2 fork, probably RedHat too. Maybe virtually everyone except Debian. In geek land there would be flamewars galore. Some of the volunteers might refuse to work on the v2 fork. But most people that get paid to work on Linux would end up doing on the new v2 fork. It's work, on a platform that doesn't suck, it pays the bills, and would still contribute back for others to use. No one else would notice.

Open or "open"

[leuk_he]

Androids big advange is that is is open (compared to iPhone). All apps can run upon i without approval from the apple app store border. That does not make iPhone bad, it can still give a very good expierence.

But if you have an adroid phone, that is supposed to be open , and then you start locking a (big) part down, then you are limping: You don't have the advantage of an completely open platform and you don't have the advantage of closed expensive controlled fantasy environment of the iPhone.

If you do a thing, do it good. iPhone is a good closed platform.
Android is a good open platform.
Motorola is good at ?? making deals with carriers???

Re:Open or "open"

[uglyduckling]

Wow, I think you might win the award for the most balanced reply to an iPhone-related post in the past 18 months on Slashdot :).

I like your reasoning, I guess the big challenge for Android is that companies will inevitably see it as a free ride to adopt, customise and close down, like the numerous busybox-based broadband routers over the past years, but on a much larger scale. Ultimately I think the market will decide, a lot of the old school phone manufacturers just don't get it. Plenty probably never will: look at how many companies released a crippled PC-not-quite-compatible over the past 25 years, until the market settled down.

Locked down... to two release schedules

[frikazoyd]

As a computer scientist, you also realize that you're putting yourself at the mercy of *TWO* development teams, and *TWO* release schedules in the event that a major exploit or bug is found? In theory it's a good way to ensure security, but it also means that you have to wait for Motorola to release an update that Google patched and released already.

Re:Locked down... to two release schedules

[I8TheWorm]

Three really. Don't forget the provider has to "tweak" it to install all of their crapware and disable features (such as the DB entry on AT&T Androids that allows app markets other than Google Marketplace).

So who owns your phone?

[richwa]

A simple question. It is my understanding from my local Verizon store that I own my phone. Assuming this is true, and Motorola does chose to brick your phone, than Motorola is destroying your property. According to this same logic, Microsoft should be able to brick my portable simply because it came with Windows and choose to run Linux. So, who owns your cell phone anyway? You, your provider, or the company that made the phone?

Re:welcome to the future

[andydread]

Unfortunately for us Linus Torvalds vehemently supports this Tivoisation. That is the main reason the kernel is still GPLv2 along with the effort to get all the developers to agree to switch. Linus Torvalds is on the record for being against the anti-DRM clause in GPLv3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tivoization Torvalds thinks its ok for hardware manufacturers to block you from running custom firmware. And so what with the advent of all these tablets and other things out there are manufacturers going to do? That remains a good question. Many may follow Tivo and now Motorola's lead. Some manufacturers may see an opportunity and market their phones as user upgradeable and may take a jab at Motorola's campaign against user upgrade-ability. Those Manufacturers would need market clout so as to run a marketing campaign worthy of raising the awareness to users about why this issue is important. Which may draw the ire of the cell providers and prove counter-intuitive. Not even Google has been successful at this to date. The cell providers love this feature and actively push for it. Motorola sees this as a great selling point to their customers. That would be the cell companies, not you or me. They also can leverage this as a way to control the lifespan of the device and therefor entice users to upgrade if they would like to enjoy the new features provided by the newer firmware on a slightly updated device.

Way to be late /.

[StrifeJester]

This story is old news already. And Motorola was asked on their FB page apologized for the comment and said they are working to help developers while protecting users. I am assuming there will be Dev models or something to that extent that cost a touch more but are open. Or they will just do away with it. Motorola just crawled out of near bankruptcy after all. A lot of people try to root android and brick shit this kind of prevents that. In some ways i like it keeps the script kiddies away from the DX makes sure people know their shit before treading there.

The other reason people turn to torrents

[killmenow]

See: http://i.imgur.com/MUQZL.jpg (re: difference between purchased DVD and pirated copy)

Re:welcome to the future

[tepples]

So what should people like my cousin and myself, who live in the USA and want a handheld general purpose computer, buy? Would you recommend the Archos 43?

Re:welcome to the future

[Daniel Phillips]

I didn't say anything about what he will/won't do, it's the fact that - like i said - he can't just re-license linux because there is code there that is not his to re-license. It's not just up to Linus.

If Linus wishes to declare that parts of the kernel can be relicensed with stronger patent protection so long as all the authors of *that part* agree, then it shall be so. The new license does not even have to be GPL v3 per se, it can be a variant explicitly written to be compatible with v2.

I have a child age 6 who is fond of telling me what can or can't be done, especially when it comes to picking things up or finding things. I typically view the stated claims skeptically.

Re:welcome to the future

[Just Some Guy]

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

But he and a few other key devs could license their own personal contributions as GPLv3. Have fun running or maintaining a Linux kernel with no code from Linus, Alan, Con, etc.

really?

[SINternet]

So true mjwx

Re:welcome to the future

[LateArthurDent]

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

Yes, we have been over this and Linus himself has said that he could if he wanted to fairly easily because most of the contributions are made by a small number of people. So he can get the current developers to agree on changing the copyright of all the code they contributed, leave the rest as GPL2, and replace the license in those as those segments get replaced, which he estimated would probably only take about a year or so.

That said, a lot of the contributors to the kernel are companies that would like to continue without GPL3 restrictions. So I'm pretty sure, "would either have to comply with it or stop upgrading" turns into, "actually, we'll start contributing code to the android fork of the kernel and stop contributing code the Linus controlled one." He'd lose that battle if he tried to change the license (not that he wants to).

I'm Disappointed

[profundus]

I'm an average garden vareity user. I've always admired Motorola, even during the dark days before the Droid. Today however, I've been put off Motorola for ever.

I do not need, or intend to install custom ROMs on my phone. As many people said, I'm only interested in the urgent email, photo pf my lunch and tweets. I do however take offense at not being able to do something for a device that I've paid for.

I take offense at being patronised. If I'm savvy enough to install a custom ROM on my phone, then I know I'm doing it at my own risk. I'm sick and tired of the suits trying to control me.

They are everywhere, trying to take control of my phone, my console, my internet even! What is the take of you guys on this? (And meanwhile, I'm probably going to stick to a dumb phone now, and get myself a tablet or something).

Re:welcome to the future

[coofercat]

Unfortunately, all that openness has lead to a phone that has crappy rough-edged core applications, few useful 'apps' and zero street-cred.Conversely, the iphone has no openness, good core apps (not perfect, but good), loads of 'apps' and oodles of street-cred.

Now. if you were a phone company, which would you prefer?

Re:welcome to the future

[mounthood]

True. Google however can change the license on Android to GPL3 since all contributions require copyright assignment. What fun that would be.

They use laws against us, fair turnabout

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

Especially since THEY have a law called the DMCA which they will use to make it illegal for you to break encryption.

If they can use laws to make it ILLEGAL to break THEIR locks on YOUR property, a law making it illegal for them to put the lock on in the first place is the only way to use your property as you see fit without breaking the law.

If they don't want laws telling them what they can do with their products and putting on encryption, they should get rid of laws tell US what we can do with what is now OUR (bought and paid for) products and BREAKING encryption.

Bypassing freedom

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

And, like all forms of this type of restriction, it was bypassed.

And, like all forms of this type of bypassing restrictions, it will be considered illegal under the DMCA, and a court will take money or even freedom from those that participate.

How does a $100,000 judgement and having everything you own sold off and being in debt for the rest of your life, or getting hit with a Federal felony and spending 5 years in a Federal penitentiary being physically attacked and if you survive to get out, being without the ability to get many jobs, own many types of businesses or have basic civil rights sound?

They are allowed to block US from using OUR (bought and paid for) products as we see fit, and it is illegal to circumvent those blocks.

Perhaps the exceptions in the DMCA make it legal, but if a court says no, the answer is NO. If a court says the sky is red, they consider it red, even if it is blue.

That's why I went with HTC

[gsgleason]

The Droid X has the efuse. The Droid 2 does not.

either way, that's why I went with the HTC Incredible instead of any Motorola products.

Re:welcome to the future

[h4rr4r]

This is why BSD was not used. Without the GPL forcing peoples hands BSD has no where near the hardware support no use in embedded platforms.

Wouldn't affect me

[Brannon]

Because I don't own a Motorola. I own an iPhone. Apple likes its customers and tries not to cultivate hatred amongst them.

All companies which produce locked-down appliances are not equal.

Re:welcome to the future

[EnglishTim]

Even if they were able to able to switch to GPLv3, it would just result in a fork of Linux. Who's to say which one would end up being more successful?

Re:welcome to the future

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

You mean like OSX?

The argument that a vast majority of non-techie users are flocking to android because it's open and using Linux doesn't hold water. Google, well, Android Inc., went with Linux. Android just happens to be free as in beer to the OEMs. Which is possible with a BSD derivative too.

Re:welcome to the future

[exomondo]

If Linus wishes to declare that parts of the kernel can be relicensed with stronger patent protection so long as all the authors of *that part* agree, then it shall be so.

That's what i said, Linus can't do it, he requires the approval of the developers of the code he wishes to change, it's not just up to him.

Re:welcome to the future

[M. Baranczak]

Oh, they can. But why would they? Their main goal is keeping the hardware makers happy.

Is this what Android users think "Open" is?

[shatfield]

Ok... so you can download Android, make changes to it and then compile it. Then what? Apparently actually using your compiled Android OS is not possible... so I guess "Open", when speaking about Android, falls just shy of "useful".

Re:welcome to the future

[Daniel Phillips]

What Linus *can* do is introduce the rule that intrusions of more strongly protected code are allowed in the kernel.

Basically, the Linux kernel can be licensed however Linus wants. He obviously needs to stick close to the implied contract with developers and obey the law, but otherwise it comes down to: are people going to keep downloading his code tree, or somebody else's? Foggy day in hell when the latter happens. Even Red Hat could not pull that off for more than a short time.

Re:welcome to the future

[exomondo]

What Linus *can* do is introduce the rule that intrusions of more strongly protected code are allowed in the kernel.

Well the potential for this already exists with the GPL in the case where the 'or later version' is specified, the problem is it is not everywhere so since GPLv2 and GPLv3 are incompatible licenses he can't relicense it.

Re:welcome to the future

[Daniel Phillips]

Linus explicitly banned the "or later version" feature from kernel licensing, so that does not come into it. The point remains that however Linus wants to license the kernel is the way it will be licensed, so long as it stays within the bounds of reason, does not conflict with legal requirements and does not drive away more developer talent than it attracts.

There is a lot of bleating about what Linus can't do, and a lot of it is mostly just so much blather to justify a personal position. Nothing stops that personal position from changing if it becomes expedient, and if it does there will be more blather to support that. Life goes on, it's mostly forward progress.

Re:welcome to the future

[exomondo]

Linus explicitly banned the "or later version" feature from kernel licensing, so that does not come into it.

It *does* come into it since some of the code has been licensed in that way and as such explicit permission from those authors would not need to be obtained if that code were to be distributed under a GPLv3 license.

The point remains that however Linus wants to license the kernel is the way it will be licensed, so long as it stays within the bounds of reason, does not conflict with legal requirements and does not drive away more developer talent than it attracts.

And i've already explained that he CAN'T do that for the GPLv3.

The only way that could be done is for all (well legally 95%) of developers to give consent, Linus cannot give consent for them hence he cannot relicense it to GPLv3.

Re:welcome to the future

[mounthood]

Yesterday I would have agreed there was no reason, but now that you ask, here's a reason: After fighting Oracle they don't want each handset vendor to payout and make separate arrangements, fragmenting Android implementations. Changing the next-big-release to GPL3 would force everyone to play by the same rules - patent agreements included.

Uh, What?!?

[LordDCLXVI]

"If you want to do custom roms, then buy elsewhere..." - OK... then we will.

Re:Minority Opinion...

[triffid_98]

Absolutely, thanks for correcting me on this. This is also why stealing phones is not a big issue (for most phones there is no easy way to spoof/update the IMEI)..see also Cloning