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I noticed that Google is now selling Nexus Ones through the developer channel to registered developers, but this appears to be a bootloader-locked retail device, not any type of engineering device. They also sell what appears to be an ION, also bootloader-locked.
So while this is fine for testing your apps, there appears to be no legitimate/officially sanctioned way for an individual developer to get a phone on which he/she can test alternate builds of Android itself.
Of course, anyone familiar with this forum knows how easy it is to root these devices, and of course with the Nexus One in particular you can unlock the bootloader yourself, but it seems strange that Google makes no provisions for allowing developers to work on Android itself on real hardware. They make Android open source but then provide no official way to try your builds on an actual device.
I guess "real" engineering bootloader-unlocked devices are only made available to "real" partners (cell phone providers, hardware manufacturers, etc.).
You can unlock bootloader Yourself in N1.
Hello,
Im currently writing an academic paper on android and openness in my master's programme. If all goes well, it will be submitted for a conference soon.
I'm looking for your opinions on having an android device open for operating system level modifications or not. As you may know, some phones have a signed bootloader such as the Motorola Milestone, t-mobile g2 (who made the phone reinstall stock OS when breached), and probably many others. Google however, make their devices open, even though they are sold as consumer devices. Many others do not bother to install circumvention mechanics.
Obviously, the people here will be biased towards allowing modification to the OS, therefore, i would like to get a discussion going, to discern what problems and possibilities you see in the long run for hardware manufacturers.
1. Does the possibility of making OS level modifications affect your willingness to purchase an android product? i.e. do you check if it can be modified before buying? And how much of an impact does it make on your desicion?
2. Why do you think hardware manufacturers put in measures to prevent custom android OS builds to be installed? Put on the corporate hat and try to see their strategy.
3. Do you think manufacturers have anything to gain by making devices open and free for modification, with source code for drivers and the like publically available?
I would really appericiate your opinions and discussion!
1. Does the possibility of making OS level modifications affect your willingness to purchase an android product? i.e. do you check if it can be modified before buying? And how much of an impact does it make on your desicion?
As a beginner app developer, this has yet to bother me. I do enjoy being able to add apps that add functionality to my phone but I haven't bothered to get down into the "root" area. So no I do not check nor does it impact my decision...I own a Samsung fascinate by the way
2. Why do you think hardware manufacturers put in measures to prevent custom android OS builds to be installed? Put on the corporate hat and try to see their strategy.
My opinion on measures to prevent changes is all about PR and performance. If enough people hacked a phone and the hack caused the phone to work below is ability then the only news report you will see is the phone sucks.
3. Do you think manufacturers have anything to gain by making devices open and free for modification, with source code for drivers and the like publically available?
This is also a give and take if question 2 is not of a concern to them, then its def a gain for the company and to all of the developers out there that do search for the best phone and nick pick around until they find it.
Are there enough of those kind of people out there to affect a companies buttom line. Maybe not yet but in another couple of years who knows.
1. Does the possibility of making OS level modifications affect your willingness to purchase an android product? i.e. do you check if it can be modified before buying? And how much of an impact does it make on your desicion?
It hasnt yet been a deciding factor on which device to get, primarily because sooner or later they all get cracked open.
2. Why do you think hardware manufacturers put in measures to prevent custom android OS builds to be installed? Put on the corporate hat and try to see their strategy.
One reason could be that the carriers demand it as a way to keep any revenue that they get from the preinstalled bloatware.
3. Do you think manufacturers have anything to gain by making devices open and free for modification, with source code for drivers and the like publically available?
The percentage of people that actually tinker in this area is very slim, so the manufacturers most likely don't see that as a big market opportunity.
Don't have any answers, but would like to read your paper when done...sounds interesting and a Masters Thesis is always fun to read! LOL
It's not a thesis, just a short article. I might make a survey for it but I need to ask the right questions.
Not all devices get fully customized, root is common, but in my phone for example it is not possible to load a custom kernel, as the bootloader checks for signed code (Motorola's secret key). There's been a massive uproar from the owners of the Milestone, as people didn't expect to be hustled like that when getting an android phone. The main problem is of course, that Motorola takes a long time to release updates. Even as of today, Froyo has still not been released for my phone by Motorola.
While I am not sure about it, I suspect Sony Ericsson X10i owners are in the same boat, and they will get a really rotten deal, seeing as 2.1 has been officially declared the last version the device will recieve. Yet, an enthusiast could release a perfectly fine version of 2.3 if the phone accepted custom firmware and he had access to drivers etc.
So basically, you buy a piece of hardware that is very capable, but The Company decides for you which software you could run.
Imagine if you bought a Windows Vista PC right before Windows 7 was released, and the only way you could get Windows 7 on it was if that particular PC manufacturer released an official update containing all it's bloatware and applications you don't want. Since the update needs to go through all kinds of verifications and approvals, it might be delayed for a half a year, or maybe 9 months, after the new OS release. Why do we accept this on our phones and tablets?
Hi,
1. Does the possibility of making OS level modifications affect your willingness to purchase an android product? i.e. do you check if it can be modified before buying? And how much of an impact does it make on your desicion?
For me personally, yes, most definately. I like to be able to get in and play, see how things work, change stuff. And i think custom ROMs IMO are a big drawcard of Android.
2. Why do you think hardware manufacturers put in measures to prevent custom android OS builds to be installed? Put on the corporate hat and try to see their strategy.
To try and ensure the device works as they want it to. Minimise support costs etc.
3. Do you think manufacturers have anything to gain by making devices open and free for modification, with source code for drivers and the like publically available?
Definately. Encourages improvement of existing features, and development of new stuff beyond the manufacturers initial product scope, which can be integrated in future products.
Android OS its self is an example of this - the developer community is writing apps, logging bugs, and contributing code to the benefit of future releases of Android, which in turn benefits device manufacturers.
- jc
my two cents
1. Does the possibility of making OS level modifications affect your willingness to purchase an android product? i.e. do you check if it can be modified before buying? And how much of an impact does it make on your decision?
>> Personally, I feel like the ability to modify my phone at the core level is something I as a power user can use to tailor my phone's experience in the way I need to make it the most efficient device it can be. This is especially necessary as my phone is my primary connectivity device (I really only use my laptop for things the phone just really isn't capable of handling yet, such as video conversion)
2. Why do you think hardware manufacturers put in measures to prevent custom android OS builds to be installed? Put on the corporate hat and try to see their strategy.
I think this is less the decision of the manufacturers and more of the carriers themselves. This really is because each device has to be tailored to be sold to the average user, rather than power users (read: 85-90% of people who will read this reply) and as a result is designed with an experience in mind. To the suits, anyone who take a phone that is supposed to have a specific experience in mind, and changes that, it becomes a different phone, and anyone who looks at that phone will see that. This means, TMo/HTC can't sell a G2, because everything that my office mates will see when they look at my phone is my android customizations, not a G2. my office mate, who is shopping for a phone, can get an android phone anywhere... but they can only get a /G2/ from TMo/HTC. Similarly, if I like my G2 experience, when i get a new phone, i will be more inclined to continue enjoying that experience with a G3, rather than buying any on sale android phone and making it just like my last one. Hence the need to have a G2 experience on every G2 phone. Just my 2 cents. I am not a businessman, lawyer, or doctor.
3. Do you think manufacturers have anything to gain by making devices open and free for modification, with source code for drivers and the like publically available?
Yes, but nowhere near as much as they can get by keeping their cards close to their hand. see my answer to number 2.
The X10 has an issue with the Bootloader being protected by Marlin DRM.
There is no obvious reason and no clear benefit to end users or the general public. Most likely a precautionary measure to ensure SE applications work as intended and to assist with purchases of games, music, updates to Android firmware (often mistakenly called ROM's) and features Sony Ericsson have not explained in any level of detail or even stated that it exists as part of their obligations and your rights to know as the consumer.
According to the W3C.
What are some potential invasions of privacy?
1. User authentication - current PKI protocols limit the degree of anonymity -- we need to know who are you so we can sue you if you infringe
2. Usage tracking for fraud prevention
OK. Now you have just purchased a Sony Ericsson Android phone and all your social network contacts from any social media site can be merged with your phone book, backed up into Google's Gmail and shared beyond any one or all of these service's. The man controlling 'everything' that happens on your device is SE.
The phone at core capability is able to run Ubuntu / Debian Linux, Windows, iPhone and emulate everything you might wish to or choose to. Thanks to this 'feature' in the form of the Marlin DRM and Seacert broadband bootstrap implementation being present on these phones... it isn't going to happen.
With the Xperia models, the entire operating system is virtualized on boot and impossible to modify the behavior of the boot loader, due to a very high grade encryption system, provided by Inter Trust.
Unlike HTC, Motorolla, Samsung (who own a stake in the Marlin DRM but choose not to use it for snooping or destroying the main purpose of Android phones) for that matter most other Android phone manufacturers, allow the boot loader to be modified without too much effort and load a custom bootloader for multiple firmwares.
e.g; Gingerbread 2.3.2 is the default o/s shipped with Sony Ericsson apps, you want to keep this but also load Honeycomb, or Gingerbread 2.3.3, a modified vanilla o/s without things like timescape and unnecessary apps that do nothing for saving battery life.. it's your phone and you should be able to have this choice, in fact the reason Android is open source, is stop one company from forming any kind of monopoly.
So what should DRM so for us?
Are there general requirements from the concept of free flow of information?
* avoid unnecessary use restrictions, respect fair use
* universal service --- equal and fair access right
* support variety of licensing options
* make it easy for users to act lawfully
* seamless operation, interoperability of DRMS
* Support Information Search(engines)
* make licensing easy to reduce transaction costs
* secure operating environment: integrity and availability of content
* avoid bottlenecks and monopolies when standardizing (production and distribution)
Conclusion:
* copyright laws give free hand to those who develop DRMS
* Only few compulsory requirements from Law, but Guidelines can be derived from Law
* when hesitating, think in terms of free flow of information
Now back on over in Android world at Google HQ...
On 24 September 2009, Google issued a cease and desist letter to the modder Cyanogen, citing issues with the re-distribution of Google's closed-source applications within custom firmware.
Even though most of Android OS is open source, phones come packaged with closed-source Google applications for functionality such as the application store and GPS navigation.
Google asserted these applications can only be provided through approved distribution channels by licensed distributors. Cyanogen complied with Google's wishes and is continuing to distribute this mod without the proprietary software.
He has provided a method to back up licensed Google applications during the mod's install process and restore them when it is complete.
The exact same principle can be done with SE closed source apps and SE do provide the source code for their firmwares as part of the open source license. Anyone withing to check this out can simply head over to http://developer.sonyericsson.com/wportal/devworld/technology/android/ and start developing straight away. The source code, test keys and everything you need is either there or linked from there back to the places you need to be.
Semcboot security algorithms are not required and serve no benefit. The day that SE stop's supporting updates for this device, the same as they did with the Xperia X10 at 2.1 Eclair, your phone will be useless and stuck with older versions of Android.
If this is acceptable and your not bother by having no bootloader mod's, a hack to be able to change firmware that may someday soon be blocked and privacy issues built in as a matter of due course that you were not even correctly informed of, except for via a specialist forum (your looking at it), then good luck with your Arc, Neo or Play.. and I suspect that there is the real rationale here - Play.
Marlin DRM exists in the PlayStation 3 for the market and guide as it does in the PSP and also will in the Xperia Play. SE became rather unhappy when the master cryptographic key to the PS3 was discovered and distributed on mass over the internet (I have a t-shirt with the codes printed...) as it bypassed their protection ad allowed among other things, pirated games to play and unauthorized content to loaded, custom operating systems etc..
Sony Ericsson watched carefully at HTC and thought about how best to implement all of their technology in an extremely secure manor and this is the result. It may actually benefit end users, so far Sony have yet to state their side of the story and will be looking forward to seeing posts on anything relevant in this thread, for anyone interested in the subject and for anyone thinking of buying an Arc.
Wish I had of known this information before I purchased my x10 but is it such a perfect world?
Isn't the X10 hackable?
This forum here has tons of custom roms for the X10
http://forum.xda-developers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=617
Sorry for the stupid question. I'm new to SE and considering an Xperia arc.
yoyohere2 said:
Isn't the X10 hackable?
This forum here has tons of custom roms for the X10
http://forum.xda-developers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=617
Sorry for the stupid question. I'm new to SE and considering an Xperia arc.
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Click to collapse
No it is not. We cannot get a newer Linux kernel with new feature hooks that support functions like tether and hotspot and speed or security improvements. All the roms just overlay newer Android on top of the older kernel.
Other phones have been fully hacked and can get a newer kernel to support the newer Android without any mismatched functions. The devs here have to work hard retrofitting Android.
Sent from my X10a using XDA App
well the X2 wasnt hacked yet
This thread shows how to root a X10.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=711907
So the xperia arc and xperia x10 can be rooted?
Geohot recently announced that he bought a Xperia x10 and will be first in cue for the Xperia play. Keeping his success in mind I've got a good feeling about it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXxw71oxjxs
I've ordered a U8 smartwatch off Amazon.co.uk and when I get it I want to toy with it but I am just wondering if anyone has attempted to put android on it?
not possible, specs are way too low for that
What about the u10?
Could you put android on the u10 smart watch?
no
even though RAM is bigger, it's still only 128mb
processor is only 300mhz
chinese smartwatches don't have the specs to run anything but the limited firmware they have preinstalled
JarlSX said:
chinese smartwatches don't have the specs to run anything but the limited firmware they have preinstalled
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Click to collapse
False. There are multiple Chinese smartwatches that run Android.
hmm, i was thinking android wear, android would require a cellular modem, no?
Not necessarily. The cell side in Android can be hidden, like how a lot of tablets have hidden dialers in them even when they didn't have cell radios. I would not be surprised if there's a lot of cellphone specific code in Wear as well.
As far as Wear, if one had full source they could compile a working Wear build for a number of Chinese smartwatches. In fact, Com1 did it on their prototype, but because they were not part of Google's exclusive "Wear Partners" club, Google shut Com1 down.
for both android and android wear you'd need drivers though, to access all hardware, so you would need a kernel specific for the watch
available?
Most Chinese smartwatches are MTK based, so no.
so it's not possible then
Depends. The TS has a custom ROM and git which was cobbled together from multiple bits of sourcecode. It's mostly a matter of how much work one wants to put into it.
http://www.phonearena.com/news/The-Pixel-and-Pixel-XL-will-be-rootable-Google-confirms_id86575 for all the naysayers...google did not let us down
I did not doubt it but it is good that it is confirmed
Confused - That doesn't really make sense - While Google can (and thankfully will) make the bootloader unlockable, they don't make it rootable. They have never done that. Root is usually achieved when developers find exploits (that are unpatched by Google), and root using that.
For Google to say that the device will be rootable is like saying "we left some exploits unpatched", or "we will provide you a means of rooting" - I don't think either is true. (yes, I read the exact verbiage on the article - and saw what you are referring to)
The bootloader being unlockable is making it rootable.....that's the "exploit"....
Sent from my XT1096 using Tapatalk
tacosrdelicioso said:
The bootloader being unlockable is making it rootable.....that's the "exploit"....
Sent from my XT1096 using Tapatalk
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Click to collapse
Technically, no.
Regardless, glad Google confirmed that the bootloader will be unlockable (as we were expecting/hoping)
jj14 said:
Technically, no.
Regardless, glad Google confirmed that the bootloader will be unlockable (as we were expecting/hoping)
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Click to collapse
My point is it gets us 95% of the way there
Sent from my XT1096 using Tapatalk
The expliot is modifying the kernel. Google knows this as we do. In order to have a modified kernel you must have a unlocked bootloader. While only time will tell i believe the verizon version will never be rooted because of this new security,cause only unlocking the bootloader will allow it, hence what i believe google was getting at, sometimes people read too deep and miss whats on the surface
I think we are having a war of definitions here, so let me say a few things that I believe will clear things up:
In this context an exploit, by definition, means taking advantage of a feature in a given software or hardware platform. The word has a stigma associated with it that implies that this feature allows an unintentional effect, and that taking advantage of it gains something for the one who exploits it. E.G. a buffered array that doesn't properly safeguard writing past the allocated memory for that array would be an exploitable software feature. The exploit that takes advantage of such a feature is known as a buffer overflow exploit, which would allow an attacker to overwrite code or data at a known location in device memory, potentially allowing for arbitrary code to be executed in the context of whatever software exposes that feature.
So, an unlockable bootloader could be exploited to allow a custom kernel to run, but it would not really fit the context of "an exploit", because the feature is there to be used for that purpose. Nor, really would building a custom kernel be an exploit for the very same reason: the kernel source is provided so that it can be built and modified by anyone.
Fenny said:
I think we are having a war of definitions here, so let me say a few things that I believe will clear things up:
In this context an exploit, by definition, means taking advantage of a feature in a given software or hardware platform. The word has a stigma associated with it that implies that this feature allows an unintentional effect, and that taking advantage of it gains something for the one who exploits it. E.G. a buffered array that doesn't properly safeguard writing past the allocated memory for that array would be an exploitable software feature. The exploit that takes advantage of such a feature is known as a buffer overflow exploit, which would allow an attacker to overwrite code or data at a known location in device memory, potentially allowing for arbitrary code to be executed in the context of whatever software exposes that feature.
So, an unlockable bootloader could be exploited to allow a custom kernel to run, but it would not really fit the context of "an exploit", because the feature is there to be used for that purpose. Nor, really would building a custom kernel be an exploit for the very same reason: the kernel source is provided so that it can be built and modified by anyone.
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Click to collapse
Yeah what he said lol...thanks for the explantion i guess exploit is the wrong word cause it does have a negative implication
yes, even HTC devices that are unlocked and rootable is not SOFF, and you had to pay for it. Does anyone know if there is any such restriction that is "hidden"?
Is it really as "open" as the nexus devices?
Has there been any confirmation on whether or not source will be released...
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