Transformer Prime Sold with Locked Bootloader | Hacker News Reader

Transformer Prime Sold with Locked Bootloader

zdnet.com

47 pointsjdhopeunique60 comments

Myth: Android puts users in control.

Fact: Android puts manufacturers in control.

Some manufacturers, of course, choose to allow users to exercise some control over their devices. But "Android" is no guarantee of this.

Android doesn't put manufacturers in control. Manufacturers are inherently in control regardless of the OS. It's not like the iPhone/iPad takes control away from manufacturers because Apple is the only manufacturer, and they definitely have full control over iOS.

Your point is negated by Windows Phone 7. Manufacturers and carriers do not have much control over it. All they get is a bigger tile for one program and all preloaded stuff is easily uninstallable with a long press. No always-running battery sucking services in the background are allowed by Microsoft and the phone has to pass strict battery and hardware tests performed by Microsoft before it can be released.

So it is indeed accurate to state that Android puts manufacturers in control.

All they get is a bigger tile for one program and all preloaded stuff is easily uninstallable with a long press. No always-running battery sucking services in the background are allowed by Microsoft and the phone has to pass strict battery and hardware tests performed by Microsoft before it can be released.

This was new to me and sounds like an extra-ordinarily good idea.

Seems at last here is one lesson that google should learn from Microsoft.

The OEMs get a special section of the Marketplace where they can have special apps for just their phones. For example, the HTC apps cannot be installed on Samsung phones. This is a much better way for the OEMs to differentiate and add value rather than put in uninstallable software.

Is it important in the long run, if the one party who controls your device is a manufaturer or a software provider or both?

Because you can install software on your device without asking for permission, Android (and Windows7, OS X) already give the user much more control than iOS or Windows Phone.

>Fact: Android puts manufacturers in control

And in the case of phones, the carriers are also in control. Unlike the iPhone and Windows Phones, carriers can and do load up Android phones with un-uninstallable and battery-sucking junkware.

Nit: The plural of "carrier" is "carrion."

However, if you don't like a given crapware-laden, locked Android device, you can not buy it, and buy a different Android device, either from a carrier that doesn't add crapware, or just unlocked (and unsubsidized).

There's a reason Google continues to promote the unlocked route for the Nexus line of phones. Buying a heavily subsidized phone from a carrier is a model where all the incentives point the wrong way.

"Putting" the manufacturers in control (otherwise known as failing to limit the control they already have) means putting the market in control.

>However, if you don't like a given crapware-laden, locked Android device, you can not buy it, and buy a different Android device, either from a carrier that doesn't add crapware, or just unlocked (and unsubsidized)

The problem is that the general populace are not aware of this at all. HN users are anyway capable of rooting the device and them putting in custom ROMs without all the junk.

Also, what have unlocked and/or unsubsidized phones got to do with bloatware? They're similarly loaded with the bloatware too.

>There's a reason Google continues to promote the unlocked route for the Nexus line of phones. Buying a heavily subsidized phone from a carrier is a model where all the incentives point the wrong way.

Huh? I thought Google tried and failed selling the phone unlocked with the G1 on TMobile? How is it promoting the unlocked route for Nexus phones?

>Putting" the manufacturers in control (otherwise known as failing to limit the control they already have) means putting the market in control.

And the "market" has shown that it's not to be trusted with that control well. Phones and tablets not getting software updates, malware issues etc. are plaguing the landscape. OEMs and carriers have shown time and time again that they're not going to do things that are in the interest of the consumer if it results in them making a few more bucks.

The market is not just OEMs and carriers; those are the vendors. The market also contains buyers (us). It's true that buyers need education regarding better options (like unlocked phones).

Google have stepped back their promotion of unlocked Nexuses since the Nexus One, where they promoted unlocked as the preferred route. (Whether they "failed" is a question for them, and what the aim of that experiment was. Perhaps the market wasn't ready for such assertive education.) But at least when I bought my Nexus S, they were very much still promoting the unlocked route on equal footing with the carrier-tied route. They're still trying to educate the market that unlocked phones even exist.

Update: missed this point.

Also, what have unlocked and/or unsubsidized phones got to do with bloatware? They're similarly loaded with the bloatware too.

Err, no they're not. I'm not talking about buying a phone from T-Mobile that you could use on another carrier if you wanted. I'm talking about buying a phone as a pure device, with no preexisting relationship to any carrier; and then buying a cellular service from a carrier independent of what phone I own. I didn't buy my laptop from Comcast, and indeed they don't even know what devices I use to consume their internet connection. Why should a smartphone be any different?

I agree that "a" market is in control, rather than "the" market is in control: Not all markets act alike. I find it confusing to talk about "The Market" as if choosing a phone from a handful of carriers is just like buying a commodity like heating oil from any of thousands of buyers and sellers trading a fungible substance with low friction and nearly symmetrical information.

Sure, it's currently an illiquid (due to lock-in) and uneducated market. I believe Google is trying to change that.

That's why I think "users vs manufacturers" is a false dichotomy. Users and manufacturers are essentially on the same side, as the natural participants in a handset market that the carriers are trying to convince everyone doesn't exist.

Update: worth noting that Apple, as a handset manufacturer, is also trying to educate the market here. One of the big advances of the iPhone was to get people buying the iPhone, not the "Verizon iPhone" or any such thing. Apple is a handset manufacturer and Google is (in this arena) a platform vendor, so their strategies look quite different, but I believe they're both interested in fixing the broken handset market.

And that's what rubs me the wrong way about the state of the world with mobile devices.

I like fiddling with my hardware and trying different OSs on it. I like being able to upgrade my OS as I see fit, and it's a shame that I can only do that on a very small selection of hardware.

Asus is treading into interesting waters here. What if the Transformer Prime was a laptop that shipped with Windows 8?

What if it were an ASUS motherboard that enforced code signing on boot?

This is why it still confuses me to this day that the hacker/computer literate community put their backing in Android instead of WebOS. Sure Android was released sooner (but not sooner-enough to have insurmountable traction), but the Palm Pre actually allowed for booting a kernel over USB and gave root access by typing in the Konami code. The Touchpad allows for running of Debian, quite well!

WebOS had no chance to succeed because the community it catered to chose the Google name and unfulfilled promises over actual freedom.

WebOS was on two very mediocre phones (if not at their release, then definitely years later when they were still the flagship devices) and wasn't open source.

WebOS was open source except for Luna, and the devices were okay midrange phones at launch. After the market snubbed them, Palm didn't have enough money to keep creating newer and better phones.

Android has an active hacker community because you can grab the code from git and build a working Android system.

This is exactly what the CyanogenMod team does; Steve Kondik has even started referring to CM as an Android distribution ala Debian as opposed to a simple set of mods or patches.

As much as I love WebOS, that just plain isn't possible with that platform.

(this was posted from WebOS on a Touchpad that also has Android installed as dual boot. Care to show me the Android devices that have been hacked to run WebOS?)

But you don't need to fork your own distribution from source to change everything about WebOS. New kernels and new environments are common, even before it became open source. The only thing closed source was the Luna desktop environment.

I fail to see how your last point proves anything, all points considered.

Android provably can be made to work on phones which weren't even made with that in mind. This apparently didn't happen with webOS, which counters "you don't really need the source"—though hackers have a healthy disdain for that attitude even if it had been true.

WebOS is the standard Linux kernel with a new desktop environment. If you can get the Linux kernel running on a device, throw on a WebKit browser and you've got WebOS. That's how its so easy to get Debian/Ubuntu running on a Touchpad with a simple chroot.

WebOS aside, support the maker of (more) open hardware. Support the people who give you full control of your device by default (even if they didn't initially give you the source for their WM).

>The only thing closed source was the Luna desktop environment.

So the only thing that was closed source was the part of the system that the user directly interacts with. Gotcha.

Andy Rubin's definition of open is the one that a lot of the hacker community can abide by:

https://twitter.com/#!/arubin/statuses/27808662429

It's impossible to do anything similar with WebOS right now.

>I fail to see how your last point proves anything, all points considered.

The kind of people that care about being able to hack on a system want full access to the system. Android provides that. The fact that Android is running on devices that the manufacturers of those devices never intended to run Android proves it.

People that want open devices will generally prefer open software. There's absolutely nothing befuddling about that.

  The kind of people that care about being able to hack on a system want full access to the system. Android provides that. The fact that Android is running on devices that the manufacturers of those devices never intended to run Android proves it.

The kind of people that care about being able to hack on a system should care that their device was designed to be hacked on and isn't going to force them to break it. Palm/HP hardware provides that. The fact that Debian/Ubuntu runs with very little modification and Android runs quite readily proves it.

WebOS never realized its full potential due to market forces, but the fact that the hardware still stands and is so easily hackable is a testament to the hardware design. It strikes me as odd that people are so willing to defend Android, in all its general customer unfriendliness at the hands of carriers/manufacturers, but since it's "open source", they're willing to overlook closed hardware and locked bootloaders. The Pre was (more) open hardware with a (mostly) open system, rooted by default with no carrier lockdowns.

Palm even gave directions on their website on how to launch a new kernel, and supported a side-loading market for kernel modifications. And they gave directions on how to unbrick your device should the new kernel fail. Is that not hacker-friendly enough?

>Is that not hacker-friendly enough?

You're focusing on hardware when everyone else is talking about software. The point is that Android can be made to run on arbitrary hardware because it's open.

> but since it's "open source",

Explain the use of scare quotes. Android is, by every reasonable definition, open source software.

By any reasonable definition, Android as an operating system was more open than WebOS from day one. I can build a complete, working Android system and run Android applications on it if I want. You cannot do the same with WebOS.

>The Pre was (more) open hardware with a (mostly) open system, rooted by default with no carrier lockdowns.

Except you were locked into Palm (and only Palm) hardware by the license. The Android platform is completely portable; the WebOS platform is not.

I didn't intend for that to be scare quotes, I intended for it to sarcasm quotes. People hide behind the open source name even if open source means nothing. It doesn't matter if your OS is open source if your hardware can't be made to boot your newly-compiled version. WebOS, in my opinion, balances base-Linux with open (enough) hardware better than the Android phones with an open source system (except for 3.0) and completely closed hardware.

I'm not talking strictly hardware, though you may be talking strictly software. That may be where the disagreement is stemming from. The point of the article is about the locked bootloader restricting access to the hardware. I'm posing my opinion that Palm WebOS devices were more open than a good number of Android-based handsets, overall. With market support, WebOS could have been the open-iPhone. I put "open source" in sarcasm-quotes because the tradeoff is freedom of your hardware.

>I'm not talking strictly hardware, though you may be talking strictly software. That may be where the disagreement is stemming from. The point of the article is about the locked bootloader restricting access to the hardware.

The thing you're overlooking is that it's possible to run Android on hardware without these conditions. If you want a completely unlocked phone, there's the Nexus series in the mainstream and there are other devices that are relatively open on the hardware side as well.

The point is, you had the option of running Android on any hardware you liked. With WebOS, you had no option but Palm. That's the very definition of vendor lock-in.

Nobody particularly cared about being able to install Debian on the Pre, because Debian will run on any hardware you throw at it because Debian is open software and can be made to run on anything you want it to. It doesn't matter that locked down devices exist as long as open ones do, because the software will run on any device.

This is something that Android can do that WebOS couldn't.

ETA:

I think the tl;dr of this would be "Hardware is a commodity; software isn't."

Speaking of boots: "If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever." George Orwell

These devices are, today, de facto extensions of our senses and tongue. If the user, can not exercise effective control over such devices that is required to view, create, and disseminate mediated information, then the user is potentially subject to external control.

"Some manufacturers, of course, choose to allow users to exercise some control over their devices. But "Android" is no guarantee of this."

I agree that Android itself does not guarantee who control's the device. But not "some", but almost all manufacturers allow users to exercise a great deal of control over their devices.

if you can install someones software on your device without the permission of a third party, you are already much more in control than on any iOS device.

"As open as OS X, Windows 7 or Android" is already worth fighting for.

Just did some research, and I don't know about the validity of the statement [1], but it was said that Asus Taiwan [2] released a press statement, which said:

> BOOTLOADER: they won't unlock the bootloader, and the purpose of locked bootloader is to support media renting service (due to DRM restrictions, and many entertainment industries requested it) on the device and its stability. BUT, they are working on releasing a bootloader unlocking tool for those users who would like to unlock it. however, the use of this unlocker tool will void the warranty immediately.

Perhaps someone with Mandarin could visit the page and verify the statement? If that's the case, it's a perfectly reasonable response.

[1] https://www.facebook.com/asus.n.america/posts/27125844960098... [2] https://www.facebook.com/asusclub.tw?sk=wall

Taken from their Facebook page:

Regarding the bootloader, the reason we chose to lock it is due to content providers' requirement for DRM client devices to be as secure as possible. ASUS supports Google DRM in order to provide users with a high quality video rental experience. Also, based on our experience, users who choose to root their devices risk breaking the system completely. However, we know there is demand in the modding community to have an unlocked bootloader. Therefore, ASUS is developing an unlock tool for that community. Please do note that if you choose to unlock your device, the ASUS warranty will be void, and Google video rental will also be unavailable because the device will be no longer protected by security mechanism.

Why is it that a bootloader needs to be locked in order for rentals to be available? Hasn't iTunes movie rentals/purchases proven that a relatively open OS + DRM is adequate for content protection?

It's shit like this combined with a distinct lack of upgrades from the Android manufacturers that keep me using an iPad or (far more open) laptop for my computing needs... for tablet computing, Apple will always have an advantage if things like CM9 aren't allowed, since Apple builds both iOS and the hardware.

It is great to see this issue getting some media attention. There is no reason whatsoever to lock this bootloader.

The only reason they could do this is to curb customer support calls.

I don't like what Asus did either, since this is supposed to be an open source product, but I'm willing to bet that Asus already believes that:

a. They're the #3 tablet behind the iPad and Kindle Fire in terms of sales and they may be fine with that as long as they're the primary Android-based alternative.

b. They're the only successful pure Android tablet maker whose design aesthetics rivals the iPad.

I've never really understood this logic; is there really a large percentage of people who flash a custom ROM and then call customer support for help?

This is just conjecture, but I feel like those two groups (people who flash custom ROMs versus people who call customer support) are fairly opposite...

I agree, but in searching around on some Samsung forums last night I did come across someone who had accidentally gotten into "reflash mode" (or whatever they call it) and had no idea how to fix it (i.e., hold down the power button for 10 seconds).

Run this story up the chain of command and what comes down from management may very well be "lock the bootloader so we don't end up like Sony", even though that may not be the root cause.

Still, I'd thought better of ASUS.

You're probably right but that could be addressed by shipping it locked down but giving the end user a way to unlock it should they desire (Google did this on the Chromebooks). The only other reason I can think of would be if content vendors, say Hulu or Netflix or Spotify, required it for inclusion of their software.

Google did this on the Chromebooks

the production chromebooks by samsung and acer have a developer switch to allow running custom builds of chromeos, but not the bios-write toggle that the google cr48 had. the cr48 allowed flashing a custom bios that lets it run windows or any other operating system.

it's just like android; google-built devices allow the user to completely change them but once other manufacturers got involved, they decided to change the rules and restrict what the user can do.

Looks like they caved and will release a tool soon to unlock the bootloader. It will void the warranty and disable Google Market video rentals.

http://www.bgr.com/2012/01/03/asus-confirms-intent-to-releas...

I was going to buy one of these...

Could it not be argued this is anti-competitive?

Is what anti-competitive? Against what "competitors"?

Sounds like locking the boot rom is good for ASUS' competitors based on the comments there and here.

I'm sure you could get a stock ARM Linux distro booting on there if you tried hard enough... Think Microsoft and IE.

Except ASUS isn't in the OS business or software business. They're purely in the hardware business. If you can't run other stuff on their hardware and you want to run other stuff, the rational response is to buy other hardware – hence, good for ASUS competitors. It's not anti-competitive, it's free market.

There will be a custom Android build shipped with the hardware...

I was about to order one too.

Instead I went out last night and bought a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. https://twitter.com/#!/marshray/status/154039917322838017

The bootloader isn't locked, but the 'Heimdall' flash backup/restore tool doesn't work with it. (yet :-)

Were there any other reasons (than just the bootloader) to buy this over the Asus?

Not that I am aware of, other than it's been on the market longer and maybe it will have fewer "version 1.0" bugs.

I'm actually trying to not be disappointed about taking a step down in CPU and GPU capacity. I think the ASUS probably had some ports the Galaxy Tab doesn't.

It's great that you got one that isn't locked, but worth mentioning for others thats Samsung is indeed locking the bootloader on some (many?) of the wifi-only 10.1 devices.

(As far as I know, all of the Galaxy Tab 8.9 and Galaxy Tab 7 Plus devices are sold unlocked, for now.)

Well, heck, maybe I'm wrong. :-) I haven't actually done it yet, but I can pull up a "Warning: Installing a different OS can void your warranty, are you sure?" message.

Do you have any specific links?

I suggest starting here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=1050

I don't have a 10.1, but I did spend a few hours reading through many of those threads last week before I decided against purchasing one for my wife. (We ended up going with the 7+ model instead.)

For what it's worth, my understanding is that there are workarounds to flash an unsigned kernel, it's just a real pain. Also, I think you would get the message you are seeing even if it were unlocked... my Galaxy S2 gives me the same warning before letting me into download mode.

Yes I plan to be a regular on those fora.

Also, I think you would get the message you are seeing even if it were unlocked

Right. I was thinking that if it were locked it wouldn't have such a thoughtful warning and the option to proceed. But this reasoning could be wrong obviously.

wasn't the whole appeal of the transformer prime that it could be turned into a laptop with the keyboard dock?

Well there are little folios and docks for the Samsung too, and Bluetooth keyboards, etc. I got an accessory which looks to allow functioning as a USB host...so perhaps I will be able to use a USB keyboard and mouse?

This is my first tablet so it's something of an experiment for me to figure out how practical it's going to be for me to use it in various circumstances.

Let your money do the talking, where this product is concerned. There are reasonable alternatives, in this case, and their market position should be improved by what Asus is doing.

Good. Now I have a reason not to buy one.

The original Asus Transformer sold with an unlocked boot loader, and many linux distros can be used on it. The question is, since the first device had an unlocked bootloader, is it a reasonable assumption that the new model would too? Since it is not just a new revision, I don't think so.

I understand what you are saying but it is also reasonable to be pissed when the follow on model takes away an ability the previous one had.

They already switched to a locked bootloader in later revisions of the Transformer. It is a pain, since Android just doesn't work that well with this form factor, but the hardware can't be repurposed to run Ubuntu either.

The original Transformer (TF101) has always had a locked bootloader. The key for the first revisions was leaked by someone inside Asus, allowing ROM flashing. Asus changed the key and now people with newer TF101s cannot flash their own ROMs.

More "RMS was right".

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