Rooting the Droid X?

just4747

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Again I think the manufacture has just as much reason as verizon to want a signed boot loader. Verizon probably doesn't care enough about the few people that want customizations. Also signed boot loader doesn't mean you can't run wireless tether. It does mean no custom roms which sucks bad because I think that means no themes but I may be wrong. I still enjoy my moto droid over my incredible for this reason and if I didn't already give it to my girlfriend I'd probably start using it again. I loved being on the bleeding edge of development and I also like that on some of the roms pushing up on the volume while the phone is locked will change the track which is safer while driving.

Anyways I guess we will see. I thought I wanted the x but after carrying it for a day I think it is hard to use one handed. Adw helped by allowing me to set the home key to pull down the shade but still the phone is huge I am going to holdout for the d2.

You really think it's too big to have as your permanent phone? Is it really that bad??

And pull down what shade?
 

Darkseider

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Again I think the manufacture has just as much reason as verizon to want a signed boot loader. Verizon probably doesn't care enough about the few people that want customizations. Also signed boot loader doesn't mean you can't run wireless tether. It does mean no custom roms which sucks bad because I think that means no themes but I may be wrong. I still enjoy my moto droid over my incredible for this reason and if I didn't already give it to my girlfriend I'd probably start using it again. I loved being on the bleeding edge of development and I also like that on some of the roms pushing up on the volume while the phone is locked will change the track which is safer while driving.

Anyways I guess we will see. I thought I wanted the x but after carrying it for a day I think it is hard to use one handed. Adw helped by allowing me to set the home key to pull down the shade but still the phone is huge I am going to holdout for the d2.

Personally if Moto/VZW decide on signing the bootloader and locking it down it will cause the Droid X to fall in popularity. The ability to root the Droid is no small reason for its' success in both the consumer market as well as in developer arenas. If they were to kill this off with their new flagship I don't see it boding well for them.
 

hendrix

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Again I think the manufacture has just as much reason as verizon to want a signed boot loader. Verizon probably doesn't care enough about the few people that want customizations. Also signed boot loader doesn't mean you can't run wireless tether. It does mean no custom roms which sucks bad because I think that means no themes but I may be wrong. I still enjoy my moto droid over my incredible for this reason and if I didn't already give it to my girlfriend I'd probably start using it again. I loved being on the bleeding edge of development and I also like that on some of the roms pushing up on the volume while the phone is locked will change the track which is safer while driving.

Anyways I guess we will see. I thought I wanted the x but after carrying it for a day I think it is hard to use one handed. Adw helped by allowing me to set the home key to pull down the shade but still the phone is huge I am going to holdout for the d2.

Personally if Moto/VZW decide on signing the bootloader and locking it down it will cause the Droid X to fall in popularity. The ability to root the Droid is no small reason for its' success in both the consumer market as well as in developer arenas. If they were to kill this off with their new flagship I don't see it boding well for them.

The reason that the droid is so popular is because it was the first true iPhone competitor (don't flame me, i hate iPhones too) on verizon.
 

givmedew

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You really think it's too big to have as your permanent phone? Is it really that bad??

And pull down what shade?

No it's def not too big just so many things that you are used to doing one handed will need 2 hands. The shade is the bar at the top that you pull down that has all your notifications. It's very hard to manipulate 1 handed. I am used to being able to take my thumb grab the shade and pull it down. Now i have to use a finger from the other hand to pull it down. Or use adw only prob is I actually like the menu system on the x so oh well.

I don't think this is going to bother too many people obviously the evo has the same issue but it doesn't bother people.
 

givmedew

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"Personally if Moto/VZW decide on signing the bootloader and locking it down it will cause the Droid X to fall in popularity. The ability to root the Droid is no small reason for its' success in both the consumer market as well as in developer arenas. If they were to kill this off with their new flagship I don't see it boding well for them."

This statement is oh so very wrong. The majority and I mean the huge majority of android users are nothing like us. There are more older people than younger using this thing also everywhere I go I see the droid. They aren't hacked, people buy this thing because of it's out of the box abilities. What do you really get out of rooting? Well my mom and step dad would say NOT much. When I asked him if he wanted his di rooted he said no. My cousin wanted her moto droid rooted just for pink and her husband said no thanks to the rooting I know at least 30 other people besides coworkers that have android based phones and only 1 other person rooted their n1 just for non released roms. I have one coworker that let me root hers so she could have pink and wifi but she prefers pdanet over wifi tether anyways.

Bottom line though rooting has almost nothing to do with the success of the droid. As less than 1 in 100 people actually root the droid. I would also guess that if rooting didn't exist the people who do root would still buy these phones and rooting at some point might go away. Also signing the boot loader doesn't stop rooting or theft of service through wifi tether it just stops the awesome unreleased custom rom abilities.

Signing the boot loader will reduce warranty claims however so of course it's a good idea for motorola to do it.
 
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Matthast

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I would have to say that I'm in complete agreement with givmedew on that point. While having a signed bootloader will be a dealbreaker for some people and therefore technically make the phone drop in popularity somewhat (as there are a number of people on multiple Droid X forums saying that they are no longer interested), I have seen many people posting who think that this is a big enough loss for Motorola to care about. Even I have posted saying that hopefully Motorola is underestimating the portion of the market that wants to load custom ROMs on their phone. However, I think that I've seen a number of posters who are vastly overestimating the financial effect that this would have on the phone sales.

Even if we were able to convince every poster in every Droid X forum to boycott the phone (a hypothetical best-case-scenario for trying to make a point to Motorola) the difference would still be negligible. Compared to the super-majority of the market that knows nothing about rooting, bootloaders, & ROMs, and don't know enough about the industry to understand the value in being able to manually update an OS once the manufacturer or service provider decides to decease support for that device (similar to the majority of Iphone users), our numbers are not sufficient enough to really make a difference in this way.

I see this as an unfortunate truth, because I think that Motorola is making some of the best hardware available right now - but if in the long run I may be stuck running 2.2 long after other devices have had the option to manually move up, I will be bummed and would consider switching to something made by HTC or Samsung. I guess the only plus side of the majority being uninformed is that when/if that time comes, I would have a large market of people to re-sell the Droid X to at that point.

If someone can come up with a way of "selling" the importance of the ability to load custom ROMs to the general public, then perhaps that is the only way we would be able to change Motorola's stance on the subject. Otherwise, the way I see it, Motorola has too many financial reasons to keep the bootloaders signed. While a boycott of the Droid X now would drop sales numbers slightly, the ability to decide when consumers will need to purchase a newer device to obtain the newest OS will trivialize any difference that would make. Essentially, Motorola wants control. Unfortunately this means that the consumers lose it - and Android enthusiasts like ourselves, committed to the idea of a system and community based on open development and consumer-satisfaction driven decision making (as opposed to profit-driven) will likely have to move on to other manufacturers like HTC, Samsung, or new Google developer-specific phones to get our needs met.
 
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sroach23

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as long as i can tether and overclock, i dont really care. i love blue energy on my droid but the droid x is calling for me.
 

bigkris

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someone already got in to the bootloader

[video=youtube;7r6q9Foom1o]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7r6q9Foom1o"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7r6q9Foom1o[/video]
 

Matthast

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There is a big difference between accessing the bootloader and being able to get it to load a custom ROM. The (potential) issue with the Droid X is not getting into the bootloader, but that it has (probably) been designed by Motorola to only run ROMs that have been digitally signed by Motorola.

According to a quote from a Motorola rep in February of this year, Motorola has used signed bootloaders on all of its phones as "common practice for many years" and "When we do deviate from our normal practice, such as we did with the DROID, there is a specific business reason for doing so." which leads me to believe that the Droid is the fluke, not the Milestone. Due to this I expect the bootloader on the X to be signed. However, we all know that companies change their policy all the time, never mind cases where a specific representative states something as truth and turns out to be uninformed.

For now I'm keeping an open mind, as it could still go either way (Motorola's track record for Android devices is one unsigned and one signed). We'll just have to wait until a dev gets his/her hands on it to know for sure.
 
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b16a2smith

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It is a long shot in the dark, but I am trying to pay somebody right now to give me an sbf for the Droid X. Wish me luck.
 

MrC1122

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There is a big difference between accessing the bootloader and being able to get it to load a custom ROM. The (potential) issue with the Droid X is not getting into the bootloader, but that it has (probably) been designed by Motorola to only run ROMs that have been digitally signed by Motorola.

According to a quote from a Motorola rep in February of this year, Motorola has used signed bootloaders on all of its phones as "common practice for many years" and "When we do deviate from our normal practice, such as we did with the DROID, there is a specific business reason for doing so." which leads me to believe that the Droid is the fluke, not the Milestone. Due to this I expect the bootloader on the X to be signed. However, we all know that companies change their policy all the time, never mind cases where a specific representative states something as truth and turns out to be uninformed.

For now I'm keeping an open mind, as it could still go either way (Motorola's track record for Android devices is one unsigned and one signed). We'll just have to wait until a dev gets his/her hands on it to know for sure.

well said!
 

zodder

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as long as i can tether and overclock, i dont really care. i love blue energy on my droid but the droid x is calling for me.
I agree so much with that, but I really think I'd miss all the themes and custom roms too much for it not to be a big factor. Although I would probably gain some free time back because there wouldn't be something to tweak every night...... lol
 

halffrozen

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I am just gald I am getting a 6 month trial without paying for my X through my companies provider, lol. I don't think I will buy it if it never gets rooted. UNLESS it just blows me away with something amazing, which I am not aware of right now. lol

Talked to my friend at Verizon who gets to test these phones to know their features for selling and what not and it isn't looking all that great for "our kind" he said.
 

FSRBIKER

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One of my main draws to this phone was the supposedly ability to connect to your tv via the HDMI out port, now it comes to light that while this is true it is only for content taken with the camera. I really wanted to watch the NFL network this fall so if the developers can't unlock the bootloader and alter these settings this feature is basically worthless IMO.
Why would I use the Blockbuster app to download movies and watch it on a 4.3" screen when I can use my Wii for example and watch on a big screen from Netflix?
 
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