News - HTC promises no more locked bootloaders

[HEXUS]

Owners of future HTC phones will be able to run their own ROMs unhindered

Read more.

[MadduckUK]

good, and hopefully the public announcement of it will encourage others to follow suit (im looking at you Motorola).

[cheesemp]

good, and hopefully the public announcement of it will encourage others to follow suit (im looking at you Motorola).

And even more so Sony Ericsson! (The X10 bootloader has proven uncrackable so far)

[Andeh13]

Having a locked bootloader that was impossible to crack by the men at XDA developers would stop me buying the phone. It's their custom ROMs that make the phones so much better and easier to use.

[jim]

Agreed. Big selling point for me as well if I was going to spend a lot of money on a phone.

[bbo320]

I might have to trade my Driod X in on an HTC phone next time.

[shaithis]

Good news indeed My Desire HD wouldn't be nearly as good as it is without custom Rome and root access.

[Steve]

I'm looking forward to HTC back-pedalling on this after a few phone calls from high-ups in various mobile network providers.

Actually no, I hope the network providers go with it, and then get really bullish about honouring warranties for hardware faults if the software has been modified, then the courts can tell them to stop being dicks and we'll sort this nonesense out once and for all.

[Hicks12]

it would be lovely if they started supporting third party software but you can understand some reasons why, especially the fact that you could just unlock voltage controls and overclock the crap out of the SoC and if it breaks its then yourfault but then they will have to fork out for it, however it is stupid aswell since i think we all know that the release times for new android builds are stupidly long when upgrading previous phones, without third party roms etc youd be stuck for quite some time which shouldnt happen really!.

[this_is_gav]

it would be lovely if they started supporting third party software but you can understand some reasons why, especially the fact that you could just unlock voltage controls and overclock the crap out of the SoC and if it breaks its then yourfault but then they will have to fork out for it

It would be nice if it would be possible to unlock the bootloader, but code was left to determine whether a phone has been, say, overclocked, so if a user does overclock, they do so with the warranty voided.

It would be even better if a phone could contact HTC to tell them in advance that such an attempt has taken place so they didn't have to fork out for the phone to be shipped to them.

There's got to be a way to discourage flashing for idiots, while allowing it for those who are relatively competent at anything software related.

I do like custom ROMs and the freedom Android generally provides, but if a phone has been damaged through end-user idiocy, then HTC shouldn't have to cover them.

[jim]

Truth is, that must happen every day with PC components but the market is still running... wouldn't worry too much about it.

[impossible]

...It would be even better if a phone could contact HTC to tell them in advance that such an attempt has taken place so they didn't have to fork out for the phone to be shipped to them.

There's got to be a way to discourage flashing for idiots, while allowing it for those who are relatively competent at anything software related....

Prehaps locked bootloader from the factory, then you would be able to download a unlocked version upon submitting your IMEI, thus they could offer a different type of support.



Imp

[AGTDenton]

I hope they bring out some patch for my Wildfire, I can rid myself of the HTC applications that I dont use, i.e. all of them. Crashes, slow, the HTC weather application doesnt work unless you turn off the phone everytime you want to view it and not to mention how poor the Camera is. Thank god my Wildfire was free from work, wouldn't spend any money on one.

[chrestomanci]

Perhaps locked bootloader from the factory, then you would be able to download a unlocked version upon submitting your IMEI, thus they could offer a different type of support.

When I was working at Nokia a year or so back they did that for internal beta firmware and apps. Some Nokia apps and phone firmwares where available on an internal beta where any Nokia employee could try it out, rather than just those who where working on that project. If you wanted to take part you went to an intranet page and entered your phone's IMEI, and then download a version of the beta software that would only work on your device.

it would be lovely if they started supporting third party software but you can understand some reasons why, especially the fact that you could just unlock voltage controls and overclock the crap out of the SoC and if it breaks its then yourfault but then they will have to fork out for it, however it is stupid aswell since i think we all know that the release times for new android builds are stupidly long when upgrading previous phones, without third party roms etc youd be stuck for quite some time which shouldnt happen really!.

It is possible to unlock a phone's bootloader while still preventing people from doing stupid or illegal things with their phones like overclocking the processor, or programing the GSM radio to transmit on unlicensed frequency bands.

The thing is that modern smartphones contain two separate processors each running a separate operating system and software. There is the application processor and the base-band processor. The base-band processor manages the GSM, WiFi and bluethooth radios. It runs a simplified hard real-time OS and has a clock speed of about 40MHz, and less than a megabyte of RAM. It is the OS and software on the base-band processor that talks to the cellphone network in a way licensed by the radio regulations. (correct frequencies, not to much power etc).

The application processor runs Android, iOS etc, with all the eye candy and downloadable apps, has a clock-speed and RAM that would not look to shabby on an office desktop PC. It talks to the base-band processor over an internal serial port.

The thing is, most people who want to unlock their smartphones are only interested in what runs on the application processor. They want new firmware releases before their network approves them, They want to remove crap-ware that their network installs, and they want to install non approved applications outside the app store process. The only feature of the base-band processor that people don't like is the SIM lock, but apart from that people are happy with how it works, and don't want to change it.

The point I am making is that HTC (and others) could unlock the boot-loader on the application processor, while retaining the lock on the base-band processor. That way everyone will be happy. Users will be able to run new and modified application firmware to get access to new apps, but would not be able to upset their networks by bypassing the SIM lock or broadcasting on unlicensed frequencies.

[[AW] Whale]

This is indeed great news.

I suppose they had little choice though given how poor the Sensation is compared to the Galaxy S II

The last thing they need now is to lose worthy customers, but to me it seems like its too little, too late.

[crossy]

And even more so Sony Ericsson! (The X10 bootloader has proven uncrackable so far)

xperiax10.net had a link to this xda-dev's article http://forum.xda-developers.com/show...&postcount=849 and it's been (widely?) reported that, despite the post date, this isn't a hoax. That said, I'd still prefer to see a properly unlocked down phone.

(Thanks sent to chrestomanci for that excellent and interesting potted explanation of the phone internals)