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

[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

[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

[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.

"Then buy elsewhere"

[SquirrelDeth]

Fine I will.dumbasses

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.

Bootloader Feedback Policy

[Vap1d-]

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

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: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.

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: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.

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:Is that a challenge?

[mea_culpa]

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

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: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.