Droid X Self-Destructs If You Try To Mod 757
An anonymous reader writes with some discouraging news for hack-oriented purchasers of the new Droid X phone: "If the eFuse fails to verify [the firmware information (what we call ROMS), the kernel information, and the bootloader version], then the eFuse receives a command to 'blow the fuse' or 'trip the fuse.' This results in the booting process becoming corrupted, followed by a permanent bricking of the phone. This FailSafe is activated anytime the bootloader is tampered with or any of the above three parts of the phone has been tampered with."
Who cares (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:iPhone Evil, Android Good (Score:5, Insightful)
In this case it's more a case of "Motorola Evil". Google provides the OS but the manufacturer still integrates it into the device.
My next upgrades isn't until December, but I can already say that Droid X is off the table. Hopefully HTC will have out something new and shiny by then. If not, I'll still go for the Incredible over the X. I've had nothing but trouble from Motorola phones anyways.
How is this legal? (Score:5, Insightful)
If I purchase the phone outright, wouldn't this be willful destruction of property on Motorola's part? Does a company have the right to destroy a purchased product - after the sale - if the consumer doesn't use it in a prescribed manner?
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Not a good idea, Moto and Verizon... (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah... I guess I won't be buying a DroidX then. Sad, really... I was looking forward to getting one when the contract was up on my Droid.
And I've been very happy with my Droid. Now, one wonders...was this done to suit Verizon or if it was on Moto's own thinking that it was done. I might not have modded my phone when I got it, but doing things like this are a real put-off. I bought the phone, it's mine to do with as I see fit- and putting in things like this take that away from me. It turns it into Motorola's device or Verizon's device and I'm just renting it. Sorry, you SOLD me a phone guys and if you're concerned about "user experience" or "risks to the network" design the damn phone to not need to be concerned about EITHER- and anything else is lying to the customer outright.
I do, actually... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure they will... But I don't appreciate having them try to transform it more into a rental of the device than a sale- and then framing it in as a sale. I'm sure there's other people that'll view it the same way as I.
Sadly, I'm fairly sure Verizon asked Moto to do this- they always seem to find a way to miss the point and try to assert "control" over everything.
Re:So, are there reasons for this? (Score:3, Insightful)
More likely covering their asses against the FCC.
Invitation to brick? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because of this setup--isn't it entirely possible that some sort of malware can be created to actually attempt to brick the phone by triggering efuse?
It's the principle of the thing and more. (Score:5, Insightful)
A hardware company actually put a self-destruct mechanism in the phone when you change the software.
A. This will get tripped accidentally, even for naive users, and will cost owners money to fix.
B. This violates the idea of ownership of the device. Motorola figures that they're licensing you parts, not selling. For an "open" OS, this is insane.
C. Once you get around it, unless you can destroy the code, you still have that thing hanging around. A mistake or bad combination later on could trip it -- there's no reason to have to put up with walking through a minefield.
All this translates to "Spread the news, blacklist the phone, send a message to Motorola." Because if this goes on as a "who cares" thing, all Motorola Android phones will have it in future and other companies will follow suit.
This needs to be a black eye for Motorola, they need to notice that, and they need to quickly backpedal.
+1000. Goodbye Moto, Hello HTC (Score:5, Insightful)
This is just another nail in the coffin for Motorola, who becomes more and more irrelevant every year, being pushed out of the market on both sides by Apple and HTC.
HTC makes the most robust and moddable phones on the planet, and do not try to stop the modding in any way - in fact one may say they passively encourage it.
This post is coming from someone who owns a 4 year old HTC Vogue that came shipped with Windows mobile 6.0, but thanks to the modders, has been upgraded to 6.1 and 6.5, and more recently ove rthe past 3 months, has been running a fully working version of Android that is lightning fast. All on 4 year old hardware.
This is what can be done when you don't shut out your customers - I am an HTC purchaser for life now.
Citation needed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:iPhone Evil, Android Good (Score:5, Insightful)
There's also another OS that is based upon open source components from Mach, FreeBSD, GNU and KDE which allows me to install whatever I want without having to jailbreak, root, break bootloaders, etc...Clicky [apple.com]
Re:Ouch (Score:5, Insightful)
In reality, the main appeal of Android operating systems is that they give phone manufacturers a serious competitor to Apple and they don't have to pay Microsoft. Not to mention, they probably don't care for Windows Mobile.
The problem is that what made the Android OS a serious competitor to Apple was that it wasn't locked. If a phone running Android is locked as tight as an Iphone, I may as well get the Iphone and the "coolness" of owning an Apple product.
Re:Sounds like (Score:1, Insightful)
Which is basically what he was saying. Droid is a line of Motorola smartphones, and this certainly is a good reason to stay away from it. Where did the OS even come into this?
A nice class-action suit (Score:5, Insightful)
I hope Motorola get's a nice class-action suit out of this.
Imagine a nice little virus, designed to trigger the 'self-destruct' and some innocent users getting infected.
Markus
Re:iPhone Evil, Android Good (Score:2, Insightful)
Apple evil, Google good.
And it still holds.
Google can't be responsible for everyone else though.
(But they for sure could restrict usage for more open phones by pushing whatever demands they wanted. The risk for them of course would be that phone companies may decide to pick another product and hence Google would lose the data of their consumers. In a perfect world I would had preferred a "open" phone as far as the OS goes directly from Google, which is sure to run future versions. Stock everything would be fine. I trust them much more than any third-party provider.)
Re:Who cares (Score:4, Insightful)
I've already found a way to get around this. I'll never buy one.
Just add Motorola (and/or Verizon) to the list of companies that don't understand open platforms or respect end user rights. There are other pricey toys out there to choose from.
Re:Goodbye Moto (Score:3, Insightful)
It's a great time to dump Moto stock ! (Score:1, Insightful)
Motorola ... how the once mighty have fallen.
Don't these idiots GET IT ?
99% of users will never try to hack their phones.
The 1% who do and end up with a brick will make this situation
world-famous, and Moto will end up looking like assholes.
I for one will never buy a Moto phone again, after the last one I owned
( RAZR, what a piece of crap that was ).
Re:It's the principle of the thing and more. (Score:3, Insightful)
The thing is, the great unwashed masses are probably never going to know or care that this is in there sadly.
The type of "geniuses" that work in mobile phone shops aren't going to be able to explain what it does or why either.
Re:How is this legal? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Ouch (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't forget that Motorola phones only have a few die-hards working on ROMS. Compare the forum for the CLIQ on modmymoto.com to the ones for HTC devices on xda-developers. The iPhone also has a big jailbreaking/modding scene, and I'm sure there will be a bunch of cool apps on Cydia once iOS 4.1 comes out and is jailbroken.
If I were to buy an Android phone, I'd go with an N1, or the "official" Google stuff. Second choice will be almost any HTC device because they actually put out source and tools to help with modding.
Re:Invitation to brick? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yep. And you can rest assured, since it's a smartphone, someone, somewhere will find a social engineering exploit to trick people into zapping their phones this way.
Re:Invitation to brick? (Score:3, Insightful)
However, every piece of software has bugs and many OSes have had escalation exploits, so it certainly is within the realm of possibility.
As do other products... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I do, actually... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sadly, I'm fairly sure Verizon asked Moto to do this- they always seem to find a way to miss the point and try to assert "control" over everything.
Remember Verizon's "open network" imitative that was announced in 2008? Two years ago -- so where's my market for open non-branded devices that I can use on the Verizon Network? Surely they didn't make that announcement just to forestall regulation and maintain their walled garden, right?
Re:It's a wonderful New World (Score:3, Insightful)
Wasn't the android phones meant to be the openish alternative to the wall^H^H^H^Hputrid compost offered by Apple?
No.
The Android operating system was meant to be an openish alternative for the phone manufacturers. It's up to them to repeat apples ways by walling up their phones too.
Butthey shouldn't forget that people who trade in a stable system with a hand-picked selection of possibel apps for a locked down system tend to buy an iPhone in the first place.
Re:It's the principle of the thing and more. (Score:4, Insightful)
Open Software != Open Hardware. Just throwin' that out there.
Re:Easy for hackers to fix? (Score:2, Insightful)
Return the devices for refund. Tell Verizon why.
Re:Who cares (Score:4, Insightful)
The way around it is simple -- don't buy one! It's not like there aren't any other Android phones out there.
Re:It's the principle of the thing and more. (Score:3, Insightful)
The more correct phone analogy for your car analogy would be try removing the innards of the phone battery, using tools made of highly reactive materials.
The correct car analogy would be to replace the ECU unit with an aftermarket unit. It's done all the time in certain circles, much like those that wish to mod phones. To further go down and tie the 2 analogies together, now imagine car manufacturers put air bag explosives on the ECU socket. Would you buy such a car?
Tivoization (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:After enduring all that vitrolic (Score:3, Insightful)
If consumers ignore the Droid and other phones that implement such anti-consumer chips, then it'll be a victory for Android users, resiting attempts to take away from the openness of the platform.
Re:It's the principle of the thing and more. (Score:3, Insightful)
A. This will get tripped accidentally, even for naive users, and will cost owners money to fix.
B. This violates the idea of ownership of the device. Motorola figures that they're licensing you parts, not selling. For an "open" OS, this is insane.
C. Once you get around it, unless you can destroy the code, you still have that thing hanging around. A mistake or bad combination later on could trip it -- there's no reason to have to put up with walking through a minefield.
And absolutely none of that creates a negative for Motorola or the carrier. To them, this is the greatest anti-hacker technology ever, and that is how they will advertise it to users, if necessary.
Increases safety! Prevents hacking! Prevents viruses! Safest phone in ages!
Users will flock to it, and us hackers will be a very small joke group consisting of less than one percent of sales. We will make absolutely no difference.
Re:Ouch (Score:2, Insightful)
In reality, the main appeal of Android operating systems is that they give phone manufacturers a serious competitor to Apple and they don't have to pay Microsoft. Not to mention, they probably don't care for Windows Mobile.
The problem is that what made the Android OS a serious competitor to Apple was that it wasn't locked. If a phone running Android is locked as tight as an Iphone, I may as well get the Iphone and the "coolness" of owning an Apple product.
Nah, openness had nothing to do with android being a serious competitor.
Gah, not you necessarily, but so many people latch on to a company/product just like they would a sports team. This isn't sport, this is business, and most people buy what's convenient (standing around at a phone store...walmart, radio shack etc...) and what is seemingly cool (shiny graphics... yay), and more and more, what is cheaper than their current stuff.
The coolness factor is probably a bigger factor than anything else. Apple has sexy commercials for their products. The lesson to be learned here is that sexy sells, technobabble mostly sucks by itself, but throw in cute people and wow, I gots to have that 10g phone with xyz widgets now!
GPL violation? (Score:4, Insightful)
Is all the GPL code in Android under such a version of GPL, that this is legal? I mean, it prevents the user from changing certain parts of the GPL software, something which at least some versions of GPL require, as far as I understand.
Re:After enduring all that vitrolic (Score:3, Insightful)
Android users can buy a different, more open Android device. You've not even got that option on iOS.
GPL v3 (Score:4, Insightful)
Isn't this exactly what the GPL v3 is designed to prevent (Tivo-ization)? Seems like FSF's concerns are once again coming true. Too bad Linux won't ever adopt v3, it seems.
Re:It's the principle of the thing and more. (Score:3, Insightful)
Is that a problem? The great unwashed masses aren't going to be modding their phones.
While I love a good ragefest (Score:5, Insightful)
Droid, DroidX, Droid2 and others -- they all have this efuse, it's nothing new. Perhaps rather than making assumptions based on the presence of a device, someone could do some actual research to find out if this is really a concern? Just because the chip is present does not mean it's configured to brick the phone - it certainly hasn't done so in other Android devices using it.
Re:iPhone Evil, Android Good (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:+1000. Goodbye Moto, Hello HTC (Score:5, Insightful)
As if this will make any difference to the masses?
Please nobody will care about this. If it mattered Verizon wouldn't have any customers at all since it has a long history of locking down phones are removing functionality.
This just isn't on most users radar.
Re:After enduring all that vitrolic (Score:3, Insightful)
Even a locked down self destructing Android phone is 10x more open then an iPhone. You know you can still install your own applications, right? You know you can use your locked up tight Android phone for streaming podcasts (over 3G no less!), tethering, instant messaging, multi-tasking, wifi metering/sniffing, file management, accessing FTP servers, playing non hardware-supported media types, google latitude, free theft protection, customizable home screens, widgets, porn(!), universal file system, change the default launcher, use skype, flash, use non-webkit browsers, use a full bluetooth stack, VOIP, tight google voice integration, expandable memory, remote or local torrent control, reading around the world in 80 days by Jules Verne, offensive apps, installing apps outside the app store, listen to nine inch nails, use alternative music players/music stores, dope wars, watch south park, use alternative keyboards, voice texting/typing, plenty of navigation apps, replace the battery, alternative SMS/alerts/quick reply apps, search emails, apply custom themes, console emulation (nintendo, sega, super nintendo, ps, etc.), sample apps and return them if they suck. The iPhone does none of those things (or does them in some sort of crippled way) so who is laughing at who?
Re:+1000. Goodbye Moto, Hello HTC (Score:3, Insightful)
...
This is what can be done when you don't shut out your customers - I am an HTC purchaser for life now.
Or until HTC does something really stupid and doesn't back down. There are many companies who used to be great, then they changed. I'm not saying HTC will change in a bad way, but you just never know.
Re:It's the principle of the thing and more. (Score:3, Insightful)
you – the customer – from an accident.
How is it protecting the manufacturer from me? How is me modding my device damaging the manufacturer in any way? It's not protecting anything, it's just vengeful destruction.
Re:iPhone Evil, Android Good (Score:1, Insightful)
Where's you god now, Googlebots? WHERE'S YOUR GOD NOW?
Come over to the iSide, it's shiny!
Will do. Just as soon as iProduct doesn't require iTunes and will mount as a standard USB storage device on any device that can use USB drives.
Re:I do, actually... (Score:5, Insightful)
Then dont buy it. Hell spread it far and wide that you WONT buy it and why. How it has a self destruct built in.
Give the Droid X a major PR black eye and suddenly companies wont try this crap again for a while...
Honestly, non nerdy friends do listen to us when we say, "oh god no, dont buy that, it has this major problem with it"
Re:I do! (Score:1, Insightful)
For fifty freaking bucks a month, just so you can send text messages AND make calls? are you fucking kidding me?
My experience of America so far is that for every walk of life there's a government-backed corporate monopoly eager to bend you over the barrel, but even by American standards the GSM networks are fucking highway robbery (yes I know Verizon isn't even GSM, but they're no better in any other respect either). I have my own non-smart phone and I want to continue using it instead of switching to your country's third-world technology.
No, fuck T-Mobile and fuck every other carrier over here too. Why should I beg and show gratitude for something that's a basic service in every other part of the world.
Re:How is this legal? (Score:4, Insightful)
No.
They are likely to petition to have all these Small Claims rolled up into a Class Action suit (or some intrepid lawyer will, hoping to cash in on money they will make by battling Motorola).
A judge is likely to grant the petition, and then Motorola can let their lawyers into the mix.
Flash forward 5-10 years before the results actually matter (although it always possible Motorola MAY learn from this before then).
Re:It's the principle of the thing and more. (Score:3, Insightful)
Companies don't drop their DRM systems because they love freedom and fuzzy puppies, they drop them because the engineering costs and customer support issues are more expensive than the perceived benefits. Thus, if you oppose DRM systems, you can either lower the perceived benefits(by cracking the systems and distributing tools for doing so) or raise the costs. Boycotts are the legal and ethically unproblematic; but generally not that effective, way of doing this. More, er, direct methods of raising customer support costs are less legal and ethical; but probably a lot more effective...
Re:Easy for hackers to fix? (Score:2, Insightful)
The story most probably refers to an actual fuse inside a chip that is made by a layer of polysilicon - it can be made to melt and blow just like the common electrical fuse. In this case, there is no return.
Re:Droid Does... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:+1000. Goodbye Moto, Hello HTC (Score:3, Insightful)
I've seen this comment from a few people so I have to ask:
Since when should the manufacturer decide how often I need to replace their product?
How often to you buy a new computer or TV? I'm sure Dell/Sony/Samsung/Toshiba would be happy if you bought a new one each year, but for most people that is way overkill.
When you DO chose/need to buy a new "X", do you give any consideration to "brand loyalty" when making your purchase?
Personally my Desktop is coming up on 5 years old. My television is about 4 years old.
When I look to replace them I'm probably going to look at ASUS and Samsung because they made a quality product that worked well.
That's the sort of reward a good company should get. When you choose to replace their product, you WANT to give them more business, instead of just jumping ship with a thankful sigh.
Re:Who cares (Score:5, Insightful)
I've worked with security systems and I can definitely say that the guy who wrote that post doesn't know what he's talking about. I've hever heard of "resettable" eFUSEs. He keeps talking about eFUSEs as if they had some kind of power to control or supervise the boot procedure, which is bollocks - eFUSEs are storage elements, you need some kind of boot ROM to make use of the data and make decisions. And you don't "write programs in JTAG". Until someone writes something technically coherent about this issue, I'd take all of this with a huge grain of salt.
eFUSEs can indeed be used for this kind of self-destruct-on-tamper behavior, but honestly I would be very surprised if it were actually implemented this way on a retail handset. Deliberately designing brickage into a unit is just a bad idea overall (except for security devices, e.g. HSMs and smartcards).
Re:Who cares (Score:3, Insightful)
Hacking the Linux source to change the CPU frequency registers is significantly easier than understanding a secure boot process.
Phone bricking malware (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Who cares (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Invitation to brick? (Score:3, Insightful)
And that will be an awesome time. When people who never understood why they should care about this kind of thing suddenly have it shoved in their face.
Re:Worst summary ever (Score:3, Insightful)
It's all explained in the very last sentence of the summary. You should know to read Slashdot summaries backwards by now.
Re:+1000. Goodbye Moto, Hello HTC (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I do! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It's the principle of the thing and more. (Score:5, Insightful)
to reiterate: void warranty, fine; brick phone, bad
Re:It's the principle of the thing and more. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It's the principle of the thing and more. (Score:5, Insightful)
If tomorrow Dell came out with a new line of computers that prevented you from putting your Linux distribution of choice on it by zeroing out the bios and the bootloader so it was rendered unbootable the fury would be cataclysmic. Even though 99 percent of the people who buy computers don't change the operating system.
Re:After enduring all that vitrolic (Score:3, Insightful)
I can't tell if you're trying to be sarcastic, but I'll bite. You really think that paying $99 a year is a good way to have a 3rd party application environment? How does that enable a community of any kind? Seems like you're probably only able to install apps that you write at that point and that is nothing compared to being able to access a development community. What if your business model doesn't match Apple's rigid App store?
What good is tethering if you're not allowed to do it? It's effectively the same problem. What good is multitasking if you STILL can't do instant messaging? What good is even having instant messaging if you still don't have anything even close to a reasonable notifications system?
You cherry picked a few things out of a long list and even those are pretty piss poor substitutes.
Look, I love the iPhone and I love iOS, but if you're trying to defend it as being open then you're delusional. I own an iPad. It's a toy. I would never accept an OS like that on my phone.
Re:Mod? (Score:5, Insightful)
I was actually considering getting this phone, I guess they just lost a customer.
accent (Score:2, Insightful)
I guess that is the euro-peon way to spell boogers..how quaint and continental and all...
anyway, I said "like" Openmoko. And here's the deal. No huge corporation is going to sell you an open anything any more, it conflicts with their skewed notion of "shareholder value" and "leveraging their intellectual properties" and other buzz speak. So..ya'all phone modders can either start supporting projects like openmoko, so it can be developed beyond the "boogers" stage, or just keep whining that your new iGS turboprofitphone is "locked down" and you can't do what you want to do with it.
Also on telco "plans".. I see kvetching galore about stupid two year "plans".. geez loweez this *ain't* rocket surgery, stop using plans, stop rewarding those lame ass "plans", go prepaid. Vote with your wallet, or don't be surprised when eventually your options for cellphones plus connectivity have been narrowed down to very sucky versus extremely sucky. You get what you pay for, keep paying for closed off/locked down two year suck plans on closed off/locked down suck phones, they'll keep selling that to you.
Re:Droid Does... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Invitation to brick? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's the principle of the thing and more. (Score:3, Insightful)
Ssssshhhhhhh!!!
Don't give them any new ideas!! I'm sure there's lots of organizations out there that would lobby for support for this...backed up by legislation!!
Re:+1000. Goodbye Moto, Hello HTC (Score:3, Insightful)
No. In 2007 it was 0 years old. In 2008 it was 1 year old. In 2009 it was 2 years old. In 2010 it was 3 years old. That's how we count ages in the Western world. IIRC some East Asian cultures consider you 1 when you're born, so maybe there you'd say it's 4.