Database Info

petition for legal modding and warranty

You know what bugs me already for years is the following...
Mobile phones, which I paid a lot for, come with poor vendor roms, which are locked. They are mostly rich in bugs and therefore poor in bugfixes, support and updates.
xda-developers mod roms, cyanogenmod, android root and so on are such great projects...
The problem with those is, that
- warranty gets lost
- not available for all phones (there are for example no mod roms for Motorola Flipout, because the bootloader has been successfully protected my Motorola and no one could hack it yet)
- the developers have to waste time with working around the protections to mod the device
It is ridiculous, you paid the full price for the phone, but never get the right to fully use it's potential.
Let's compare it with buying a normal laptop. It's also a piece of hardware and mostly there is Windows preinstalled with a loads of bloated unwanted software. This might be ok for a lot of people. And the rest? They are free to install ANY operating system they wish.
On normal laptops there are not risks when messing around with new operating systems. Of course you need some knowledge and you may lose your data, if you do not know what you are doing. But since all my messing with operating systems for PC, I never damaged the hardware, simply it is designed in a way, not to be damaged by software, it's robust.
Mobile phone vendors claim, they lock us out, because we could potentially harm the hardware. Isn't it their task, just to develop robust hardware and allow us to install any software we want?
This petition would aim for:
- open bootloader by default
- root by default
- warranty for the hardware, no matter which software you used
- free to install custom roms
- robust hardware
I'd like to start a petition and perhaps some public awareness for this issue.
So, if you want to help with anything.... Like writing a petition, a more handy text then this, for example, would be needed.
Discuss.

Installing another O/S on your laptop is not likely to break it, if it does you fix it or take it to a computer shop. A computers warenty normally only covers the junk it came with. There is already a problem with self entitled gits who dont read properly, or make an effort to understand what they are doing who download a WP7 rom, try to put it on a sensation, and expect someone to come running with a new phone. I don't believe they should try to stop people from modifying their devices in any way they want to, but they shouldnt have to cover your fumbling around either. Any modification is rightly done at your own risk.

hungry81 said:
Installing another O/S on your laptop is not likely to break it, if it does you fix it or take it to a computer shop. A computers warenty normally only covers the junk it came with. There is already a problem with self entitled gits who dont read properly, or make an effort to understand what they are doing who download a WP7 rom, try to put it on a sensation, and expect someone to come running with a new phone. I don't believe they should try to stop people from modifying their devices in any way they want to, but they shouldnt have to cover your fumbling around either. Any modification is rightly done at your own risk.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I agree with this.
One of the major issues with phone ROMs is that you do have the potential to completely brick your phone if you don't know what you're doing. Unrelated hardware failures (i.e. USB port loses power while flashing a new bootloader) may hard brick your phone to a state of complete uselessness.
Having super user access and root on a phone is another issue that the vast majority of end users do not want to have to deal with. UAC is enabled by default on Windows Vista and 7 because it provides robust protection for people who DO NOT know what they are doing. For day to day usage of a computer, users do not need an account with any special access privilege. Even if you do know what you're doing, its still SAFER to be on a non-admin account for day to day computer use.

hungry81 said:
Installing another O/S on your laptop is not likely to break it, if it does you fix it or take it to a computer shop. A computers warenty normally only covers the junk it came with.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There are also computers which come without any software, just hardware. If anything goes wrong, like defect harddrive, then it will be replaced, because of warranty.
Mobile phones are very similar to computers nowadays. But there are no decent mobile phones without operating systems available. This is also what I vote vor.
hungry81 said:
I don't believe they should try to stop people from modifying their devices in any way they want to, but they shouldnt have to cover your fumbling around either. Any modification is rightly done at your own risk.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, messing with software -> no more software suppprt -> but hardware warranty still ok.
Kagadar said:
One of the major issues with phone ROMs is that you do have the potential to completely brick your phone if you don't know what you're doing. Unrelated hardware failures (i.e. USB port loses power while flashing a new bootloader) may hard brick your phone to a state of complete uselessness.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I agree that this problem does exist right now...
But only because the hardware is not robust.
As far I know, (a while ago I informed myself about a few devices) it is not possible to brick Nokia S60 v3 devices. This is because the routine to flash the device is read only and can not be changed. No matter if you lose power during flashing or usb cable loss... You can always flash again. There is NO way to brick the device while flashing.
Apart from the flash routine which is hardly built into the phone, the rest of the phones software can be updated.
That demonstrates that there are no technical limitations to deploy robust hardware.
Kagadar said:
Having super user access and root on a phone is another issue that the vast majority of end users do not want to have to deal with. UAC is enabled by default on Windows Vista and 7 because it provides robust protection for people who DO NOT know what they are doing. For day to day usage of a computer, users do not need an account with any special access privilege. Even if you do know what you're doing, its still SAFER to be on a non-admin account for day to day computer use.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I also agree that it is saves not to use admin account for everyday use and that it's also a good idea not to have it enabled by default.
On computers you still have the option to legally use your root account. At the other hand with mobile phones this is completely unwanted and you need some kind of hack to do it. This is the difference. And this is what I complain about.

Yeah
I think just like apps there are some absolutely amazing ROMs that run better than the vendor ROMs. I think they should allow those changes to occur whether through a "vendor verified" developer or some kind of authorized ROM download channel through the manufacturer so you can get the style and type you want the most which typically runs much smoother without voiding the warranty. Great idea!

Lmao. Hell no. Carriers and manufacturers will try to start sellings roms like theyre crack. Ringtones anybody? Cmon. Only $3.
Anyways. I think the op doesnt know what hes asking for. What you want is a blank phone and you want the manufacturer to cover hardware no matter what is done with phone. Fair enough. I guess you want them to cover the phone if you burn through all your write cycles in the flash memory used because you have to flash anything you can your digital hands on. You do realize this will cause the price of parts to go up in the long run? And prices upfront will be more because they will calculate losses due to all the warranty claims. Should i keep wondering why insurance prices keep going up? Phones are built much, much different from computers. Pc's are generally modular and a single piece if defective is claimed to oem of that part. Not necessarily hp or dell. Phones usually only have one or two boards in them with all your components. So if you somehow manage to fry your wifi because you thought could improve reception or your bandwidth or whatever with something custom and it doesnt work, that whole board, system or maybe even phone depending on how its built now needs to be replaced.
I dont want to say it, but itis fair for them to not cover your phone if you went above and beyond. True, because we have become digital crackheads we usually become beta testers for their hw/sw but we also have the power of the coin too. You cant fault them if you wanted to improve their bugs/sw. You cant go banging on your drug dealers door either when he sells you some bunk cocaine and you go mix it with drano, just hoping for something and it backfires on you.
I voided my warranty.

Some interesting opinions. If this was made legal there would likely be restrictions placed on what can be changed, and it would likely end up regulated in some way.
The result would be third-party 'illegal' roms and commercially available 'legal' ones.
People like us would likely still be flashing illegal roms with modified clock-speeds etc ; )

Question about bricking.

Not a Transformer owner quite yet, but I do have a question.
My current phone is a Captivate. If anyone else here is a Galaxy S person, you know that our phones have a reputation for being pretty ****ing hard to brick (as long as you know how to read). Just get into Download mode (via buttons or jig), fire up Odin/Heimdall and you're back in business. How does the Transformer compare? Is it pretty easy to take care of when something goes wrong? Or does "at your own risk" actually mean something could seriously go wrong and not be recoverable? Thanks for any input.

I have a galaxy s captivate and i am pretty astounded at its resistance to bricking. The transformer is relatively hard to brick you just need to make sure that the zip files you download are not corrupt before you flash them. Also the unbrick tool is quite amazing but you have to read all of the instructions for it or else you might brick it further. Allot of people have complained about it completely bricking their transformer but that is only because they didn't follow the instructions properly. Other than that you are going to want to buy a transformer with a serial number that starts with less than b60 because asus changed something in some of the b70's (about half, i have a b70 that was not effected by the change) which makes them impossible to root currently.
I would suggest it as it has been a great addition and a fantastic piece of technology

Legal recourse if warranty denied because of root/unlock?

Before throwing a quick answer out to me, please read this quick blurb that describes my situation:
I have a Nexus S. On my 51st week of ownership (aka last week of warranty), the power button decided to bite the dust. This has been documented by other owners as well, notably the one and only simms22 himself. This is a common problem with Nexus S owners. Anyways, while I was trying to flash it back to stock, just my luck the TWRP recovery app crashes, leaving me with a wiped /system and a few other partitions seemingly out of whack. As a result, I have a non-booting phone. I can get as far as the Google logo with the unlocked padlock, at which point it of course cant find an OS to load (/system is blank). Anyways, I was unable to recover it back to stock because for some reason, if the power button doesnt work, then the bootloader and fastboot do not work properly. Basically, the bootloader is unresponsive unless the physical buttons are actually functioning.
I have no doubt that this phone is more than fixable. A simple repair of the power button and I'll be on my way. But of course, I was unable to do that, so I had to send it in today (in the state I just described) with a note explaining that I'm a developer, and work with various systems. This may have been a stretch, but I figured it'll help. I explained that I am 100% sure the problem is hardware-related, and independent of any software. I said that I had tested many versions of Android and have determined that since the phone doesnt respond to power presses when OFF, that it is NOT software related.
Anyhoo, I know I've got myself into some ****, so I'm curious: what kind of legal recourse do I have if they try to deny my warranty claim? I'm aware of the following:
1. The bootloader on a Nexus S specifically states that unlocking the bootloader or modifying software MAY void the warranty. It doesnt say it DOES, but that it MAY. I believe that is a strong word to use, and may very much help my case if I have to fight it. It would seem to me that this leaves Samsung with the burden of proof showing that software mods caused a button that communicates 1-way (lol) to fail, which is impossible. It's physically impossible to set the software to 'fry' the power button. It's a physical button...software simply detects presses and acts based upon it.
2. The 1975 Magnuson-Moss Act has been used frequently in the automotive sector, though its language is in no way geared towards cars. It helps to keep manufacturers from claiming things like 3rd party stereos voiding drivetrain warranties.
I'm fully prepared to fight them on this one if I have to, but I'm hoping someone can help give me some additional ammo here. I'm hoping that I won't have to, and that Samsung will do the right thing and repair it without charge. I'm a faithful customer of theirs.
Thanks!

I don't have anything but I suggest you look into your state laws as well.
You may have some extra protections given to you by your state laws.

t1n0m3n said:
I don't have anything but I suggest you look into your state laws as well.
You may have some extra protections given to you by your state laws.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's exactly what I'm doing right now, but I've had no luck so far. It seems that Australia, on the other hand, is all over that kind of stuff. Damn Aussies
Anyways, if anyone can assist me with USA-wide or TN-specific consumer/trade laws that protect me, I'd greatly appreciate it. Or if someone has a similar experience to share, please do!

Question Does unrooting and relocking bootloader effectively restore warranty?

Or can ASUS still tell if my phone has already been previously rooted? I come from Samsung phone where rooting the phone would permanently trip Knox as if there's some sort of hardware fuse. I'm wondering if something similar happens to ROG Phone as well.

Good question, I'm curious as well.
My guess is since the phone pings asus to unlock bootloader that they know on their end that its been tinkered with.

If you have used the official method they have record of your device id. The good news is they're not too hostile towards unlocked devices like some of the other brands - they know most of their customers are on the wild side

Asus releases an official unlock app, so the warning about voiding warranty is more intended toward covering issues you cause yourself. They usually still cover the internal hardware and provide support for the stock firmware. If flashing the phone back to stock fixes the issue, they may even help with that. At the end of the day, it's there so they have the option to deny claims.

Data recovery from hard-bricked phone

I have a Pixel XL that's hardbricked. Took it to a GSM shop they said the charging port works but something something CPU fried. No gsm shop in our city can fix this apparently but he heard that some folks could do it in New York City.
I don't want to recover the phone, just the data on it. Do you guys know shops that can do this ?

gtech99 said:
I have a Pixel XL that's hardbricked. Took it to a GSM shop they said the charging port works but something something CPU fried. No gsm shop in our city can fix this apparently but he heard that some folks could do it in New York City.
I don't want to recover the phone, just the data on it. Do you guys know shops that can do this ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not at any reasonable price point. What happened to the phone? Recovering the data from the flash devices would involve prohibitively expensive forensic data recovery, to the point of removing the flash devices from the board and interfacing with them using special tools. The people who have the means and the knowledge to do this are few and far between. Assuming there's no physical damage, someone with the Qualcomm Product Support Tool software and the appropriate binaries could potentially perform a low level reflash so the phone will boot...but again, the people who are actually able to do this are few and far between, assuming they even have the necessary files (which are not publicly available). The average repair shop will just replace the board, which means all the data is never recovered.

gtech99 said:
I have a Pixel XL that's hardbricked. Took it to a GSM shop they said the charging port works but something something CPU fried.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Speaking of a fried CPU, it means due to overheating CPU’s electrical components like transistors, diodes or capacitors are burned up. You will find overheating happened with some CPUs which didn’t have any fail-safe features or were overclocked by pushing high voltage. Sometimes using a faulty motherboard and faulty PSU can do this type of damage.becauseSo, you if you really ended up with a fried CPU, what is quite rare these days because, as said, modern CPUs have advanced thermal protection ( CPU will shut down automatically if it reaches a high temperature. If CPU temperature rises high due to high clock speed then it reduces the clock speed to a lower level ), you will have the worst luck to recover data from phone.
Note: it’s not possible to fix a fried CPU. Try to replace it with a new one.

V0latyle said:
Not at any reasonable price point. What happened to the phone? Recovering the data from the flash devices would involve prohibitively expensive forensic data recovery, to the point of removing the flash devices from the board and interfacing with them using special tools. The people who have the means and the knowledge to do this are few and far between. Assuming there's no physical damage, someone with the Qualcomm Product Support Tool software and the appropriate binaries could potentially perform a low level reflash so the phone will boot...but again, the people who are actually able to do this are few and far between, assuming they even have the necessary files (which are not publicly available). The average repair shop will just replace the board, which means all the data is never recovered.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I haven't done anything special with this phone. Never rooted it or installed other bootloaders, etc. It was a generic bland Pixel XL. It might have overheated a few times in the summer when I was using it in my car for Waze but otherwise nothing.
Before it shutdown for good it had some strange reboots and I think I recall there was some Pixel bug that was causing that. After doing that for a few weeks it stopped turning on completely.
Isn't a procedure like this available for the Pixel ?
https://flashfixers.com/recover-data-dead-phone-chip-off-data-recovery/

gtech99 said:
I haven't done anything special with this phone. Never rooted it or installed other bootloaders, etc. It was a generic bland Pixel XL. It might have overheated a few times in the summer when I was using it in my car for Waze but otherwise nothing.
Before it shutdown for good it had some strange reboots and I think I recall there was some Pixel bug that was causing that. After doing that for a few weeks it stopped turning on completely.
Isn't a procedure like this available for the Pixel ?
https://flashfixers.com/recover-data-dead-phone-chip-off-data-recovery/
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's what I was referring to by removing the flash device from the PCB. You would need fairly specialized tools, incluing a reader that's able to interface with the chip, and you'd have to have significant knowledge of how to interpret the raw data as the actual file structure. If you can find someone who thinks they can do this, good luck...but if it were me, I'd be charging about $150 an hour to do it.
And, this is all assuming that the data isn't encrypted. If it is (which Android does by default) then you're SOL.

V0latyle said:
That's what I was referring to by removing the flash device from the PCB. You would need fairly specialized tools, incluing a reader that's able to interface with the chip, and you'd have to have significant knowledge of how to interpret the raw data as the actual file structure. If you can find someone who thinks they can do this, good luck...but if it were me, I'd be charging about $150 an hour to do it.
And, this is all assuming that the data isn't encrypted. If it is (which Android does by default) then you're SOL.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Ah, ok. I'd pay 300$ to have this recovered is that reasonable ? Or it might be way more than that ? Guess I need to find a shop that does this sort of thing

gtech99 said:
Ah, ok. I'd pay 300$ to have this recovered is that reasonable ? Or it might be way more than that ? Guess I need to find a shop that does this sort of thing
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Best of luck to you, honestly I think the money would be better spent elsewhere.