HTC sides with consumers: No more locked bootloaders in Android phones

https://www.facebook.com/HTC/posts/10150307320018084

by drivebyacct2 • 15 years ago

402 77 15 years ago

After much consumer push back against locked bootloaders in new devices, HTC has (apparently) decided to discontinue the policy. This arrives just after Motorola makes some unsubstantiated comment about reconsidering the policy.

For some history, the Droid 1 was very open and easy to flash with custom ROMs. It's European brother, the Milestone, featured on-chip security that verified the signature of the bootloader which in turn verified the signature of various boot files including the linux kernel at the heart of Android. Subsequent Motorola devices in the US featured similar security and thus do not have official CM7 builds.

HTC recently adopted a similar strategy with respect to some of their more recent phones. The Thunderbolt had a buggy implementation though, and was still hacked quite quickly. The Evo 3d (And another? maybe?) featured a fixed version that more closely represented the impenetrable Motorola style bootloader.

Anyway, it appears now, that they maybe embracing the community more, which makes me happy. My mom won't stop talking about how fast her Droid OG is. I put CM7 on it which includes Gingerbread... a treat her phone would have never otherwise seen. Meaning it also includes a fix for an awful race condition that can make it impossible to answer phone calls. Good stuff all around.

Also, for context, this is the statement Motorola made a month ago: http://ausdroid.net/2011/04/27/confirmation-motorola-to-unlo... They make very specific caveats for "where carriers allow it".

ZoFreX• 15 years ago

I'm a Milestone user and long-term customer of Motorola... I can't recommend against them enough. Their problems extend far beyond locked bootloaders, far more than following HTC on this issue would be required for Motorola to be worth dealing with.

rbranson2• 15 years ago

More reasons HTC is my favorite phone manufacturer right now. After a bike accident left my Nexus One screen broken, $100 and a 4-day turnaround got me back on my feet. Thrilled. Maybe they'll drop the Sense UI from the stock phones. One can dream.

joelackner• 15 years ago

when htc improves their battery life (as far as the manufacturer can do) they'll be tops in my book.

blakerobinson4• 15 years ago

I had a pretty sweet extended battery for my Incredible thing lasted for well over a day with heavy voice and data usage. Sure it's not a fix from the manufacturer, but it worked out pretty well.

rbranson2• 15 years ago

I was about to ditch my Incredible with it's hilariously bad battery life until I rooted it. I can probably get 2 days out of it now. My Nexus One had great battery life. It's the software. Not saying it's an excuse (they put the OS on there) or that this is palatable for the average person, but the hardware is solid.

EDIT: To add to this, it's likely Verizon's fault for the Incredible's battery life, because they require the vendors to install terrible, low quality applications & system extensions that can't be uninstalled from the phone.

nl• 15 years ago

I doubt they'll drop Sense. Many people like it (as you can see by looking at the demand for custom ROMs with it).

w1ntermute• 15 years ago

As long as the bootloaders are unlocked, who cares what the default software on there is? Just load up CM7 and you're good to go.

nunb• 15 years ago

Just curious: what ROMs come with Sense? Do you mean that owners of say, a Galaxy S2 want to (and could be) running HTC's Sense?

runjake• 15 years ago

This is great news. The HTC CEO made a pretty quick and sudden decision.

Meanwhile, Motorola vaguely semi-committed months ago and nothing has happened.

I don't really buy that carriers are demanding this as Samsung currently doesn't do this.

drivebyacct22• 15 years ago

AFAIK The SGII is open, but I had heard rumors a while back from people I trusted that Samsung was headed in a similar direction. There's no reason to believe it, and with HTC taking a stand I'm hopeful.

rodh257• 15 years ago

I remember Paul Obrien tweeting that the GSII was really open, seemed to actively encourage modding. Twitter search is horibble so I can't find the tweet now though.

nfriedly• 15 years ago

Just so you know, twitter's search only goes back a limited amount of time because its targeted at real-time results, not historical. Google with site:twitter.com might get better results.

bane• 15 years ago

Well, now I know who I'm buying my next phone from.

jeffool2• 15 years ago

A million times this. But really, I probably wouldn't even consider it if the phones didn't have extra programs on them that ran pointlessly and/or I couldn't uninstall.

minalecs• 15 years ago

well the whole point of having an unlocked bootloader is so it makes it easier to run custom roms. Most roms are aosp or stock that remove all the crap.

akent• 15 years ago

Why was this announced via a post on Facebook? Don't they have a corporate blog or something?

blakerobinson4• 15 years ago

HTC is a Chinese company, so even if there is a corporate blog, it's not directly hitting English speaking users. HTC probably saw this as its most direct path to that audience.

bmunro• 15 years ago

Taiwanese, to be precise.

bad_user3• 15 years ago

This is exactly what I've been talking about -- customers want unlocked phones, and because with Android competition is tough, sooner or later unlocked phones will be the norm. Maybe not just yet, as I don't believe HTC or Motorola until I see it, but soon.

I just bought a Galaxy because SG phones can be easily unlocked. That's a lost sale for Motorola - as my first option was a Defy (those phones are cheap and solid and I tend to mistreat my phones, so Defy seemed like a good option, until I found out that unlocking them is a bitch)

abh1nav• 15 years ago

+1 for unlocked phones being the norm. This has been the case in asia for years now. It's about time we catch up.

zaph0d• 15 years ago

The OP was talking about bootloader unlock and not carrier unlock.

sliverstorm3• 15 years ago

Carrier lockdown only happens when you buy a phone under contract. You can buy unlocked phones, easy.

But they are so expensive!!!!

Well, yeah, that's because you're paying the real price, not a subsidized price. When you're paying the subsidized price, IMHO you have less leeway to complain about carrier lockdown.

sandGorgon• 15 years ago

unlocked phones != unlocked bootloader.

"unlocked phones" mean that you are not restricted to using one service provider and you can just change your SIM cards to subscribe to a new service.

But this still does not mean that you can change the operating system of your phone hardware.

This is the bootloader. Unlocking the bootloader gives you to freedom to flash community developed Android variants.

HTC's commitment is to unlocking the bootloader - not the service provider SIM unlock (though you might be able to do so - however they are NOT the same thing)

blakerobinson4• 15 years ago

Unlocked bootloader is awesome. I would have settled for just being able to turn off Sense at this point.

daimyoyo• 15 years ago

Now that HTC has committed to removing locked bootloaders, it's only a matter if time before all other android handset makers have to follow suit. This is a very good thing for the cellphone industry, and tech in general.

kragen2• 15 years ago

I'm glad they're doing this, but it's sad that it's news. We ought to be able to take for granted the freedom to run whatever software we want on the computers we buy. (Don't tell me a cellphone running Android isn't a computer. You know better.)

nitrogen2• 15 years ago

You know it's a computer, and I know it's a computer, but to the "average person," it's an appliance. It's kind of like the electric motor. Someone (sorry, I don't recall who) recently posted an analogy here on HN between electric motors and any other technology.

At first, factories would install a single giant motor with belts running everywhere, and Sears sold a general-purpose home motor. Eventually, motors were miniaturized and specialized into all kinds of devices. Now nobody thinks about using a motor; they think about using a lathe, blender, or sewing machine.

The same trend is happening with computers. Initially, people had generic computers (ignoring the anomaly of the standalone word processor). Increasingly powerful computers are gradually getting built into everything. You and I see computers everywhere, but everyone else just sees smarter devices.

chopsueyar3• 15 years ago

Motors cannot control computers. Computers can control motors.

Motors do not require an operating system.

There is something else that bothers me with this analogy...

The computer (as the 'average person' uses them) is a synergistic experience between both the hardware AND the software.

Without the software, it would be useless. Without the hardware, the software would be useless.

For the motor analogy, I assume the motor is the hardware, and the belts are the OS?

Motive power and computer power are 2 different things.

kragen2• 15 years ago

Of course, and I think that's a pretty good trend in both cases. The thing is, though, bad motors can cause electrical fires, which are dangerous. If the trend toward smaller motors were accompanied by a trend toward higher risk of burning your house down, I'd say we need to work on that.

Here's how I explained the bootloader issue to some people yesterday who I think were average:

The bootloader is the software that runs on your phone when you turn it on. It starts up the rest of the software on the phone, and if it's "locked", it will only start up software that the phone's maker has approved to run. This enables your cell phone company to cheat you by, for example, charging you a dollar for a ringtone that the musician released for free, or to charge you rates a hundred times as high for text messages as for other data transfer.

There are worse things they could do, too, like making your phone never turn on again if they have a contract dispute with you, or activating the camera or microphone without you noticing upon a request from law enforcement or because some guy in their law enforcement service center wants to see you get undressed. They haven't been caught doing those things yet, but when they do, people with unlocked bootloaders will be able to stop them, and other people won't.

aphexairlines• 15 years ago

I think the lesson is that you can never take consumer freedom for granted.

chopsueyar3• 15 years ago

Consumer freedom

Is that an oxymoron?

nooneelse• 15 years ago

"Consumer", "customer", "user". What is in a name?

Personally, I like to put myself in terms of the second two. The first carries connotations of more passivity. The second has that old "... is always right" adage on its side. The last takes the money out of the discussion and bridges nicely back to other movements toward user freedom in the realm of computers.

Splines• 15 years ago

I once had an HTC HD2, and while WM6.5 wasn't very good, the xda-developers community loves this device. I was able to try out all sorts of Android builds on this device, as well as getting WP7 sort-of working on it. Truly amazing.

My only gripe was that it was built with TMO in mind, and didn't have the right radio to talk 3G on AT&T. The battery didn't last too long either, but it was user-replaceable, so not that big of a deal.

ableal• 15 years ago

The HD2 came out 18 months ago, and is still near par to current hardware (1GHz, WVGA, etc.). I've been testing these XDA Android releases: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=957652 ; I get standby battery drain of 1% / hour, which is about the same as the original WM6.5.

Luyt• 15 years ago

"There are four major stakeholders in the Android smartphone market: the cell carriers, the consumers, the handset makers, and Google. The carriers want smartphones to be locked-down carrier-controlled devices through which customers obediently buy services on carrier terms. All the other stakeholders, by contrast, gain from unlocked devices. Consumers win because they’re not limited to what the carriers choose to provide them; handset makers win because an unlocked phone is more valuable to a consumer than a locked one (and a little less expensive to ship, too); Google wins because its long-term strategy requires it to commoditize the carriers into a passive channel between the customers and Google."

More at http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=3285

gonzo• 15 years ago

where is the fking downvote button? ESR-hole knows nearly nothing about the smartphone market.

And until last week, he didn't know that the iPod Touch would run apps.

eru• 15 years ago

We value polite conversation here.

forkqueue• 15 years ago

Too late for me - I bought a Samsung Galaxy S2 instead of an HTC Sensation precisely because of the locked bootloader.

dochtman• 15 years ago

I just hope they will allow the Sensation to be unlocked -- or release a SKU that comes with the ability to unlock it.

gst• 15 years ago

The unlocked and unbranded HTC Android phones that I bought so far did not have any locked bootloader. E.g., on my HTC Wildfire there was some kind of engineering bootloader preinstalled.

Carrier-branded HTC phones are locked down, but IMO that's OK and I have no problem with that as long as I have the choice to buy and use an unbranded phone.

silon• 15 years ago

Perhaps it's time to upgrade my HTC Hero (rooted, of course)

darklajid• 15 years ago

Hero user here: You mean that particular phone that they threw on the market and neglected ever since, right?

I do like these steps in the right direction, but HTC won't win me back for a long while after receiving my (pre-ordered, one of the first in DE) Hero and waiting ages to receive any updates/support on it afterwards. It was more or less dead on arrival and really only usable because of the fine folks over at VillainRom.

tytso• 15 years ago

One of the things that I find really cool about this is this happened without using a copyright license (i.e. GPLv3) as a bludgeon to force HTC to do the right thing. This was done using simple market forces, and not the anti-Tivo clause of the GPLv3. Which has been the Linux kernel developers' objection all along to the GPLv3....

martythemaniak• 15 years ago

That's great. HTC is going to be shipping unlocked bootloaders, SE has committed to allowing users to request an unlock code for all new/current devices and the Samsung Galaxy S 2 comes unlocked. Motorola probably won't be able to resist the pressure.

Seems this will be standard for android devices very soon.

grantjgordon• 15 years ago

Wow, it's about time!!

HTC sides with consumers: No more locked bootloaders in Android phones

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