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Motorola Releases an Official Bootloader Unlocker
New submitter Nertskull writes "Motorola has released a tool to allow anyone to unlock the bootloader on their phone/tablet. The only supported device so far is the Photon Q 4G LTE, though three other devices are supported through their developer unlock program. Support for unlocking other devices is supposedly on its way."
Motorola leads into the unlocking process with this amusing tidbit: "WARNING: Motorola strongly recommends against unlocking the bootloader and/or modifying or altering a device's software or operating system. Doing so can have unintended, unforeseen, and dangerous consequences, such as rendering the device unusable, violating applicable laws, or causing property damage and/or bodily injury, including death." Careful, folks; unlocking that bootloader might kill you.
Unlocking your bootloader *can* kill you. Mind you, it also requires that after unlocking, you also root your device and send the CPU into overdrive, causing the Li-Ion battery to melt/explode. So it's not a proximate cause, but the potential is still there.
We've seen companies opening up in the past and often they started closing down again after time. Let us hope they stay open and even more, let us hope it works for them from a business perspective, so that other companies may follow.
As long as the guys in the suits think they make more money by closing down, we still have a problem.
When is Apple following suit?
No, it just sound like they are covering their asses from law suits.
"I have downloaded hundreds and hundreds of records, why would I care if somebody downloads ours?" Robin Pecknold
Turn Left! Or so the Nav system of my unlocked phone said, even though I was in the middle of the bridge...
You know what else would be nice, Motorola? With your unlocking tool, how about updated drivers for the latest version of Android for at least 3 years into the life of each phone. Having an unlocked boot loader is great but actually being able to install Android version++ and having everything work would be even better.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
Adding a few words to a disclaimer and accepting a little mockery is a hell of a lot cheaper than the lawsuit when someone, somehow manages to kill themselves with a software change...
They of course have to cover all their legal bases. Some dolt could theoretically get their battery to catch fire and burn their house down.
Indeed. Someone could sue saying, my relative unlocked the bootloader, which broke the brand new phone, giving him or her a heart attack, and there was no way to call 911.
A disclaimer like this also gives a good deal of publicity to the announcement, almost begging an article like this to be posted.
The world's smartest bug zapper www.zapstats.com/kickstarter
yup, last time I saw someone do an 'rm -rf' he lost one of his fingers. and once, a friend of a friend tried running fdisk and to this day, he still can't talk right.
it can happen, folks! believe it.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Rooted custom OS leads to installing from "Uknown Sources." Installing apps from unknown sources leads to installing pirated apps. Installing pirated apps leads to installing pirated media. Pirating media leads to terrorism. Terrorism leads to death. QED.
actually this is real possibility, because of pressure for battery capacity and size manufacturers of most smartphones have to use some very unstable materials for battery ones that DID have exploding problems before.
in order to stop batteries from overheating or exploding there are pretty sophisticated chips /controllers built-in controlling their allowed charge rate/charge current/allowed discharge percentage/discharge speed, if by unlocking boot-loader you are able to access/reprogram battery controller you could because of software error cause battery to overheat or explode so this disclaimer is more than valid as in
"we put some mechanisms to protect you in this phone, should you remove it and hurt yourself somehow its your fault we are not paying a million bucks for damages to you or your family"
Yeah, the Yakuza take system administration very seriously.
Thank you Motorola.
----- obSig
Keep the ignorant ignorant and stop the stupid killing themselves. Sensible really. When Fast Food restaurants have to warn people that coffee might be a tad hot, I'm not suprised to see Google/Motorola do something like this to stop the ignorant from breaking their phones and suing them for it. Although in my opinion, a disclaimer similar to the MIT license would have been better than a warning akin to that on high voltage cabling. Ah well, that's the way the world is heading...
If you gave me a choice between a printer and a giraffe with explosive diarrhoea, i'll get my ladder and my raincoat
Yeah... this was probably one of the reasons. My Tilt 2 on CM7.2 was unstable enough that it would encounter kernel panic every so often (especially when the radio would lose signal, then try to regain it. A RIL panic was common).
There were a few times I ended up in the Ghetto because the thing would reboot while in the middle of Navigation; and it took at least 5 minutes on an extremely clear day to get a GPS lock.
It is nice having a phone I can root that is rather stable on CM10 (Gnex)
...violating applicable laws...
That I can violate some law by altering a product I bought always interests me. I suppose if I sharpen one end of my android phone and plunge it into some one's chest I'd be violating a law, much as if I had welded a cow catcher to the front of my car and mowed people down with it. If I add an after market clutch system to it however that seems perfectly fine. There's a whole market for that infact. Rooting MY phone? Some kind of law is broken? What is that??
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
I'm writing this post from my new Virgin HTC Evo V. I spent the past two years locked in to a contract with verizon , stuck with a Motorola droid 2 global.
I have over 10 hours logged on the phone wih Motorolaand Verizon customer vervice, yelling, screaming, and crying because of the lockedbootloader. I told them if they could not unlock thebootloader or keep up with its kernel releases then they would earn a permanent spot on my shitlist and would lose me as a customer for life. I would encourage everyone I knew to join me in boycotting their products. They didn't do either so fuck both of them and they horse they road in on. I spent the better half of the past two years stuck with Froyo and my d2g is still 2.3.3. Verizon's data charges were obscene and the bucket plan looks like a bucket full of two years of rape.
I for one do not welcome our obstinate corporate overlords and prefer space / deep ocean Richard Branson any day of the week.
Why so complicated and technical?
Unlocking the bootloader can cause death, because the one doing the unlocking probably proceeds by rooting his device and putting god knows what on the device.
Next thing you know, the guy is on the road exploiting the GPS functionality of said and unlocked/rooted device. But the GPS is now a bit flaky (just buggy software or intentionally misleading)
and instead directing the guy to the real highway gives him a parallel side-road but displaying to correct one. The guy - feeling really good about everything and listening to the pathetic music
coming off the car-radio - does not notice a thing.
Next thing you know some guerilla guys stop his car, help him get rid of his earthly possessions and one the way to the heavenly roads. Nice and quick.
So, unlocking your bootloader can kill you. And no explosion in your face needed for that to happen.
You've never seen fsck on a mounted file system, have you? Blood everywhere, Even on the ceiling. However, they never did find the bodies.
The problem with that argument is that one might legitimately argue that if there's a safety issue that's mitigated through software, the need for modified firmware to do the same needs to be communicated. 99.9% of damage and hard-bricking is caused by either booby traps left by the manufacturer to trap the unwary, or important details like "always monitor the battery temperature, and back off if it exceeds N degrtees Celsuis" that aren't disclosed.
I'm happy to see that Moto is finally starting to become non-Evil under the ownership of Google. I'm disappointed as hell by the fact that the Photon Q was totally gimped by Sprint and/or Motorola. This would be a great phone if it were in a blister pack at Wal Mart being sold for use with some value-priced prepay network. It's not, however, a top-tier best of breed flagship Android phone:
* 540x960 qHD. WTF?!? 540x960? And not even OLED? The Q's display is a decisive step down from the Photon 4G. Note to Sprint & Moto: the next generation of any phone is supposed to AT LEAST as good as what it replaced, especially now that we're going to be stuck with the damn phone for almost two painfully long years thanks to last year's abolition of 12-month upgrades.
* tiny battery that can't even be swapped when it dies halfway through Friday night. If they'd put a huge battery inside like the one in the Razr Max, it might have been tolerable. But 1785mAH? You can't be fucking serious. I'd literally burn through that in 3 hours.
* Half the flash of its predecessor. WTF. Read the note above about how successor phones are supposed to be a step up, not down.
* Nonremovable SIM. Yay, it can roam on GSM in other countries... except at $2.50/minute, nobody is going to actually DO it knowingly and voluntarily once they find out how badly Sprint is going to rape them for doing it. Overall, this is just kind of like Sprint turning around and giving us a final kick in the balls, just for good measure.
It's been years since I've actually left the US, but the sealed-SIM anti-feature ALONE is enough to make me want to leave Sprint, because it demonstrates total and complete contempt towards us. I mean, really... once you factor in the administrative cost of roaming, and fighting with livid customers who just got a bill for $900 in roaming charges after spending 3 days in Montreal, how much extra is Sprint *really* going to make compared to what they would have not made by just giving it a normal SIM slot and charging a $35-50 one-time admin fee to unlock the SIM lock during the first year of a contract? Sprint could even offer an olive branch to deflect criticism and waive the fee if the customer puts down a $400 deposit that gets returned after the contract's 12th month (knowing that 99.9% of customers would just say 'fuck it' and pay the $35-50).
It's a shame, because I love Motorola's build quality and superior radios. But the harsh fact is, I'm going to be stuck with my next phone for 20 long, painful months now that Sprint has taken away our annual upgrades, so my next phone has to be damn near flawless & one I'm sure I'll be able to live with. The Photon Q is not that phone. I can only pray to the flying spaghetti monster that 18 months from now, Sprint + Moto will be unleashing an unlocked Nexus device with specs to die for.
Turn Left! Or so the Nav system of my unlocked phone said, even though I was in the middle of the bridge...
My LOCKED nav system did just about that to me last year.
I was driving east into Hawthorne NV on an old desert road. Coming through the last pass it told me to turn left midway through the last pass.. Taking the turn would have sent me down about a hundred feet of cliff.
It looks like there was once a wagon road there, which had washed out long ago. Of course the USGS still had the track on their maps, the map vendor had included it, and the nav system picked it because it was slightly shorter than going down the hill to the highway into town.
Some of our friends in a Prius were directed onto the 4x4 trail into Bodie. (Fortunately it was midsummer, and they were JUST able to make it - much to the astonishment of a couple of offroaders they encountered along the way.)
Trusting nav systems, especially in rural areas, is a great way to get killed (typically by getting stuck far from cellphone service), unlocked phone or not.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Please mod parent up. This is not a hypothetical issue: there have been issues with getting 911/emergency dialing to work on some phones with custom ROMs. Certain models of the first generation Samsung Galaxy had this problem.
What if a hacker added a hidden denial-of-service attack function to a ROM that was widely downloaded?
How can you be sure that no one has?
As I read their entry in wikipedia:
- There was pressure from the Android community.
-- Motorola promised an unlocking tool "by the second half of 2011".
- When it didn't appear, complaints were mad to the FCC about violation of a Part C rule that appears to REQUIRE a way for ordinary users to unlock the bootloader and load anything they want.
So this may be Motorola's response, 14 1/2 months late.
I wouldn't be surprised if Motorola held off, or limited the models unlocked, to avoid violating contract provisions with carriers that resell their phones with their service plans at greatly discounted prices.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I see how you might overheat your phone cpu or battery, but I thought all that ever came from that was a burned crotch! Apple... >_>
Depends on what you do with the phone after it's been unlocked -- Personally, I'm glad they're not hiding it anymore, at least we know the risks: Run afoul of any powerful organisations today and you get disappeared.
This disclaimer is not nearly as silly or crazy as one might think. CyanogenMod, for example, has well-documented problems with E911 functionality on various phone models. In fact they completely dropped support for the T-Mobile Samsung Vibrant because dialing 911 didn't work!
I don't know about you, but I can sure see the inability to call 911 to be a "dangerous consequence" that could absolutely lead to "property damage and/or bodily injury, including death" even if it's not the phone itself that's literally the thing killing you.
The answer is much simpler than some silly battery problem. Samuel L. Jackson is not a fan of unlocked bootloaders. In fact, he's mother@%$#ing tired of these ^%@#$ing unlocked bootloaders, and he's going to open up a very, very large cap of whupass on everyone who installs one.
So...pretty comprehensive disclaimer. I used to stick a half page one at the end of most of my work, talking about incorrect line voltages and pirates.
In that case the phone isn't casing death. it just caused life avoidance.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
But mutant ninja bootlockers are a bigger risk!
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
"Use the source Luke.."
15TW = 15,000 Nuclear Reactors. (Approx. one accident a month.)
I actually got a good giggle out of your comment. In addition to those I had during writing my previous one.
Thank you.
An unlocked boot loader allows you to flash a new recovery (such as ClockWorkMod) that allows you to flash ZIPs containing new ROMs, Kernels, and other things.
Unlocking the boot loader varies between companies and even phones. My Tilt 2 needed Hard SPL (It was a winmo phone) flashed to replace the stock SPL, that way I could flash CWM on it before getting CM7. My current phone (A Galaxy Nexus) only requires a simple "fastboot oem unlock" command sent to it while in fastboot.
The guys that find a way to unlock it basically reverse engineer it and often find some sort of exploit that they can use to gain access. Many companies keep the phones hard to unlock primarily for 2 reasons: Warranty (since it is possible to brick/damage your phone if you're an idiot) and also as a form of DRM. If you have root access to your phone, it is exceptionally easy to pirate applications.
About fucking time.
Clearly you have never heard of "I Can Walk Blindfolded Using The Force", a slick new app that hums when danger is near. Of course, if some bozo roots their phone and disables the danger sensors, you really can't expect ICWBUTF to work properly, can you? And boom, another user is dead. Long live Clu.
I have a fist full of LiIon 14500 batteries (approximately AA size and shape) each with a dead simple protection circuit on one end that provides current limiting and over-discharge protection. They can be bought for a few cents each in quantity 1 (so imagine what 10,000 would have as a unit price). It's just a tiny bit of analog electronics on a surface mount chip.
There's no great magic to charge circuits either. Voltage limit to the cell's max, and current limit to the desired rate of charge (1C or so quite frequently).
There's little excuse not to do that in a cellphone given that firmware can have bugs and phones can and do lock up.
There are everywhere on the world bodies regulating radio emission (FCC in the USA for example. A little bit more complicated in the EU).
All these bodies have one official goal: Make sure all the devices play nicely with each other.
Unlocked device means: user can install god knows what on the device.
Including flashing hacked radio firmware to give better/stronger signal, at the cost of going out of official specs and recommendation.
Which brings the risk of b0rking nearby sensitive and vital electronic equipment.
A smartphone with an "overboosted signal" radio firmware walking around a hospital might be a little bit frightening.
And all these (exploding battery, GPS leading to false directions, radio-interferences) are just a few of the situation where a phone can be problematic.
In some Suing-happy countries full of trigger happy lawyers, it might be useful to put a sticker on the unlocked saying "it's your fault if you cause death".
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]