Motorola Releases an Official Bootloader Unlocker 123
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.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
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...
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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.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Interesting)
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"
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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
3rd options (Score:2)
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 equip
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Thank you.
Re:Wow (Score:4)
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.
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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 qui
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Re:Wow (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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Yeah, the Yakuza take system administration very seriously.
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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.
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Re:Wow (Score:4, Informative)
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.
ICWBUTF (Score:2)
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.
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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.
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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.
Actually... (Score:1, Insightful)
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.
Re:Actually... (Score:4, Informative)
You're welcome to provide well-researched counterexamples.
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Unlocking the bootloader IS a prerequisite for rooting most devices, and is absolutely the preferred method. The only way around this is to use some sort of hack method.
Absolutely true on the overclocking part, but it's something of a chain: to overclock you need to root, and to root you need to unlock the bootloader (usually, see above).
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Right Step! Right Guys? (Score:4, Interesting)
As long as the guys in the suits think they make more money by closing down, we still have a problem.
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Posting to undo wrong mod :( sorry
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Every other day? I used the last batch up this morning before I went out for coffee with a friend. Came back to 5 more this after noon already... in the last 2-3 weeks or so I have gotten mod point almost as fast as i use them up.
There may be legal issues, too. (Score:5, Informative)
As I read their entry in wikipedia [wikipedia.org]:
- 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.
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I think it might be that Google purchase thing. I wouldn't be surprised if all new phones were factory unlocked from now on, but who knows?
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I think it might be that Google purchase thing.
Guess I should have read further. B-)
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Now for iOS? (Score:2, Offtopic)
Re:Now for iOS? (Score:5, Informative)
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I think their practically non-existent smartphone market share and negative profit share makes them pretty irrelevant at the moment. As you pointed out, however, they're part of Google now so all of that may change in the future. They're gonna have to figure out what to do about Samsung, seemingly the only truly relevant Android OEM at the moment, first though.
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Have you ever seen one?
It wouldn't matter if I've seen 500 of them or if I've seen not a single one. That's pure anecdote and proves nothing. The fact that it is believed by some to have outsold the iPhone [bgr.com] is a much stronger testament to its popularity and relevance. Also note it's current number one status on Amazon [amazon.com] which is a huge smartphone sales channel.
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The problem with moto, is that its been joined at the hip with version for most of Android's existence. So while the razor maxx is nice, the Atrix HD on att sucks eggs in comparison with the maxx's battery life. The Atrix I was great, Atrix II was a minor update and not a top rate phone. They need to take a hint from Samsung and actually release the same phone on all carriers at the same time. Make them fast, give them good screens, and make them hackable. Its not that hard.
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You're complaining about their anti-modding attitude in a thread about them providing a bootloader unlocker. I just want to make sure I have that straight.
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After endless research, I have to say the RAZR MAXX is not just a good phone... but probably the best phone on the market. A solid well built phone that works great, looks fine and most importantly: It is practical! This is a smartphone that is really worth its money. In combination with the openness of Android this phone is the absolute Iphone killer. Sadly most people don't bother to get the best phone... they either get the fanciest phone (Apple hell) or the phone with the highest specs (the great plasti
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So perhaps CM7 enabling a 270 degree screen rotation (upside-down landscape) is a gross federal violation.
Doubtful. Anyone could already hold the phone upside down against their ear if they choose to do so.
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Customization will be popular with iOS users when they are allowed to do it.
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Re:Now for iOS? (Score:4, Funny)
> When is Apple following suit?
You didn't get the memo? iPhone 5w. "w", as in "Woz Edition".
Rumored features include
* Zigbee wireless mesh networking
* multiplexed pins on the headphone jack that can be repurposed for I2C, SPI, or GPIO (not at the same time, obviously). Oh, and legacy UART (3.3v logic) that also supports Atmel-friendly baudrates (125kbit, 250kbit, 1mbit), 9-bit word length (9/N/1, to be exact), and can use pin #3 for GPIO, RTS, CTS, or synchronous clocking in or out.
* fixed 4800mAH lithium cell
* gamepad wings that slide out from the underside (to the left and right when held in landscape orientation). One side has an analog stick & digital stick, the other side has an analog stick & 4 buttons.
* Volume button pair that also serves as the "left trigger button" in "gamepad" orientation, and 2-stage camera button that serves as the "right trigger button" in gamepad orientation. All of which can be intercepted, redefined, and repurposed by end users as they see fit.
The iPhone 5w's flagship applications will be a logic analyzer/DSO, which demonstrates the use of the bundled iProbe (4 clip-on leads, terminating at a 1/8" TRRRS headphone jack). Additional accessories will allow connectivity to most car ECUs, CANbus, and JTAG.
Oh, and the phone will also include a fully-unlocked bootloader. Of course, not even Woz will likely be able to get the Powers that Be at Apple to release the source to their crown jewel, but it won't matter. People will buy one, and reflash it to Android. Even Larry & Sergey will be spotted in public with it (running Android, of course).
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Sold!
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You Sir/Madam win 1(one) Internet!
*giggle*
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Will it be possible to call someone with it ? :-)
causing... injury... including death... (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:4)
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My LOCKED nav system did just about that. (Score:2)
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 map
Progress is always welcome (Score:5, Insightful)
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Slashdot: Motorola is evil!
Motorola: Ok, we will allow you to mess with your own phone if you really want to.
oakgrove: Thanks, but please do all the work for us too, and make it convenient to abandon your business interests by simply pushing a single button!
dutchwhizzman: Yeah, that would be oss!
Motorola: Hmm, nevermind, just use the OS that we provide and like it.
Me: you dorks!
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oakgrove: Thanks, but please do all the work for us too, and make it convenient to abandon your business interests by simply pushing a single button!
Even with an unlocked bootloader, in order to use an updated version of Android on a device, you need drivers. The GPU for sure and likely other components on the SOCs Moto use utilize closed hardware that only Moto can provide drivers for. There is no "do all the work for us" as without those drivers, no work can be done unless you get lucky. If Moto goes through the half-measure and unlocks the bootloaders but doesn't provide drivers then you get a half-working solution and Moto's reputation gets tarni
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The GPU for sure and likely other components on the SOCs Moto use utilize closed hardware that only Moto can provide drivers for.
It's not true that only Motorola can provide drivers - it is just *hard* for others to do so. Nouveau showed it was possible to reverse engineer a GPU driver; in the ARM a world open source Mali GPU driver [limadriver.org] and Adreno GPU driver [github.com]is being worked on, which will hopefully cover a large proportion of the mobile devices out there.
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...make it convenient to abandon your business interests by simply pushing a single button!
Why would our pressing a button cause us to abandon them?
Oh, right! When you say "your business interests" you don't mean us, the actual customers paying actual money for actual products! Got it!
All fun and games until it burns yours house down (Score:1)
Let me break it down for you. (Score:4, Funny)
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You can install from unknown sources without rooting or unlocking the bootloader....
"leads to" -- it's a gateway drug. once you start mucking around down in the OS, you're apt to all sorts of perversity. like learning terminal commands.
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I haven't seen even one Android phone where you couldn't enable "Unknown Sources".
You don't have root, you have bootloader locked, etc but still you can enable "Unknown Sources"
Thanks (Score:2)
Thank you Motorola.
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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)
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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.
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In that case the phone isn't casing death. it just caused life avoidance.
Seems like a good idea (Score:1)
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When Fast Food restaurants have to warn people that coffee might be a tad hot
You can blame our illustrious judicial system and multi-million dollar payouts by easily manipulated by sob stories juries for that.
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This part of the disclaimer bothers me the most... (Score:2)
...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??
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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?
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"Use the source Luke.."
Too little too late (Score:1)
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
All I have to say... (Score:1)
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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