Samsung Kills the Cameras On the Galaxy Z Fold 3 If You Unlock the Bootloader (xda-developers.com) 78
If you plan on unlocking the bootloader to root your Galaxy Z Flip 3 or Galaxy Z Fold 3 -- Samsung's two newest foldabes announced earlier this month, you should know that the Korean OEM will disable the cameras. Technically, this has only been confirmed for the Galaxy Z Fold 3, but the Galaxy Z Flip 3 likely has similar restrictions. XDA Developers reports: According to XDA Senior Members [...], the final confirmation screen during the bootloader unlock process on the Galaxy Z Fold 3 mentions that the operation will cause the camera to be disabled. Upon booting up with an unlocked bootloader, the stock camera app indeed fails to operate, and all camera-related functions cease to function, meaning that you can't use facial recognition either. Anything that uses any of the cameras will time out after a while and give errors or just remain dark, including third-party camera apps.
It is not clear why Samsung chose the way on which Sony walked in the past, but the actual problem lies in the fact that many will probably overlook the warning and unlock the bootloader without knowing about this new restriction. Re-locking the bootloader does make the camera work again, which indicates that it's more of a software-level obstacle. With root access, it could be possible to detect and modify the responsible parameters sent by the bootloader to the OS to bypass this restriction. However, according to ianmacd, Magisk in its default state isn't enough to circumvent the barrier.
It is not clear why Samsung chose the way on which Sony walked in the past, but the actual problem lies in the fact that many will probably overlook the warning and unlock the bootloader without knowing about this new restriction. Re-locking the bootloader does make the camera work again, which indicates that it's more of a software-level obstacle. With root access, it could be possible to detect and modify the responsible parameters sent by the bootloader to the OS to bypass this restriction. However, according to ianmacd, Magisk in its default state isn't enough to circumvent the barrier.
New slogan (Score:3, Insightful)
Samsung phones: all of the bad parts of the Apple phones, with almost none of the good ones!
Re: New slogan (Score:2)
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More words: Removable battery, headphone jack, retarded punch hole for front facing camera... the list of words goes on.
It takes time to copy everything.
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New addition to my list (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:New addition to my list (Score:5, Informative)
I've been saying that since my note 4, which had a malfunctioning USB port due to a physical problem that was a well known factory defect for that phone, was refused warranty service because I rooted it. I could have sued under magnuson moss but didn't feel it was worth the effort. I'd just rather never buy samsung phones again. I've always rooted my pixel phones and Google has never denied a warranty claim in all of the two cases I needed to make one (the fact that they gave me a free upgrade to a pixel xl for the nexus 6p failed battery problem an entire year after it was out of warranty makes them a winner in my book.)
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Re:New addition to my list (Score:4, Insightful)
Warranty void stickers are illegal. Are you implying that someone should get a pass on failing their legal duties if they also committed a crime?
So? (Score:3)
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I can use the phone as a hammer so long as the warranty sticker remains in tact. Got it.
Re:New addition to my list (Score:5, Informative)
I've been saying that since my note 4, which had a malfunctioning USB port due to a physical problem that was a well known factory defect for that phone, was refused warranty service because I rooted it.
That violates the Moss-Magnuson Warranty Act and you could have gotten a new phone plus some expenses with a Small Claims suit. Of course, most people don't know this, so the companies aren't worried.
I've been to court 5 times in the last five-ish years. The lawyer Verizon sent to settle told me that the companies have an "asshole fund" (named after me apparently), out of which they pay the handful of customers that understand what their legal rights are (assholes). She was a hired gun, who travelled the country defending such suits for the company. The next day she had a small claims suit to settle in, I think, Arizona.
The point was not to give in right away, to make people sue, because most people would give up. And if they go through with it, settle at the last minute. Even though people seem intimidated by it all, Small Claims suits are trivial to file, so when something like this happens to me, I claim my share of the asshole fund. There's always someone who says "you have too much time on your hands", then go on to tell you about the football game they watched on Sunday ... you know, productive stuff. I can think of less useful uses of time than learning how your local court system works, as well as researching consumer law.
Anyway, the refused warranty service because they always refuse warranty service. The law only gets enforced against plebes. You can get satisfaction, though ... but it takes 7-8 hours all-in.
Think it over next time before letting them get away with it.
Re: New addition to my list (Score:2)
Samsung always had a problem with the USB port as well as the headphone jack wearing out too fast. No amount of care or cleaning would resolve this. I don't know about the headphone jack, but the USB port fails (from what I read) because the metal surrounding the port gets 'stretched out' over time causing the plug to fit in loose.
If they made the metal a little bit thicker, it wouldn't be such a problem.
After years of using Samsung, I switched to an inexpensive LG phone.
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That violates the Moss-Magnuson Warranty Act and you could have gotten a new phone plus some expenses with a Small Claims suit. Of course, most people don't know this, so the companies aren't worried.
I don't think it would have been quite so simple. Apparently the EULA on the device included a mandatory arbitration clause. I actually did go to court to file the paperwork but they told me that I needed to go to a different court that was across town, and I didn't feel like it would be worth the effort driving back and forth who knows how many times and taking off work over a $700 phone.
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Interesting. A malfunctioning USB port was the only thing I didn't have problem with on that particular model, and I went through multiple notes.
Then again, the US and the EU market had very different hardware in that phone.
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Re:New addition to my list (Score:4, Interesting)
I think I need to add Samsung to my fuck list. Fuck Apple and Fuck Samsung.
Right in the ear.
I'm pretty sure there's no legitimate reason for this, and I'm not even going to RTFA because if there's a reason offered it's gonna be some stupid Applesque "Muh Securitah!!" like claiming it'll stop malware from rooting your phone and installing spycam drivers, which it won't.
Likely more to do with deterring anyone from removing the factory installed trackers, spam, bloat and other malware from the thing they just paid a shitload of money for.
OnePlus. Decent phones at reasonable prices, quite unlockable and rootable, and the minimal included bloat is mostly removable even without rooting. Sure, they might be spying for China, but what isn't nowadays?
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Re: New addition to my list (Score:2)
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I have so many companies on my list, lots dating back to the 1990's.
What annoys me is that when you decide to dump a company for back shit etc and you go to a competitor only to find shit company then merges/buys out the competitor and then you back to square one
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Samsung has been doing shit like this for a while. If you root the cameras don't work, or don't work to their full capabilities.
Meanwhile Moto doesn't pull that shit. They ain't perfect but they don't fuck you when you unlock.
Good Job (Score:2)
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So long as rooting does not require a hardware modification, it is open to hacking and remote exploits to accomplish. If there's a way they're validating and using it to disable the spying functions of the phone, I'm quite in favor of it.
What we need are a return to DIP switch settings for firmware and other administrative functions. But we don't have that, so for most consumers this is a win.
For those that do need this functionality, there are other phones out there.
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Dip switches would make physical attacks easy. What would be better is if you could load your own signing key, just make it so that it can only be loaded via ADB and from a device that you whitelisted from the debug screen. That basically guarantees that only the owner of that phone controls the chain of trust.
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So long as rooting does not require a hardware modification, it is open to hacking and remote exploits to accomplish. If there's a way they're validating and using it to disable the spying functions of the phone, I'm quite in favor of it.
What we need are a return to DIP switch settings for firmware and other administrative functions. But we don't have that, so for most consumers this is a win.
For those that do need this functionality, there are other phones out there.
I dunno, I think the way most unlockable Androids work is perfectly reasonable and secure enough to protect the average user from bootloader attacks. Performing a bootloader unlock in the "approved" way generally requires both physical access to the phone and the ability to authenticate to the OS. If there's an unapproved way to do it that doesn't require these, maybe they should fix that.
This isn't to say there aren't OTHER threats, but this specific action isn't going to protect against OS exploits, zer
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However, it requires effort to get into the bootloader (physical access), or via the OS debugging protocol (adb) it can be done, but only after the device is authenticated with the phone (physical access)
Samsung has been busy killing their sales recently (Score:5, Interesting)
First "looted" TV's now phones.
Will they be bricking older devices soon?
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Samsung recently launched an internal review when Xiaomi overtook them to become the world's largest smartphone manufacturer.
The main issue is probably not anything to do with these kinds of policies that only a very small number of people are about. It's likely down to Xiaomi making some really good mid-range phones that are 95% as good as Samsung's flagships costing 2-3x as much.
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I think you'll find the market for both rooted phones as well as TVs stolen from a South African warehouse to be incredibly tiny and even if 100% of those customers boycotted them you wouldn't even notice on Samsung's quarterly report.
They aren't so much killing sales as they are verbally insulting them a bit.
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Nope, that's way too much effort for Samsung. They just abandon them and leave them to rot at your house. They only brick them to make a point publicly.
Good riddance. (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyone here who holds copyright for parts of the Linux kernel? Samsung is in violation of GPLv3 - in the past, they haven't provided source simultaneously with release, sometimes not for months. That's playing with fire, they could lose all future access to Linux (and hence, Android). Don't know how they are these days, but....
Re:Good riddance. (Score:4, Informative)
Anyone here who holds copyright for parts of the Linux kernel? Samsung is in violation of GPLv3
The Linux kernel is licensed under GPLv2 only [kernel.org]. So, what software is Samsung distributing is in violation of GPLv3?
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While the GPL does require source to be available, neither GPLv2 nor v3 requires source code to be released at the same time, in the same place, or using the same medium as the binary. Your argument conveniently excludes the other two options that a distributor has to choose from. Here's the whole clause (emphasis mine):
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These days, "a medium customarily used for software interchange" almost always means to make available for download over the web. They could certainly have done the postal thing, but they didn't, and that doesn't relieve them of the duty to release it in accompaniment (i.e. simultaneously). You can't distribute object, then fo
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They probably are using linux under GPLv2.
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I stopped buying Samsungs when they started foisting their Knox shit on everyone.
That's funny. That's precisely when Android become accepted in a corporate world previously ruled entirely by Apple. Knox has been the best thing to ever happen to Android, it means I no longer have to put up with a shitty iWorkPhone in my otherwise Apple free life.
Your second comment is bewildering: ... Don't know how they are these days
Samsung is in violation of GPLv3
So they are but you don't know yet you declare it so. My head is spinning. Reading your comment is better than smoking weed.
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Knox would be fine, IFF a user could push it out of the way, perhaps with a warning as Google does when u
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Let me parse simple English for you - if Samsung was
Let me stop you there. Now English is only my third language but I think even my simple understanding can tell the difference between "is" and "was". Let me know if you still don't understand where you went wrong and we can give you a basic less on on word tense.
Knox would be fine, IFF a user could push it out of the way
Knox is not relevant to a user without being activated. If Knox could be nerfed then it wouldn't be usable as a security mechanism. In other words, you're only happy with a security mechanism which could be bypassed or removed at will. I don't think
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I know you said "is", and changed it to "was" in your subsequent reply. Nice gaslighting attempt, but really we found the crux of your issue is the complete and total lack of understanding how breaching a license works.
Samsung violated the GPL in the past. There is no remedy for that
False. Absolutely false. Even the example you gave to the other guy as to the violation you claim is simply fixable and you can't even point out if that practice is still happening.
Thanks for playing.
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I didn't have an argument. You made one without and backup or logical reasoning. I see you marked me as "foe". Shame. You had the opportunity to learn something but you chose the path of ignorance and stupidity, and all you got to back it up is calling someone an asshole and the "nuh uhr" argument. With a low UI like yours I thought I was talking to an adult.
Shame. Anyway have a go fuck yourself day. Come back when you learn how GPL violations work and when you can point one out to us.
Re: Good riddance. (Score:2)
The tragic thing about Knox is that it was originally DESIGNED and INTENDED to be non-evil.
The whole original IDEA of Knox was to take advantage of ARM TrustZone to partition the SoC into a Trusted hypervisor running two guest operating systems... one locked down, one unrestricted.
The idea was, things like the hypervisor couldn't be tampered with, and it had first & last authority over access to the bare-metal hardware, but exercised it with a light touch when the 'insecure' OS had user focus so it real
Englighten me (Score:3)
Re:Englighten me (Score:5, Interesting)
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I hate fake shutter sounds on phone cameras. If I can't disable them that's enough to put me off the damn device whether it's unlocked or not.
Shit, my real camera uses a silent digital shutter most of the time. (Sometimes I explicitly enable the mechanical shutter). Why would I want something that doesn't even have a mechanical shutter play a sound recording when I use it?
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I was thinking of getting the Z Flip3 and this discussion caused me concern, so I just had a chat with their UK support.
They've told me that the shutter sound can be disabled. So maybe that's not the underlying reason for the camera being disabled with an unlocked bootloader.
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Might also be related to the cameras being able to see infrared. OnePlus offered a feature that let you capture images with IR content that was given false visible colour, but people quickly noticed that it could see through clothing.
The IR information is useful for things like face detection and low light performance, but normally hidden by the image processing algorithm that is applied to every image the camera captures. With a rooted phone that could be bypassed, as well as having the shutter sound disab
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One has to wonder why (Score:2)
Why the camera, of all things?
Now, this isn't exactly a component where it is in some way understandable why it would stop working if the "trusted" boot process gets tampered with. I could see access to certain "protected" parts, like access keys to certain store functions. But a camera?
I kinda wonder what they try to keep from being discovered.
Re:One has to wonder why (Score:4, Insightful)
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Not sure if it's the reason, but South Korea and Japan have requirements for camera shutter sounds. Unlocked bootloaders would be one way around that.
Indeed, this seems to be the most plausible non-spite-related reason, though it seems a rather draconian measure to comply with a weak requirement in a couple jurisdictions (even if one of 'em is Samsung's home jurisdiction). If this is the case then, like most such measures, it will almost certainly be an utter failure at the task for which it was intended, and remain a pain in the ass to people who just want to, you know, fully access the hardware they paid for. Most likely Samsung doesn't care, since w
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Why the camera, of all things?
Now, this isn't exactly a component where it is in some way understandable why it would stop working if the "trusted" boot process gets tampered with. I could see access to certain "protected" parts, like access keys to certain store functions. But a camera?
I kinda wonder what they try to keep from being discovered.
Maybe there's some magic whizbang firmware that has to be loaded into the camera, and Samsung doesn't want the competition stealing their Hardware Accelerated Super-Bokeh IP or figuring out which points their face recognizer looks at, so they've encrypted the whole thing and won't load it if someone might be watching... [rant]Seriously people, just put your fucking bios or your wifi firmware in a file on your web site. Encrypt and sign it if you must, but don't make me hack it out of a 225 MB Windows exec
Some may ask, what's the downside? (Score:2)
For some people this may be a feature. It means someone can't activate the camera and peek in without the user's knowledge.
Can we get the internal microphone disabled too? If someone wants to make a phone call they'd have to plug in a microphone first, which again may be a feature, not a bug, to prevent someone listening in without the user's knowledge. I'm starting to use Bluetooth and wired headsets more often anyway so a broken microphone would not be a big deal. I noticed that devices are including
Re:Some may ask, what's the downside? (Score:5, Informative)
For some people this may be a feature. It means someone can't activate the camera and peek in without the user's knowledge.
No it doesn't, it just means you can't activate the camera.
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It doesn't mean both at all. If you want a feature of a phone to be that the camera is non-functional so that malicious code can't use it to take pictures secretly, you can not rely on the idea that perfectly functional camera hardware can't be activated by malicious code just because Samsung doesn't let you activate it the normal way.
If you want a phone where you can be certain the camera is disabled you need a hardware solution that can be scrutinized.
Also, you shouldn't make an assumption that people rep
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I have to say the failure in logic appears to be with you.
It absolutely means both. It's factually impossible for you to claim otherwise. If the camera does not work, it cannot be used maliciously by a remote party. THAT IS IT. Done.
The summary even states "with root access, it could be possible to detect and modify the responsible parameters sent by the bootloader to the OS to bypass this restriction. That the owner of the phone might not be capable of doing so doesn't meant that everyone is incapable of doing so. Ergo, the owners' inabilities to use the cameras on their phones does not preclude the possibility that others may be able to access them.
If the problem was physical,
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Are you a fucking Apple "engineer" or some shit?
Seriously? Carry around 20 more dongles and shit to hang off your phone? How god damn convenient... And we won't even get into worry about snooping and then say you use a wireless device that spews data all over in a 360 degree radius and has as much security as cheese cloth has waterproof container properties...
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Are you a fucking Apple "engineer" or some shit?
Did you not notice the modifier "some"? Not everyone would enjoy this and I recognize that.
I recall, perhaps incorrectly, that there is a sizable population that rarely use their smartphones for calling, preferring to communicate by SMS/MMS, e-mail, and so on. There's another also not insignificant population that will almost always use some kind of wired or wireless headset. It's the popularity of the wireless headset that lead to the demise of the 1/8" TRRS headphone jack. The confusion over the OMTP,
Eat a bag of dicks, Samsung (Score:2)
Guess I need to say that now.
I don't need a "pH0lDiNG f0n3" anyway, and you bet this will filter all the way down to their most budget devices.
Really, Samsung, go fuck yourself.
Let me rephrase this ILLEGAL approach (Score:2)
You buy a PC with Windows. You decided to unlock the bootloader and Windows disables de mouse (which is comparably important to a camera in a mobile).
What would you do?
The obvious and ONLY approach is to SUIT the company that BLOCKED YOUR PROPERTY.
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Microsoft don't make PC's ... you bought a PC packaged with windows, it can be sold with an alternative or nothing - So if they did this it would be illegal
Samsung make Phones, a complete piece of hardware and integrated software, that you can unlock the bootloader at all is at the discretion of Samsung
Is nobody seeing the upside to this? (Score:2)
Good reason for it (Score:2)
There is a good reason for them doing this, or at least a really good bit of plausible deniability. If you have ever been on the receiving end of Samsung's attention, you will know they are a vindictive company so I am under know illusions that this is an intentional way to screw those who unlock their phones.
That said the excuse they will use is that the camera is now 'secure' and part of the secure boot/root of trust chain and is critical for security and transaction mechanisms. Kinda true as long as you