Hi Everyone,
Ive been on a bit of a mission with T-mobile and have been in touch with the directors office, they are under the impression that nothing has been locked down on the phone in rc7/rc30 that would limit the use of the phone from a development standpoint.
Ive given them a few examples of things that cant be done but they refuse to do anything (other than cancel my contact if i want) as im only one person who is complaining.
I know everyone runnning rc30v1.2 and rc8v.12 is ok atm, but could EVERONE please send a little email of complaint. Just explaining that you are unhappy that they have locked down the phone and denied us root.
cl&[email protected]
They say that if they get more complaints then something will be done
ITS WORTH A SHOT ISNT IT?
PS... If anyone wants to cancel their contract in the uk because of the lack of access, call 01707 315000 and ask to talk to Leah within the Directors team about your G1 problem. I explained that i couldnt get my apps working because i couldnt edit/add files to system directories.
They should offer to cancel it, it worked for me
Yeah, it's worth a shot, although from past experience with T-Mobile this may be akin to trying to extract blood from a stone
I tried doing the same thing after I got my G1 (before anyone figured out the hole in RC29). I found the people over at T-Mobile USA are just as clueless. As soon as you mention the words Android or G1, they instantly transfer you to a different support queue. I tried to explain what root access was and they didn't have a clue what I was talking about.
I found that here in the UK also, these people work in the directors team and so far have not fobbed me off.
They dont claim to be technical but are at least talking to the T-mobile developers about this. They have raised my concerns with the UK G1 manager, i think my case just needs a little more oomph from others complaining.
I've already called HTC, G1 support, and the PDA/Smartphone support ppl. None of them were willing to even try to understand the issue.
T-mobile have just called me and have advised that we should expect a statement about the issue by the end of the week. The issue is now with board members apparently
Maybee they are actuclly starting to understand??
You should have them email. At least that way it leaves a paper trail.
SGTDavePwnage said:
T-mobile have just called me and have advised that we should expect a statement about the issue by the end of the week. The issue is now with board members apparently
Maybee they are actuclly starting to understand??
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's very interesting that T-Mobile is even considering the idea of allowing root access, to the point where it would be an executive decision by the board members. Do you have any other information on this aside from your first post? Can anyone else confirm this?
i phoned tmobile uk today and asked why i couldnt get root on my tc5-rc8.
and i had a long talk with the guy and he said he had a email about this issue
and went throught a few things with me on my phone. and then he said he would phone me back tomorrow with someone that new more about the g1 then the tec support staff. and he would be able to give me more answers about it.
qtronix
Cool
Sounds like my insessant *****ing at T-mobile support might have gotten us somewhere?
At least techies are not fobbing people off at the moment.
Could you please concider sending an email to the address i posted, just so they are aware that others are miffed.
******This is a copy of the email i sent to the directors team******
Leah
Many thanks for your call....
As t-mobile dont seem to see/understand the problem I have given the contact details of the director team to a group of developers so that you can hopefully get a few more calls about this. Please believe me that I am not the only person who has these concerns, but when people call tech support about this they are simply fobbed off by people who are not trained/do not understand the issue.
I would like to point out an error with t-mobiles response that they have in no way locked down the phone so that it is detremental for putting developed software onto the phone.
Please see a few examples of how the new RC8 Software limits Developers :-
1. Say I wanted my screen to automatically rotate without wanting to open the keyboard, this is simply a matter of editing offset: 1104724 within /system/framework/framework.odex to 0x0F001246.
I could do this on the old software but not on the new RC8
2. Say i wanted to update the web browser to do the same, this would mean editing the origional browser source code released by Google and putting it on my phone. Again, this was possible with root access on RC7 but has now been made impossible on the new RC8.
3. Say i wanted to make a tethering application that allows me to use my G1 as a modem to my PC (i know this would cost me money on my contract for data transfer) but I might want to do it so that i can connect to my workplace vpn to fix something. This was Doable on RC7, but now is not.
4. The G1 currently has no way of clearing cache for the marketplace, this again was doable on RC7 but not on RC8
5. The G1 has a limited ammount of space to install applications. It would be a good idea if we could install applications to our SD memory Cards, but again we cant do this because of the new software.
The above examples are just some simple things developers are working on that would benefit the phone, but we cant develop them and put them on the phone.
Basically anything that means editing a system file / writing a file to a system directory is now impossible.
Please understand that developers are not trying to take over the world or ruin the phone. We are simply trying to make the phone do what we want / improve the features.
This is how OpenSource works. Everyone has access to the Source code so that it can if neccecary be customised/edited to improve things for everyone.
The new software has made it impossible for programs that interact with the main system files or require extra files to be put in a system folder, to work.
Developers understand why the phone RC7 software was unsafe in the way it ran commands, we understand why you fixed the command running problem, but instead of fixing the issue properly you have just locked down root access?? Why??
If the new software in no way limits what developers can do, then why when you search on the net are so many people “Jailbreaking” their phones to get the access they require.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081105-android-liberation-t-mobile-g1-jailbroken.html
Can i draw your attention to
"In contrast, the G1 has been developed by the Open Handset Alliance project. It's extremely unlikely that this alliance, which is committed to an open platform, will engage in the same kinds of protective shenanigans that Apple has resorted to. The Android philosophy states that "anyone can contribute to Android and influence its direction. That means that anyone can download, build, and run the code needed to create a complete mobile device."
So why jailbreak an already-open device? One big jailbreak advantage is that it allows you to bypass the G1's internal storage. Until now, you were limited by the G1's built-in memory for installing and running programs. With the jailbreak, you can install applications onto a local SD card and run them from the card. Running low on memory? Just swap cards in and out.
Jailbreaking also allows you to use low-level tools that run in the background. Want your G1 to call home and report your location every 20 minutes? A simple Unix process, called a daemon, can handle that for you. You can set daemons up to remind you of appointments, to scan for nearby wireless devices and more. The world of handheld computing doesn't begin or end with graphic interfaces. There's an enormously rich world of possibilities available through command line processes.
Most importantly, jailbreaking gives you complete control of your system from the bottom up. It lets you stop thinking of your phone as a handheld gadget and start using it as a fully-capable Unix platform. "
Please could you explain how T-mobile are of the opinion that they have not limited developers with the above examples in mind.
The G1 is being sold as a Developer friendly OpenSource Phone. How can you claim this is developer friendly when the software severely limits what developers can do?
Are T-mobile saying that the phone was never supposed to allow users this access and that the RC7 root access was a mistake?
Eagerly Awaiting your response..
******
Well written, although I would have DEFINITELY left out the part about tethering the phone.
vr24 said:
Well written, although I would have DEFINITELY left out the part about tethering the phone.
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Click to collapse
I did think about that, but then i reconcidered as we already have tetherbot which works without root.
Suppose we will just have to see if anything comes of it
SGTDavePwnage said:
I did think about that, but then i reconcidered as we already have tetherbot which works without root.
Suppose we will just have to see if anything comes of it
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
you can always call t-mobile and say that after you updated the phone it is now:
constantly feezing, apps are running slow, and at times you can not connect to internet.
also tell them that you tried a factory reset and it did not help (make up a story that you have friend that has a lot of app and his phone runs faster than you phone with no apps installed)
if you have insurance they will send you one for free, you just have to return your old phone,
i believe they are still sending out rc29 for replacements as of now.
friend and cousin tried it and it worked.
might be worth a shot
Just got this in my inbox:
"Thank you for letting us know of your concerns with the 'open source' and 'root access' on your G1 mobile phone. We really do appreciate your comments about this.
We're aware that there are concerns in relation to this and our leadership teams in the UK and the USA are currently reviewing your comments and our position. We plan to provide you and other customers with similar concerns, with a response early next week, which should answer your concerns. I'll be in touch with you then.
Your comments are extremely valuable to us Mr * and I'm grateful for your patience while we look into this. I'd like to thank you personally for your co-operation.
In the mean time I hope you enjoy your weekend.
Kind regards
Leah Young
Directors' Office Co-ordinator
T-Mobile (UK)"
Of course, their answer could be anything from "f*ck off" to "yes, we'd love to embrace the openness of android with both arms, here everyone, have root!" so we'll all have to keep our fingers crossed 'til monday.
Well I just hope they release an update with options that allow us to turn off all background services (myfaves) and unwanted datatraffic (or actuall prevent overriding options when roaming).
How did that dead horse like the beating?
Perhaps a dead horse. Could it be that Tmo has now figured out that with root access, it won't take long for people like the coders at XDA to fully jailbreak the device to the point that voIP will be easy for any user to obtain? Are they just trying to protect their ability to profit off of voice traffic?
rynosaur said:
Perhaps a dead horse. Could it be that Tmo has now figured out that with root access, it won't take long for people like the coders at XDA to fully jailbreak the device to the point that voIP will be easy for any user to obtain? Are they just trying to protect their ability to profit off of voice traffic?
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Click to collapse
Hummm... I think ALL wireless providers are threatened by VOIP but the main reason root access was blocked was due to bad press mainly by tons of articles stating that there is a huge security risk and a flaw was found with Android which could let remote users attack someone's device...blah blah blah and so forth. That pretty much scared T-Mobile and Google which hated to have bad press so close to the G1 just being released and were forced to correct this issue. The only problem with that protection came with closing alot of freedom for the G1 and may happen to alot of more Android-based devices in the future, I'm afraid... Maybe Google will realize that there are other ways to protect mobile hijacking (which is extremely rare anyways) by creating some type of built-in firewall software instead?
rynosaur said:
Perhaps a dead horse. Could it be that Tmo has now figured out that with root access, it won't take long for people like the coders at XDA to fully jailbreak the device to the point that voIP will be easy for any user to obtain? Are they just trying to protect their ability to profit off of voice traffic?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Root is not necessary to build a voip app. Fact is, G1 launched with a skype-compatible voip app called iSkoot. Look it up.
SGTDavePwnage said:
Cool
Sounds like my insessant *****ing at T-mobile support might have gotten us somewhere?
At least techies are not fobbing people off at the moment.
Could you please concider sending an email to the address i posted, just so they are aware that others are miffed.
******This is a copy of the email i sent to the directors team******
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i wont quote the entire email because its big. but you sir are very well spoken, great email!
Sorry if this is a common question, but I failed to find anything. Feel free to close this thread if I am asking something that has been asked multiple times.
I want to learn what to look for when trying to find root exploits. I just don't know where to begin. I thought a reasonable process would be to look at all of the old root exploits and see where they looked and get a rough idea of what to look for from those. The problem is all the root exploits come in a one click .exe or an .apk so it is impossible to learn from what they do. Does anyone have suggestions? And just for the record, I am not some young kid who has no experience or knowledge of linux, oo programming, scripting languages, assembly language, etc. I will be finishing up my final year of college and will be in need of a hobby when I graduate
I'd actually like to know about this too, or at least what could I do to help the expert developers obtain root on new devices. (I have a Droid 3) It'd be a learning experience - if only we knew where to start looking to learn how.
andmaf said:
Sorry if this is a common question, but I failed to find anything. Feel free to close this thread if I am asking something that has been asked multiple times.
I want to learn what to look for when trying to find root exploits. I just don't know where to begin. I thought a reasonable process would be to look at all of the old root exploits and see where they looked and get a rough idea of what to look for from those. The problem is all the root exploits come in a one click .exe or an .apk so it is impossible to learn from what they do. Does anyone have suggestions? And just for the record, I am not some young kid who has no experience or knowledge of linux, oo programming, scripting languages, assembly language, etc. I will be finishing up my final year of college and will be in need of a hobby when I graduate
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
A root exploit is usually found in a program that is pre-installed on the phone, and has write access to the usually read-only parts of the phone's memory. People mess around with these programs until they find a loophole that allows them to use the programs write access to write whatever they want to the phone.
One of the Evo 4G's root methods involved opening Flash Lite's settings page and running a script within it that gave you root access. (Source)
Those are the easier roots though. Found by pure luck, when someone says "Hey, what happens if I try and do X while the phone is doing Y?"
Some of them are more complicated. For example, the current Evo 3D root (My phone) was found by a team of professional developers who intentionally crashed the phones kernal, and found a bug in the kernal itself that allowed files to be pushed through it.
Brush up on how exploits are found and exploited in the desktop world - it's the same stuff for mobile. Usually called "privilege escalation".
Be warned, though, it is extremely tedious and difficult. It can be pretty dull.
It takes a lot of time, just like finding an exploit on a linux program. But it's too harder, since the great part of the OS is written in java
Thanks for the replies. I thought that it might be similar to privilege escalation on a linux box. I did not know that some of the exploits were found through programs that were already installed on the phone...that is very interesting.
So a while ago there was this controversy about the King Root app that it was collecting the phone's IMEI and sending it off to China servers after a person roots his device.
Since then it seems that forum moderators here began locking up threads and removing all links, basically this program was banned from the forums. Now I see that lots of threads have been unlocked again for discussion where the Kingo Root app is mentioned.
I have also noticed that they have now added an "Open Source" page on their website. So have some experts from here reviewed the program thoroughly, found nothing and decided to allow it?
Mitko said:
So a while ago there was this controversy about the King Root app that it was collecting the phone's IMEI and sending it off to China servers after a person roots his device.
Since then it seems that forum moderators here began locking up threads and removing all links, basically this program was banned from the forums. Now I see that lots of threads have been unlocked again for discussion where the Kingo Root app is mentioned.
I have also noticed that they have now added an "Open Source" page on their website. So have some experts from here reviewed the program thoroughly, found nothing and decided to allow it?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, discussion is now allowed. The Kingo team has been working with the XDA staff to resolve the issues. IMEI's are no longer collected, but by virtue of how the program works, it still sends some info (such as serial number) to remote servers, and there is no real way around that. The explanations given by Kingo seem reasonable, and jive with what the XDA staff has determined by their own analysis.
As per usual, any time you use a closed source program to gain root (or for anything for that matter) -- and I'm not specifically talking about Kingo -- the onus is on you to determine if it is the program is appropriate for you. Caveat emptor.
efrant said:
Yes, discussion is now allowed. The Kingo team has been working with the XDA staff to resolve the issues. IMEI's are no longer collected, but by virtue of how the program works, it still sends some info (such as serial number) to remote servers, and there is no real way around that. The explanations given by Kingo seem reasonable, and jive with what the XDA staff has determined by their own analysis.
As per usual, any time you use a closed source program to gain root (or for anything for that matter) -- and I'm not specifically talking about Kingo -- the onus is on you to determine if it is the program is appropriate for you. Caveat emptor.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you for the detailed answer.
Hello fellow members and users of the XDA website and forums, well anyways, not all of us have the luxury of affording the top-notch or even the close to high quality devices. With that being said, there is a small issue for those of us who can't afford these top notch devices. We are pretty much UNABLE to root our devices and get the most out of them. So, for those of you out there whom understand the situation and the ordeal we have to endure on a regular basis, being unable to find the full potential of our devices, here are some questions I hope that we could have answered. (I hope this is in the right section, if not, my sincere apologies)
1) How do you root an iRULU tablet/android WITHOUT a computer?
2) How do you root an ASTRO QUEO tablet/android WITHOUT a computer?
Needless to say, I don't exactly have computer access, and the only computer access I will have anytime soon will be using a LIBRARY computer, so with that in mind, it is nearly impossible for me to download (let alone install) any programs that aren't already part of the system.
So my question is simply... are there any APPS/APKS that allow me to root these two devices WITHOUT a computer? I have already tried FRAMAROOT & ANDROOT, but it seems these two are unusable with my devices. Can you please provide me with a solution, that DOESN'T require a computer?
Does a comprehensive and plain english list exist anywhere that tells who is who and why they have a security certificate installed on my android phone?
I've asked this before and never found an answer. I find it odd that it isn't questioned and recently when installing FoxFi, it was made more poignant when many became up in arms about the FoxFi cert and the notification that some unknown entity could be monitioring activity. FoxFi is pretty clear about why that cert is there and I can't say that for the factory installed ~200 certs.
Also, is there a comprehensive list anywhere that tells what factory installed and system apps do? Many have very obscure names and even names which are quite misleading upon actually discovering what they really do. I'm sure I can't be the only one that would like to know exactly which apps are safe to freeze, disable or uninstall and upon doing so, what functionality will be lost or what other apps will no longer work, if any.
I think Google needs to step things up in these two areas so people can actually know. The work in the area of app permissions is a step in that direction, but, still a long way from full and forthright disclosure aimed at educating all android device owners.
Thanks for any direction you can provide.
Hmmmmm.... its merely about the desire to know why every android I've owned for coming on ten years now has security certs installed belonging to the DOD, Japanese Government, Experia, Equifax and many more that I have no idea who they are unless I want to research each and everyone of them. Even doing so in most cases still doesn't reveal why those entities have a cert on my phone and what it actually means. I wonder what happens if they are removed and why they are there in the first place.
As far as the many pre-installed apps that I can't imagine many people having a clue as to why they are installed or what they actually do, well, that kinda speaks for itself as well.
Nobody else wonders or does everyone else but me already know?
However, in the mean time, I'll refine my quest to changing permissions and any insightful threads on that for dummies would be appreciated.
Thanks
Hi
Thanks for writing to us at XDA Assist. Unfortunately I can't find anything relating to your question on XDA, it's probably best to ask here:
Android Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting
No response in two days, thread closed.