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T-Mobile issues a statement regarding the G2′s anti-rooting system

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by Tyler Cunningham on
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If you haven’t heard the news yet, the G2 comes pre-loaded with an anti-rooting mechanism which essentially resets the phone and restores the stock software when any changes are made to the phone’s OS.

T-Mobile has issued the following statement regarding their decision to prevent modifying the stock software:

Code-Level Modifications to the G2

As pioneers in Android-powered mobile devices, T-Mobile and HTC strive to support innovation. The T-Mobile G2 is a powerful and highly customizable Android-powered smartphone, which customers can personalize and make their own, from the look of their home screen to adding their favorite applications and more.

The HTC software implementation on the G2 stores some components in read-only memory as a security measure to prevent key operating system software from becoming corrupted and rendering the device inoperable. There is a small subset of highly technical users who may want to modify and re-engineer their devices at the code level, known as “rooting,” but a side effect of HTC’s security measure is that these modifications are temporary and cannot be saved to permanent memory. As a result the original code is restored.

It’s a little early to tell if developers are going to be able to get past this security measure, but when there’s a will, there’s a way.

[via MobileCrunch]

» See more articles by Tyler Cunningham


Categorized as Android Development, Android Hacks

  • grumpy

    I give it a week before this is taken care of. Hasn’t this already been decided in the courts that its our right to free devices we own?

  • Mark

    That’s a selling point of android phones, to have total control over your phone. I for one probably won’t but a android phone that I can’t root. You can’t fully customize a phone if people limit what you can do on it.

  • http://twitter.com/mghtyred @mghtyred

    Little early? Partial root (not temporary ROOT) has already been achieved. Posted on XDA and T-Mobile OS/DEV forums.

    Also, in regards to blaming T-Mo: “but a side effect of HTC’s security measure is that these modifications are temporary and cannot be saved to permanent memory. ”

    HTC’s security measure. Mark my word, this won’t be carrier specific, (heck the Desire Z has the same measure). Expect ALL new HTC phones to have this hurdle to overcome.

    The good news is that the DEV community will make short work of this, and once it’s tackled on the G2, it should be short work to do the same with other HTC devices scheduled to roll out.

  • curse

    AFAIK both the G2 and Desire HD are rooted already..
    And if every modification to the system resets to default, how will future updates of the system be possible?
    (let me just guess, that’s how it’s rooted, the updating)

  • http://twitter.com/Stefing Stefing

    Dodgy hardware (the hinge) and locked-down software – are HTC trying to be Apple?!
    Let’s show then just how big this “small subset” is and boycott this device!

  • http://aasdad John doe

    @mghtyred: This is 100% carrier specific, there is no such thing on the Desire HD nor on the Desire Z. Please make sure you know the facts before spreading FUD like this.

  • nurlip

    maybe manufacturers will learn that spending money developing anti-rooting software costs them twice as much as allowing rooting to happen: cost to develop anti rooting software + lack of product adoption leads to less sales and overall degradation of the brand image. my droid is only a superior phone b/c of the hacking community and i’ll never go back to unrooted. i’ll switch to the iphone before i buy an unhackable phone. i’m not alone there either. Google better wise up and put some restrictions on this before they start to lose market share.