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Should I, shouldn't I

Hi folks,
I'm thinking of picking up the galaxy s, the samsung vibrant from t-mobile to use on my carrier.
i had a few questions and hope you fellas can help me out.
1st, what would be involved in unlocking it? Would I have any problems getting it unlocked?
Also i'm a total noob to android but i've been reading up. What exactly is "rooting"? will rooting allow me to put a stock 2.2 on it? is that even possible and is it recomended on this phone?
and lastly from people who have been using this phone, do you recommend getting it?
thanks

oh snap! i posted this in the wrong board. it should have been in the "Galaxy S I9000 General"
sorry mods.

Rooting allows you to get access to parts of the phone you otherwise wouldn't have access to. Compare it to having administrator rights on windows, you can access more files, do more stuff. Programs can perform more actions when your phone is rooted.
Putting 2.2 on it is completely seperate from that and at this moment is not possible. However, Samsung already stated that the first 2.2 update will be somewhere in august (not for euro/usa regions though) so perhaps withing the month after that it will also be available for other regions. Samsung has officially announced that it WILL be updated though, so no need to worry about that.
Without the 2.2 update it's already pretty damn fast though (with some tweaks its faster then the Nexus one WITH 2.2) so I would certainly already recommend it.
This is my first android phone (after symbian, windows mobile and more) and it's really easy to get used to and works just great. The screen is beautiful (good colors, vibrant although reading text on it is a less great experience) and it's very fast. Also feels light, in a good way, great screen, etc. I can totally recommend it.
ps. No idea what the status on unlocking is, mine was unlocked already so never looked into it.

you might want to make sure the frequency bands of the one you acquire will work on the carrier you want to use it on
if not, it may not work at all, or may not give you 3G data svc

personally i didnt think any phones are locked down anymore, at least not in the UK?
you should buy the phone, its the best ive owned, not saying its the best on the market but id like to hear of an arguement for why it isnt.
rooting was done on this device even before release, and with already 300k sales in south korea alone it looks like its going to have some great support and updates in the future

[Q] Why not an eFuse?

So I just read about HTC new attempt at blocking custom firmware, most likely due to people bricking there phones and sending them back to T-Moble, Sprint, ect...
If HTC and other company's really have an issue with custom roms why dont they just implement some sort of eFuse if an unsigned/encrypted firmware/bootloader/recovery ect gets flashed over it will burn out and mark the phone as being altered but still usable?
Thoughts?

Its also possible that they are implementing this to help against people that think they know how to root phones from actually doing it. It could be to save the "average user" from screwing up and smurfing up their phones, so that way they dont get a bunch of phones back from tard buckets that can't follow directions on how to root. It also may be a tactic to say "just try our new UI and see if you like it while someone who is good with code takes more time to root." Because if there was no locks then the folks on xda would root the phone and never look back at what the manufacturer has put on the phone and worked hard to do. Just my .02 but i could be wrong.

Morder Chemiker said:
Its also possible that they are implementing this to help against people that think they know how to root phones from actually doing it. It could be to save the "average user" from screwing up and smurfing up their phones, so that way they dont get a bunch of phones back from tard buckets that can't follow directions on how to root. It also may be a tactic to say "just try our new UI and see if you like it while someone who is good with code takes more time to root." Because if there was no locks then the folks on xda would root the phone and never look back at what the manufacturer has put on the phone and worked hard to do. Just my .02 but i could be wrong.
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I take issue with "the manufacturer has put on the phone and worked hard to do"
If they had any sense they would make the phone way more sleek and functional before sending out to us. They do not, They just send out the "7/11" version of what the phone is capable of, and do that because they do not want to put the money into the research. Ergo ....XDA is born............

oka1 said:
I take issue with "the manufacturer has put on the phone and worked hard to do"
If they had any sense they would make the phone way more sleek and functional before sending out to us. They do not, They just send out the "7/11" version of what the phone is capable of, and do that because they do not want to put the money into the research. Ergo ....XDA is born............
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Perhaps I should have put that in quotes. They're just making minor changes, slapping a revison number on it and pushing it out to the masses. However they, being the manufactures, would consider this "working hard" part. I'm not supporting what they push out because there is WAY more talent from the devs here on XDA that put in more work and make things better.

Rather than HTC taking a page from Motorola's customer-hostility, there is an easy way for this to be done:
I'd recommend HTC use the fastboot oem-unlock method, with a well-written out warning screen on the device that once you tap OK, all your data hits the bit bucket [1], the phone is unlocked, and if you want any service on this device, the phone will need to be completely reflashed with a stock ROM from the cellular carrier who sold the device.
This way, it keeps the dummies from bricking their phone, while the dedicated modders can spend time working on better ROMs and not having to deal with eFuses and other crap.
[1]: It may seem bad that unlocking the phone for ROMs causes a purge of data, but just in case really clever malware tries to trigger an oem unlock, it would be completely removed from the device.

Android rooting days are coming to an end?

Verizon and other carriers are working with Google to ban rooting phones. Data will get throttled and possibility of the phone getting banned from network coverage.
1. The way that they were able to track rooted users is based on pushing updates to phones, and then tracking which meid's did not take the update.
2. More than one major carrier besides Verizon has implemented this program and that all carriers involved had begun tracking rooted phones. All carriers involved were more than pleased with the accuracy of the program.
3. In new builds the tracking would be built into the firmware and that if a person removed the tracking from the firmware then the phone would not be verified on the network (i.e. your phone could not make phone calls or access data).
4. Google is working with carriers and manufacturers to secure phones, and although Google is not working to end hacking, it is working to secure the kernel so that no future applications can maliciously use exploits to steal end-user information. But in order to gain this level of security this may mean limited chances to root the device. (This item I've been told but not yet able to verify through multiple sources – so take it for what you want)
5. Verizon has successfully used its new programs to throttle data on test devices in accordance with the guidelines of the program.
6. The push is to lock down the devices as tight as can be, but also offer un-lockable devices (Think Nexus S).

NOOOOOO,
that sux and i wanted to buy a andriod soon because of the rooting.

I wouldn't see it as a threat the reason being :
Majority of people root they phones just to get the better version of the android software which they would have not got otherwise due to the companies not releasing the updated software so obviously the companies wont bother to send the so called update to this old phones anyway.
Secondly Google seems to trying to close the gap on fragmentation in the android as most phones were updated to the Eclair version. so I believe most of the phones of 2010 will eventually get the Gingerbread release depending on the carrier
and last of all there will always be great softwares released and some one out there will come with a hack or whatever

tfn said:
I wouldn't see it as a threat the reason being :
Majority of people root they phones just to get the better version of the android software which they would have not got otherwise due to the companies not releasing the updated software so obviously the companies wont bother to send the so called update to this old phones anyway.
Secondly Google seems to trying to close the gap on fragmentation in the android as most phones were updated to the Eclair version. so I believe most of the phones of 2010 will eventually get the Gingerbread release depending on the carrier
and last of all there will always be great softwares released and some one out there will come with a hack or whatever
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i completely agree with your first point considering I am one of those ppl! also I rooted my EVO to get better battery life....thats another reason to rooting.
i do see the carriers point of view tho.....they dont want people using the tethering workaround they gain from rooting since that is money that they are missing out on.
i should mention, tho, i am against the carriers doing this!! im just saying that i see where they are coming from

I dont think there is any blocks coming to any of the networks in the UK

This subject has already been discussed - more than once, you'll see, from the link I posted in that thread.

If this takes place, I'll be going back to Iphone.

his was an email I got from my networking team. Just wanted to inform and at the same time get a few informed views.
Sent from my ADR6300 using XDA App

tfn said:
I wouldn't see it as a threat the reason being :
Majority of people root they phones just to get the better version of the android software which they would have not got otherwise due to the companies not releasing the updated software so obviously the companies wont bother to send the so called update to this old phones anyway.
Secondly Google seems to trying to close the gap on fragmentation in the android as most phones were updated to the Eclair version. so I believe most of the phones of 2010 will eventually get the Gingerbread release depending on the carrier
and last of all there will always be great softwares released and some one out there will come with a hack or whatever
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I know this is my first post, but this thread caught my eye.
the reason they don't want us rooting our phones is because if we do we can use out old phone longer and don't have to pay out he wazoo for a brand new phone. I have a Samsung Moment the last O/S that I could get was Android 2.1 Update 1 which basically rendered the Spring gps useless, and made calls and texts come in when ever they wanted, forcing me to think about a new phone, So i joined the SDX forums and rooted it installed 2.2 with the EB28 rom and so far every thing works as good as a Samsung epic just not 4 g,. which doesn't bother me since I don't video chat.
As far as I am concerned YOU paid for the, phone YOU pay the phone bill its YOURS, you should be able to do whatever you want to with it.

that realy sucks. I dont like that

I wouldn't sweat this too much.
I understand the tethering issue, and I also understand that the base is, and always will be, money. That's the whole point of any business.
Having said that, this community in itself is a market and there are people watching what we are doing and where we are going, because there's cash to be made. If we run into locked bootloaders, dead phones, crappy updates and new phones riddled with bloatware, you better believe that someone else will be ready to snatch all of us up and give us exactly what we want, if not close.
If I owned a company large enough to deliver wireless service, I'd be sitting silently with a squad of high-end 250 dollar unlocked smartphones ready for some good ol "we have your back" marketing. ...granted my wireless was on point and I got good reception.
I don't think us getting into our phones and tinkering with it's innards is ever gonna stop. It might change, yeah, but it won't stop.

damn that doesn't sound to good

even if this happens i'm pretty sure there will be workarounds..

So please explain me how that would work in the court room :
- defendent : I paid for a data plan, and now I am accused of using it
- provider : he has installed an upgraded OS on his phone, your honor !
That would be the same as switching phones (for example if I change my Hero for an unlocked Nexus S, I would be using the same OS as in my hacked Hero), while still having the contract.
I can not see how they can enforce such a thing.

I always buy SIM free phones, so they cant really get me with that as I dont ever get carrier updates.

jh71 said:
So please explain me how that would work in the court room :
- defendent : I paid for a data plan, and now I am accused of using it
- provider : he has installed an upgraded OS on his phone, your honor !
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Try again...
Defendant: I paid for a data plan that expressly stated that tethering is not included so I fiddled with my phone so that I could do that without paying the appropriate charges.
Network: as you can see, a clear breach of contract.
Not that it would ever reach a courtroom anyway.
waz000000 said:
I always buy SIM free phones, so they cant really get me with that as I dont ever get carrier updates.
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That's got nothing to do with it though - I have an unlocked. unbranded Motorola Defy but the bootloader is still encrypted.
Some manufacturers can and do lock down handsets that aren't tied to any one network. Motorola do it, HTC seem to be moving in that direction - only SE are taking clear steps in the opposite direction.

Let's have a go at it one more time:
Defendant :
"Your honor, android is all about innovation, and carriers are ganging up with manufacturares cuz they want more, and more, and more, but are to lazy or incapable, or lacking inspiration. I do root, but tethering might as well not even be there, as it is part of many official out of the box releases. If i root, i do it cuz some manufacturers and some carriers are incapable of offering me the google experience im locking for, and as this is a carrier dominance, i dont have a choice but get the closest device for my budget, and that delivers the closest version to that google experience, and then root it, to get the proper battery life i paid for, and get rid of bloatware, which isnt productive for my needs, as THIS DEVICE IS MINE, I OWN IT!"
Network:
We are directly against Android!!!!
,

if this happend i think hes going to loose a lot of client so i don't think thats going to happend if no root no theme change no a lot of other things no liberty so if they do that i buy an iphone ^^

hey andy...why dont u guys start investing in you own hardware... apple is pretty good at it, google would be a hit. at least a research would be more then worthed.
my, how the tables would turn in such case....

The more I read and hear this, the more I don't believe it will ever happen.

Hoping for suggestions on cracking a T-Mobile lock off my S8+

I swore-off androids (ADHD makes smartphones a very bad distraction for some, especially me) but my friend got a "buy one, get one" deal on the S8+ and, after putting a small edge-crack in the first one, just put it aside - she ended up giving it to me.
With her pins I removed the samsung/google accounts and did a hard-reset, then updated the system- my understanding was that, after doing this, that the phone would be 'open' for switching providers, so expect this is a different level of 'lock' (after hard-resetting, there was an App called 'device unlock', I had to connect to my wifi to get an answer and it said 'no', to contact customer service)
Am unsure if she can get them to unlock it, but even that is a major PITA (we don't see each other often nor do we live nearby), and I half-expect they're going to say 'no' to her anyways if she's trying to get them to let a 3rd party use it on a different carrier. So, I want/may-have-to crack it to get around this and while I'm guessing that a custom ROM will bypass this, I've read enough about there being something on the chip that'll be irrevocably 'tripped' when rooting the phone before flashing ROM's, and that once tripped it can't be undone and causes issues....so am wary!
There's also the idea of just flashing the regular G955U1 firmware but even w/ that I'm unsure if it'll 'trip' whatever the chip's protection from rooting is, I'd really like to get my service (Tracfone) onto it before doing more aggressive 'minimalization' of the system as I'd like to mess-around w/ a new android OS for a bit just to check it out (last time I used android, towelroot was the premiere go-to...that should give an idea how long it's been!)
Any/all ideas or tips or just keywords to get me pointed in the right direction would be incredibly appreciated, have spent many hours this week trying to get this thing working w/ my service, am awaiting my 2nd SIM card (my old phone, via Tracfone, was using verizon towers- so if I want to keep my #, I have to use the Verizon SIM they've mailed me that should be here any day) and, after that re-set, I'm expecting that even the new SIM will not be enough to get it working properly :/
(Something I think is important to point out, though it could be a fluke- during one of my tech-support sessions w/ the people at my carrier(Tracfone), the first one actually, we ended the call *thinking* it was fixed - the tech had finished on his end, asked me to make a call w/ the S8+, I called my landline and sure enough my phone# was calling my landline (via the S8+), however the tech said there were still issues and that he'd work on them, to call back in 24hrs. After hanging-up, I started testing and the first thing I did was to *call* my cell# from the landline and, sure enough, the old phone started ringing (the old phone is CDMA so it wasn't like I'd pulled its SIM), am unsure if I should take this to mean that it just let me dial-out as a fluke (I hadn't hard-reset the handset yet) or if it went wrong another way, but I *was* able to make a single outgoing call from the S8+ with my # so am getting the impression the lock isn't *that* unbeatable!)

Do a google search for UnlockUnit(.)com and check if your S8 qualifies to be unlocked.

Thank you!!
RossTeagan said:
Do a google search for UnlockUnit(.)com and check if your S8 qualifies to be unlocked.
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TBH that seems sketchy to me but it's a fail-safe/last-ditch effort I'll do if/when the time comes....
I just got a 30d temp-unlock from t-mobile (after a conference call w/ them & my friend the prior owner & myself), so right now am thinking *maybe* I can do things as far as cracking that lock that i couldn't have before....I don't care if I hobble the phone, I only care if the cracked unit can do talk/text, if it loses data I'm fine with that (honestly I'd be looking for the most minimalist ROM if/when I get my non-t-mobile service onto this thing, am a linux person and hoping they've got linux-esque rom's at this point!)((yes, I know android is based off linux I just mean putting a super-minimalist 'basic mode' *nix setup, that'd be my ideal!!))
I know there's a 'trip' on the logic-board on the CPU but my understanding is that tripping it only ruins the ability to get samsung updates and things of that nature, but that it *does not* ruin the ability of the handset to call/text, or use wifi....am still just thinking there *has* to be a way to crack this thing if I'm willing to lose-out on every feature besides talk/text, honestly I've been considering going to this t-mobile location that I suspect is a franchise in a 'ghetto' area near me and trying to just slip their tech $50 or something to unlock it! Though I'd much rather just crack it at-home so I can have higher assurance it's not merely this 'temporary unlock' feature and that I actually get it truly carrier-unlocked....hate that they went so far to lock it out but am having trouble thinking it's unbeatable!
(regarding the pay-for-unlock-code types of operations like you linked, do you know of others' experiences like how reliable a service it is, something more like 50/50 or 95% reliable? Have read an anecdote of someone unlocking one that way, only for the handset to be locked again a month later.....presumably they paid for a temp-unlock, thinking it was a permanent one- but permanent is all that these services seem to imply they do!)

Question Unlocked bootloader data security

If I lose my phone or it gets stolen how secure is my pin protected data with an unlocked bootloader as opposed to a locked bootloader?

Pretty sure you have to wipe all to get rid of a pin, so I would say it is almost the same.

Connorsdad said:
If I lose my phone or it gets stolen how secure is my pin protected data with an unlocked bootloader as opposed to a locked bootloader?
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There are two schools of thought on locked vs. unlocked bootloader security (both which I quote below) that I saw discussed a while back on the subject. It may not directly speak on pin protecting your data -- they discuss some on how your device is encrypted behind your pin so even if stolen, it should still be secure (enough) -- but at the very least there are ways around EFS so your device might still be of some use and/or, maybe given enough time you never know what can happen; which is discussed a bit in the quote & discussion (in the thread they do it in) below...
You could click on either posts (they are made in the same thread) to follow the discussion more (they go on for a bit, but not to too much more of a degree)...
96carboard said:
Everything will work perfectly with an unlocked bootloader. It will just give you an annoying warning screen briefly when powering on.
If you want to know about security risks, they're fairly small, and ONLY apply if your phone is handled physically by someone untrusted for an extended period of time, in which the only thing they could actually do is install a modified boot image. Under those circumstances, the device security has to be assumed compromised whether the bootloader is unlocked or not.
An unlocked bootloader will NOT allow a 3rd party to access data on the device, since it is encrypted and requires your security code to unlock.
Now, you can actually tell if they've rebooted the device, which they would HAVE to do in order to install a different boot image; the unlock screen (which they are NOT able to modify without resulting in boot failure) will tell you!
And I absolutely disagree that it is shortsighted to advise immediate unlocking. Nothing of real benefit comes from having a locked bootloader. Any sense of security you gain from it is smoke and mirrors. It can only be tampered with if someone has physical access, and if somebody has physical access, it has to be assumed compromised regardless of whether it is unlocked or not. If anything, your security is improved because it is now on your mind that it could potentially be tampered with, and you are reminded of it with the id10t warning every time it reboots.
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bobby janow said:
Everything will not work perfectly. Let's be honest here. Look it up, some banking apps work mine doesn't. Pay will work one day and not the next. And if your bank finds out your account was hacked and your phone is unlocked and/or bypasses bank security protocols who will pay for the missing funds when they find out?
A missing device can be booted into a custom recovery and adb commands will be available to take everything on your device bypassing any security you have. With a locked bootloader that is not possible. So if you know your phone can be compromised you feel more secure? That is ludicrous and really doesn't make sense. I mean talk about smoke and mirrors.
Now that being said there are a lot of folks in your camp that say you're living a pipe dream if you think the phone is more easily hacked or info stolen. I understand that argument entirely and it's possibly correct to a certain degree. But to summarily say immediately unlock your bootloader if you don't plan on rooting because.. well just in case, is really disingenuous to a great many individuals. At the very least look up some articles on why to keep your bootloader locked, especially for someone that hasn't done it in some time, if ever. The beauty of Android is the possibility if you so desire. Just be conscience of the advice you give. Many years ago Chainfire said in his blog that if you have an unlocked bootloader and have financial apps on your device you're asking for trouble and you might want to rethink that. (not in so many words) That weekend I locked my bootloader and never looked back. I haven't missed anything.. well other than flashing MVK kernel for my 6a. ;-) But then I'd need root and that brings a host of other issues.
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