HTC Unlocks Bootloader For All of Its Devices
htcdev.com
htcdev.com
This, so far, is BS.
If I were to make a guess, I would say the September 2011 mark is all devices that are using the current bootloader locking method, and so they are just supporting that instead of going through and making other programs for all previous versions.
[1] http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1318919
"We continue to work on models launched prior to September 2011, please check back often for the status of older devices."
My guess is the newest devices have an updated bootloader that they CAN unlock easily. I am betting they may even be stymied by the security they put in place on older devices. This series of events makes sense to me:
Spring 2011 - announce we're going to allow unlocking
Summer 2011 - update bootloader to be easily unlockable
Sept 2011 - start releasing updated loader on devices
Dec 2011 - final certification that this is all going to work OK and release to the public
2012 - figure out how to get around our own security on older devices
??? - Convince carriers to actually take that update
I think we need to temper our expectations with respect to the mobile device industry. We might see smartphones as mini-computers, but the companies that make them do not, and neither does the vast majority of their target audience.
I certainly haven't (with the exception of trying to use a G1 after a Froyo device). When I got the Froyo to Gingerbread upgrade on my G2 there were many improvements, but nothing I noticed that affected third-party apps. Even many of my favorite apps that use Honeycomb features (e.g. Plume, Kindle, Google Music, Firefox, etc.) seamlessly support older devices.
Google has been pretty good about putting out compatibility libraries for major new APIs (e.g. Fragments) and there's a lot of support for checking the presence or absence of various features / APIs / etc. These days, there's even support in the Android Market for having different versions of the same app for different OS versions.
Supporting a range of OS versions is certainly work, but I'm not sure how much more work it is beyond supporting a wide variety of form factors, different hardware features, etc. In any case, the good developers seem to be able to handle it.
I'm pretty sure developers care about users upgrading to the latest version. No one wants to be targeting ancient APIs.
Translation:
Look, you guys asked for this, so we're giving it to you, but it's probably going to fry your brain. Enjoy.
Ask yourself the same thing about a car. Or a toaster.
The point for most people is to have it work as designed and not have to think about it.
It's kind of like late 80's ricers versus today's German cars. I myself auto-crossed a Honda CRXsi. Today I'm just as into performance, but have other things to do with my time. I can honestly say I have not ever seen the engine of my car which Car & Driver recently named the Best Handling Car in America. It's a Boxster, and ... there is no hood to open. I'm okay with that.
That "sizable community" is dwindling fast, as computing becomes an appliance technology. Your opinion is disproportionately represented here because HN is much more like the late night parking lot full of ricers in San Bernardino than it's like an arbitrary quarter mile of LA's I-10 rush hour traffic.
// Note: iphone-dev's redsn0w[1] has an untethered jailbreak for iOS 5.0.1 on everything but the iPhone 4s and iPad 2. And saurik's Cydia[2] is doing just fine, with plenty of souped up suspensions or new stereo systems if you want to get your hands dirty.
Or lets put it this way: you buy a car that can only be worked on by the dealer and only runs on their proprietary fuel, even though your local mechanic/Speedway could do it much cheaper and much faster if it weren't for the locked hood. Brand new cars are getting notoriously harder and more expensive to maintain because of proprietary electronics which require dealer intervention when they break.
Your "note" is like saying "Yeah but I got around it by using a crowbar. Now I have to buy gas from some guy in his basement because Toyota would sue me if went to the dealership."
Which, until HTC's note today, was the same crowbar needed for HTC Android phones sold under carrier contracts. The dealership (BestBuy, Verizon store, whatever) isn't going to unlock your phone's boot loader whether it's iOS or Android.
But since you want to further torture this analogy:
Changing your tires and rims and paint job is like changing your case or wallpaper. Jack up suspension, get an Otter Defender. Changing your OEM stereo is like changing your OEM headphones. Change the exhaust, change the ringtone. On the other hand, rooting your phone to void the warranty is like installing an aftermarket ECU to void the warranty.
While everyone "customizes" their cars and their phones, it's almost always superficial. Very few, even in upstate New York, want to void the warranty with aftermarket parts in the engine control electronics or drive train.
Before Fairfield County, CT, I lived in the Smokey Mountains between North Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee. I myself had a car on blocks. :-) And before that, for a decade, I lived in central Africa where trucks you couldn't swap parts on like something from Mad Max didn't last long. Point being, I'm familiar with the tradeoffs of DIY customization vs "just works" in a broad spectrum of cultures.
So I'll assure you, the kids in Africa now enabled to communicate through their Nokias and Ericssons and Huaweis[1] don't give a damn about "rooting" their phones, and neither do most Sunday mechanics in the Smokies. Does it send/receive SMS? Can it make calls? For the next generation, can it do email? Great. From Wall St to Kinshasa, people want everyday appliances to just do their jobs and not waste their time.
1. http://gizmodo.com/5634258/the-most-popular-phone-in-the-wor...
From Wall St to Kinshasa, people want everyday appliances to just do their jobs and not waste their time.
Or I can buy an HTC HD2 which comes stock with Windows Mobile 6.5 (which does well enough on its own, all WM6 jokes aside it still works as a phone), but thanks to HTC's unlocked bootloader and a healthy aftermarket community, I could also install Android, MeeGo, Ubuntu, and Windows Phone 7. There's no reason why "moddable" and "functional" have to be exclusive categories. Actually a nice thing about WebOS devices is that they are almost completely unbrickable. If you mess up, HP gives you directions on how to boot from USB to reinstall everything. No reason why every other phone can't have that ability, too, to avoid warranty claims.
Hopefully their customer and developer friendly policies will survive their absorption into Sony proper (though there are, sadly, too many reasons to be pessimistic on that front).
By all means, bundle some pre-packaged code to do all manner of silly things, but also allow users to run whatever code they want on the devices. Why is this such a difficult concept to accept?
Nothing has changed since the 1980's in this regard. Consumers still are paying for the hardware, in this case the mobile device. They cannot manufacture the cheap electronics and encasings themselves.
However they can replace bootloaders and firmware with free alternatives. Some can can write this code themselves. And sometimes they want to share their efforts with other enthusiasts in the public domain. Nothing has changed since the 1980's - it's still their right to do so.
"Please note that unlocking your bootloader does not mean that you will be able to unlock the SIM lock. Unlocking your SIM lock is at the discretion of your operator/carrier and is not part of the bootloader unlocking scope."
Is what they call SIM lock the same as S-OFF/S-ON? I always heard it called 'Security-ON/OFF'.
With S-ON you can still get temp root access (until you reboot) but can not run different ROMs as it prevents access to memory locations that need to be edited to do that.
To get S-OFF on my Evo Shift(Sprint), I had to downgrade it from Android 2.3 and use an old hack specifically because it was the only publicly known way to get S-OFF. There may be better way out now.
Unlocking the bootloader was easy. I could do that with temp root on 2.3. Getting S-OFF was the tricky part for me.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIM_lock
It appears S-OFF/ON is also set by the operator/carrier and not the manufacturer.
I'd love to see a definitive source about S-OFF/ON and how it is implemented. Especially, for the Sprint/HTC combination.
An unlocked bootloader allows for the booting of kernels that are not signed by HTC (and probably jointly the carriers).
S-OFF disables write protection on the /system and /boot partitions. It is part of the NVRAM of the radio and is patched during HBOOT, which I believe is HTC specific.
sources: http://alpharev.nl/
Basically, enough partitions are unlocked to allow custom ROMs, but not to modify the radio or modify requiring a certain carrier's SIM card (SIM lock).
http://lifehacker.com/5871759/htcs-official-bootloader-tool-...
Ironically, that article references an XDA report that the official unlock tool works on the Thunderbolt (shortly before HTC announced it).