Triangle Away vs Samsung
Posted by Chainfire on 04-06-2012 at 21:00:00 - Comments: 135 - Views: 117036
Project: TriangleAway - Tags: Android Bad news
Project: TriangleAway - Tags: Android Bad news
The Samsung Galaxy Note and Samsung Galaxy S III update for Triangle Away I have just released, may be one of the last - if not the last - iteration of Triangle Away.
History
These past few years, Samsung has been very kind to us power users. We have been able to modify most of our Galaxy series devices as much as we wanted, without silly roadblocks as locked bootloaders and such.
With the Galaxy S II, Samsung introduced a custom kernel flash counter and custom kernel warning triangle. This is where Triangle Away came in - it reset the flash counter and removed the warning triangle.
On the Galaxy Note, Samsung tried hiding the data once more, so Triangle Away would not work.
On the Galaxy S III (among other new devices), Samsung has gone a step further, and has introduced a background service that runs on your device and checks for things such as a modified /system, apps running with root access, etc.
For the moment, this service does not do anything malicious, but who knows what the future will bring ? Tracking of IMEI's that have ever ran root, disabling of services, etc ?
Custom ROMs, root, bricks, and warranty
I am not sure what the reason is Samsung wants to track all this. My reason for wanting to "break" their tracking is one thing: warranty.
Being able to run the software I want on devices I own without losing hardware warranty should be a right by law. As for as I can see, there's only two ways you can really break your device with root access:
(1) overclocking to the point where hardware is damaged
(2) flashing nonsense to your bootloader partitions
I'm not sure how to handle (1). I personally never overclock - and I don't think it's strange to deny overclockers warranty. Surely this must be preventable in the hardware. Case number (2) however is wholly Samsung's fault. Adam Outler has shown time and again that these devices are perfectly able to be made unbrickable - so any bootloader brick is IMHO Samsung's fault. If Adam Outler can prevent the situation with a soldering iron, the original design is broken.
Regardless, hardware should be under warranty - if I have my device rooted or not. Leaked service center documents show that devices should be checked for root, and if present, deny warranty. (This is not just Samsung, all the major OEMs do this.)
That is simply unacceptable. Any OEM following that policy is a bad OEM - in some countries this may even be an unlawful practise (though good luck winning in court). HTC has once refused to replace a defective digitizer on my HTC Diamond (a common hardware issue with this device) due to HSPL being present. They claimed HSPL had irreversibly damaged the mainboard, and the entire innards of the device would have to be replaced. Riiiiight.
Root by itself is not a crime, nor a pointer that a device is broken in any way that should not fall under warranty. But in the eyes of the OEMs it seems we are criminals.
If the purpose of the tracking is related to corporate security and such, I can see why Samsung would want to lock down further. I can certainly understand that, though I don't necessarily agree.
The future
I'm not necessarily against (on-device only) flash tracking, but it would have to come with a guarantee from Samsung that hardware issues will not be denied warranty just because a device is running custom software.
If we had that, we would not have to break these counters and trackers, and corporate security and such would not be broken.
However, every iteration Samsung is making the breaking a little more difficult. Even if Samsung doesn't come up with such a guarantee as mentioned above, it is the question if it is wise to keep breaking these "mild" protections.
I've seen a lot of people (users, commenters, posters, non-techs?) claim Samsung's security is currently weak, and that us hackers are so much better. Let me put one thing straight before going further: Samsung engineers aren't stupid. The reason we currently break these protections so easily is because they want it to be breakable easily. Once that changes, and they start employing full encryption and whatnot, we - the powerusers - will be royally screwed.
The question then becomes, do we play this game of incremental security until we end up with locked devices, or do we choose to live without warranty in exchange for our devices being dead easy to modify ?
And thus we come full circle - if Samsung goes another step further in protecting their custom flash data, will I even attempt to bypass it ? Should I ? A big part of me thinks not.
There's always hope Samsung will do the right thing and provide hardware warranty even with modified software, but somehow I doubt this will happen any time soon.
There's also the possibility that Samsung will not make the next iteration better protected. After all, how many people really use Triangle Away anyway ? I would estimate there are about 50 000 unique Triangle Away users - on 50 million or so possibly supported Galaxy devices, its effect is relatively little.
History
These past few years, Samsung has been very kind to us power users. We have been able to modify most of our Galaxy series devices as much as we wanted, without silly roadblocks as locked bootloaders and such.
With the Galaxy S II, Samsung introduced a custom kernel flash counter and custom kernel warning triangle. This is where Triangle Away came in - it reset the flash counter and removed the warning triangle.
On the Galaxy Note, Samsung tried hiding the data once more, so Triangle Away would not work.
On the Galaxy S III (among other new devices), Samsung has gone a step further, and has introduced a background service that runs on your device and checks for things such as a modified /system, apps running with root access, etc.
For the moment, this service does not do anything malicious, but who knows what the future will bring ? Tracking of IMEI's that have ever ran root, disabling of services, etc ?
Custom ROMs, root, bricks, and warranty
I am not sure what the reason is Samsung wants to track all this. My reason for wanting to "break" their tracking is one thing: warranty.
Being able to run the software I want on devices I own without losing hardware warranty should be a right by law. As for as I can see, there's only two ways you can really break your device with root access:
(1) overclocking to the point where hardware is damaged
(2) flashing nonsense to your bootloader partitions
I'm not sure how to handle (1). I personally never overclock - and I don't think it's strange to deny overclockers warranty. Surely this must be preventable in the hardware. Case number (2) however is wholly Samsung's fault. Adam Outler has shown time and again that these devices are perfectly able to be made unbrickable - so any bootloader brick is IMHO Samsung's fault. If Adam Outler can prevent the situation with a soldering iron, the original design is broken.
Regardless, hardware should be under warranty - if I have my device rooted or not. Leaked service center documents show that devices should be checked for root, and if present, deny warranty. (This is not just Samsung, all the major OEMs do this.)
That is simply unacceptable. Any OEM following that policy is a bad OEM - in some countries this may even be an unlawful practise (though good luck winning in court). HTC has once refused to replace a defective digitizer on my HTC Diamond (a common hardware issue with this device) due to HSPL being present. They claimed HSPL had irreversibly damaged the mainboard, and the entire innards of the device would have to be replaced. Riiiiight.
Root by itself is not a crime, nor a pointer that a device is broken in any way that should not fall under warranty. But in the eyes of the OEMs it seems we are criminals.
If the purpose of the tracking is related to corporate security and such, I can see why Samsung would want to lock down further. I can certainly understand that, though I don't necessarily agree.
The future
I'm not necessarily against (on-device only) flash tracking, but it would have to come with a guarantee from Samsung that hardware issues will not be denied warranty just because a device is running custom software.
If we had that, we would not have to break these counters and trackers, and corporate security and such would not be broken.
However, every iteration Samsung is making the breaking a little more difficult. Even if Samsung doesn't come up with such a guarantee as mentioned above, it is the question if it is wise to keep breaking these "mild" protections.
I've seen a lot of people (users, commenters, posters, non-techs?) claim Samsung's security is currently weak, and that us hackers are so much better. Let me put one thing straight before going further: Samsung engineers aren't stupid. The reason we currently break these protections so easily is because they want it to be breakable easily. Once that changes, and they start employing full encryption and whatnot, we - the powerusers - will be royally screwed.
The question then becomes, do we play this game of incremental security until we end up with locked devices, or do we choose to live without warranty in exchange for our devices being dead easy to modify ?
And thus we come full circle - if Samsung goes another step further in protecting their custom flash data, will I even attempt to bypass it ? Should I ? A big part of me thinks not.
There's always hope Samsung will do the right thing and provide hardware warranty even with modified software, but somehow I doubt this will happen any time soon.
There's also the possibility that Samsung will not make the next iteration better protected. After all, how many people really use Triangle Away anyway ? I would estimate there are about 50 000 unique Triangle Away users - on 50 million or so possibly supported Galaxy devices, its effect is relatively little.
Comments
You may use tags like [b], [u], [i], [url], [quote], [code], [pre], etc
a) we might never know why they all want our data. Everybody fights for this nowadays. I installed a Stop Watch - the most basic possible app - and it required Internet permission!! Hm.
It could be for statistics only (I mean if they see people rooting more and more, maybe they will open the devices even more).
It could be to have a global overview on how things are going.
It could be for money so that they can sell the profiles etc.
But we can also use them and their devices until they screw up with full encryption and so on then we switch to some other open things. Since we pay big money for powerful things, there will always be somebody that will sell to this market what this market wants. For now, Samsung appears to give easy root (I'm sure its not easy though) but they want private details in return.
Well, for our private details we will probably soon ask a lot of money in return!
b) So I say, please continue with triangle away. As long as it goes, it is fun (as long as some people buy it).
c) what is the name of the background service ?
But I agree that hardware warranty shouldn't be broken by software,
HP allow we to disassemble notebooks and still have warranty, why a only the software cut off the warranty in phones.
But I agree that hardware warranty shouldn't be broken by software,
HP allow we to disassemble notebooks and still have warranty, why a only the software cut off the warranty in phones.
Why is out Vodafone or Telecom can put their brand specific software on but we, the device owners cannot?
I doubt if they will block their devices' service layer with full encryption algorithm (AES, Blowfish, etc). If they do, someone else in the industry will become No. 1 when they offer fully customisable hardware [via software solutions] for their clients.
Just my 2 cents worth. :)
They should just instead focus in tracking overclocked devices, and engineering a bootloader or whole flash emergency recovery procedure that is doable by the end user, restoring only original authorized Samsung software and requiring this to be done before a device warranty can be claimed.
First: Chainfire thanks to your development of Kernels - the first thing i flash was your root Kernel ;)
Second: I HATE things where i lose my warranty just because of stupid Engineers who dont want to repair the evice just because they want to save a bit money.
That makes me sad :(
maybe the stopwatch app needs internet for displaying ads? Sound about right to me :)
Furthermore, I don't really care about Samsung tracking the number of customs ROMS flashed on my device, as long as that they don't use that anoying triangle. Keep it somewhere logged where it doesn't annoy the user.
Changing the software on any kind of hardware should not mean you lose warranty on the hardware (unless you as manufacturer can provide proof that the software really broke some part due to overclocking or something like that).
while the real developer releases tested stable version so updates are rare on of those copypaste-devs makes 10 versions a day drawing attention of unexperience users by his activity - while the person who originally created something fades away in that ocean of crap :)
that is why the service checks for /system/ modiffications on the other hand monitoring or preventing root is a no go for any oem and i do not think samsung will head this way. this must be rather a tool for particulaar caarriers with they 'special needs' than some valhaalla banhammer for us :)
What changes are you talking about? The ability to modify hidden boot partitions for example which would allow you to reset things like flash counters?
"Once that changes, and they start employing full encryption and whatnot, we - the powerusers - will be royally screwed"
Full encryption to what? the whole system or just parts where information such as triangle and flash counter is stored? Why would Samsung want to lock the whole OS?
THIS THING FOR NOW IS ONLY FOR SAFE TRANSACTION, IF YOU GO TO JAPAN OR SOUTH KOREA AND FRANCE(LILLE ONLY) THEY ARE ALREADY USING THIS TECHNOLOGY
Following that, I can not support overclocking.
For this reason alone, I recommend that Triangle Away be enhanced. But eventually this arms race will end in their favor. The service on GS3 should be of major concern.
Is that even legal?
I think I read this article too fast....let me read it again
As soon as samsung starts to use background services to track the use of root and try to stop me from using my phone, I'll stop using those particular products. There will always be an alternative.
I can understand why they want to count these things though, and I could understand my phone being excluded from drm stuff. Would be no problem. But why the triangle? Why not just some notification in the info screen or something ;-)
What would be wonderful, would be for all manufacturers to implement fully open boot loaders, and to allow firmware modification to still fall under the warranty. Maybe if the boot loader was modified, then the warranty would be void.
Remember. Samsung, and all manufactures have to do research and development, which is a timely and costly process. Ideally, it would be wonderful for them to put time and money in to testing different boot loaders, and thus, in the future, they could approve, and even support, many different, non-default boot loaders.
Custom firmware images have come from free, community supported software. A manufacturer such as Samsung is one entity trying to compete with other profit driven manufactures. With the sales of approximately nine million, for the Samsung Galaxy S3 alone, there is little to encourage Samsung to start implementing policies, and practices to consider making it's customers more free from their the restrictions Samsung implements.
I'd support a petition to encourage Samsung to (at least) implement an unlocked boot loader, and support hardware faults, even with devices that have custom firmware images (possibly excluding over clocking damage).
We cannot continue this ping pong match of hardware restrictions by the manufacturer, and then then the community working out how to try to bypass it.
We need to work as a community to encourage, and push Samsung (and all manufacturers) to give their customers/users the freedom to use the device bloatware free, with Root access, and/or a non-standard operating system.
This change of policy, ethics, and technology will not come from Samsung themselves, as they are at present, due to the nature of their business. Organizing a change in the culture lead by the community is a strength we have against large companies.
Please reply, as to how we go about socially, culturally, and even politically changing companies, and the whole industry to more to a more free, choice based environment.
What are people's thoughts?
However about 10-12 months ago I flashed a custom sense ROM on to my Samsung Nexus S and it screwed the IMEI number behond repair by myself and the community so I flashed it back to stock re-locked the bootloader and sent it of to Samsung for repair. I got it back about 10 days later fixed and with the bootloader unlocked :-) I'm sure they sent it back this way to let me know they knew it had been modified, but the main thing is they repaired it under warranty and at the time it was open knowledge that Samsung didn't refuse warranty just because you'd flashed a custom ROM on one of there smartphones. If things really have changed over the last 12 months then its sad really sad.
My 2 cents worth.
I installed a completely stock (I hope), unbranded version of ICS 4.0.3, as I do not, at this stage, want anything fancy on my phone. I also rooted my phone so I could use adfree to cut down on data usage inhibited by "free" software. So, in essence, my phone is just like it came out the box, with a little "stop humping my data" thrown in, so should not be penalized for it :-(
I do not frack around with hardware overclocking etc, I am battery conscious :-) besides, I have a pc for that :-D
Demon :-)
Today I noticed my device's defect unable to off Wi-Fi even after the factory full wipe, so regardless of my flash counter I'll visit SVC tomorrow morning anyway and see if Sammy gives me new one. I strongly agree with you and end-users should control their own device, and there's no evil in the root access but malicious user himself is.
I'll say your words instead of you guys and post the afterwards.
Bottom line, as long as Apple is making money, we will be forced to deal with thing we should not have to if the market were fair and balanced, or till one day Apple goes belly up
Tbh, it's more like they are screwed, since the powerusers will just go back to using Google's Nexus devices and be done with it, regardless if Samsung's device has better hardware...
But maybe Samsung want to go like apple, maybe they really do want to be another apple clone...
to custom software, I still remember the motorola milstone
wich was almost unflashable... also the HTC Hero was also hard to root
(compared to most devices nowadays)
In a way i still think they arent open enough, but its becoming better,
If i lose my warranty by flashing custom software? Well ill just try to get my warranty anyway.
I can't promise anything though!
That, i must say was a great read.
I do agree that, like you, I'm against companies, say like verizon locking their devices down. However, when i make videos, when i write guides, i not only do it for myself, but do it for others, so that it helps them.
What my point it here cf, is that, i would like to see you continuing development in triangle away, for example.
Just because Samsung, or any other person or company tells you or makes it hard, doesn'tmean that you, the creator of an app, guide, video, should stop what you are doing.
At the end of the day, see it as helping those that need to send it in for warranty, rather than see it as a stand against Samsung.
Hope that made sense...
-Totallydubbedhd
If I'm rooting my device and installing custom software my warranty should remain ok.
However, if my hardware fails, the first thing I'm going to do is stick the stock FW back on and unroot ready to get my warranty and device back. This is a £500 phone and I can't afford to be buying a new one
Your continuing development in triangle away and all your work
Just because Samsung, or any other person or company tells you or makes it hard, doesn't mean that you, the creator of an app or help with info. I see it as helping those that need to send it in for warranty, rather than see it as a stand against Samsung OR THE CARRIERS. Thank you
Cell phone manufacturers are doing this people are letting them.
well thats just my 2cents
I am serviceman of one of bigges cell phones services in Poland.
In most cases, if customers comming to me with problem "what to do if i have phone on guarantee, but i have custom rom ?" i officially downloaded on their's devices Triangle away, and cleaned rom counter. BUT ! u don't solved problem of f.ex. custom rom counter on i9000 or i9001, where most of my customers were placing cyanogenmod 9, that is ICS 4.0.4.. Please, solve problem of crash yours ap on galaxy and galaxy +
greetings from Poland,
Paul, "Haloo gsm" service
I followed it until I came to here:
--- Samsung Galaxy S3 AT&T
I get this message when I run TriangleAway:
"Magic header not found,
Incompatible Device?"
I am using a AT&T Samsung Galaxy SIII
I am following the link :
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1494114
I tried to buy it but having issues with google wallet and AT&T billing address which is not allowing me to buy from playstore, Kindly help me out chainfire I am worried about my new phone I just bought it a week ago. Thanking You.
ro.product.model=htc_jewel
ro.product.name=htc_jewel
ro.product.device=htc_jewel
kindly help me to know what are the original values for these to be configured i haven't took backup while i am changign nwo i am suffering a lot kindly help me out chainfire please.
This message to request offering to apologize first.
I galaxy s3 users in South Korea.
Is my galaxy s3 Model M440S
I would like to use. TriangleAway application
Model that supports only SHV-E210S, SHV-E210K
M440S Model Korea exists.
M440S is a model for the 3G model.
Support on this product, please ask.
Always appreciated.
Broken English Thanks for watching.
I would like to use. TriangleAway application
Galaxy Note 10.1 N8005 (in Turkey)
help please
You're correct about the primary reason why Samsung implemented this 'feature'. However, Samsung does also have valid reasons for implementing this. If a device gets hard-bricked due to firmware flashing, Samsung will have to replace the motherboard. If an irresponsible flasher hard-bricks their Samsung device, since it's under warranty, Samsung will have to replace it for free. If that irresponsible flasher hard-bricks the device again for the same hack, Samsung will still have to honor the flasher's warranty.
What Flashing can damage:
-The EFS partition (requires motherboard replacement)
-eMMC partition table (somehow related to the eMMC bug; hardbricks the device if damaged; requires motherboard replacement)
-The kernel. (Could prevent the phone from starting up)
I wish Samsung would allow rooting as it's less invasive than a custom firmware. However, Samsung wants to protect its own (and Google's) interests.
Indeed they did. It still works as expected if you're just running stock kernel/recovery and root, though. It's only a problem if you run custom firmwares. As such, they are more friendly to just root than custom firmwares.
I do not plan to get around these new measures - you can use Triangle Away, but the counter will only stick to 0 if you're running stock+root - else it will auto-increment to 1 at every boot.
nice.
Thnks !
S7562?
Also, Thanx for the wonderful app. :)
seems to be a "new custom binary counter"
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1912984
Samsung: this is my first device from you. I paid 600 euros (twice the price of my laptop).
I had the plan to move my complete familly to your SAMSUNG phones and buy 2 SAMSUNG TV.
I don't mind some bugs in touchwizz or whatever people complain and was really suporting you in your success but since this small "modified", I'm really wondering if I should really change all my device as I am scared of the future with you. So I'm looking at other vendors which I did not do for 6 months.
I'd be okay for voiding warranty for overclocking, and I would even accept voiding warranty for custom rom, I cannot accept not being able to be "administrator" on my machines (That would block me for my galaxy tab with a custom rom but I only rooted my galaxy S3)
If my phone has a slight hardware problem and the warranty does not work, I'll put my thousand euros somewhere else and spread the word as much as I can on all my websites.
People, spread the word.
Not my style to rant, threat or even post but Play clear, I really like your devices, that would annoy me to move to something else.
ChainFire, my devices thank you ;)
but i cant mount sd card cant move apps to sd card .
is here some thing new for my samsung galaxy s dous 7562
second, someone opened my eyes regarding the rooting with warranty issue. EU says you should be covered, I hope this article is good enough: http://piana.eu/root
the point is that there are usually devs or testers having access to encryption keys, salts and encryption algorithms. someone WILL disclose eventually.
we just need to find one employee and pay for the disclosure :D
IMEI and other device specific values are stored onto some sort of storage instead of being imprintened onto devices themselves. you root and mess up with that and you easily end up with some sort of hard pillow, let's call it brick. surely, that's manageable but not for free, that's a service offered. by no means it should mean Samsung not offering warranty at all.
WE make OEM's what they are. Take a look at HTC. they were once N1 but they screwd up with their bootloaders and traces if you go official and want to relock.
if tomorrow Sammy want to go the same way i will go for another smarter OEM that wants to take my money. Have a look how many left their S2's for Sony devices just to put CM in their QualComm powerd phones.
and if there is none, then hell i will go back and use my Nokia 8800 which has a great long lasting battery.
To conclude. Keep doing what you do and rest assured that WE, the power users really appreciate your hard work and in any time we have a few bucks WE can take you out for a beer.
Cheers. Wish the best.
Email: m.aurelio@msn.com
khoontkk@gmail.com
1. I'm certain that the respect that Chainfire displays for Samsung engineers is entirely mutual. In fact, one of the reasons that these back-doors are not welded shut with strong encryption is that Samsung knows perfectly well the value of the creativity and hard work that people like Chainfire bring to its platform. You/we shouldn't frame the discussion only in terms of "it's our right to build software" and "it should be a crime to lock it down". That is a way to say "Samsung, yea, it may cost you a bit of money to have to honor the warrantee of a bricked device, or to do the extra development to make your devices unbrickable. But that should just be a cost of doing business. An unbrickable phone is better and ultimately saves you money, so suck it up and make the investment." No, the OEMs need to be reminded that their phones are more valuable because their owners can, well, OWN them. Chainfire is doing a bigger favor for Samsung by developing than Samsung is doing for Chainfire by not locking down the phones. **That's** why it's in Samsung's interest to keep them open (or at least openable).
2. If things start to get bad -- phones start to get really locked down, and it starts to look like "war" -- there is a precedent for how to proceed. I doubt that the it will be possible to make free openness an entitlement. But surely the situation can be made to take a page from today's carrier phone locking rules: carriers can lock down the phones they allow on their network with strong encryption, but they are legally required to sell unlock keys at some "reasonable" price. In our case, the cost of the key would cover the expense of the risk incurred to the OEM for continuing to honor the warrantee. (My guess is that if such an "unlock code" cost 1 penny it would more than cover the additional risk, but that's not the point). The OEMs could just reuse the entire infrastructure that manages phone locking today -- in addition to "carrier" and "factory" and "network" unlock codes, there would now be a "software" unlock code. BTW, Windows Phone basically does this already today.
Don't get me wrong -- I certainly hope that it never comes to this. (And I hope that Microsoft lives to regret the software locks that it places on every Windows Phone). But in the not-too-distant future, every phone will be a computer and every computer will be a phone. Ensuring the openness of the world's computing fabric is far too important to turn it into an "us" vs. "them" war where it's even vaguely imaginable that "we" might lose.
Luckily for all of us -- **ALL** of us (you me and Samsung too) we have guys like Chainfire on our side. We don't need no favors from Samsung.
scott.petrack@gmail.com
and for that reason, people like him (you) are Should things ever start to get "bad" (i.e. OEMs start to **really** lock down the software on our phones), I
My SGS2 (4.0.4) facts:
PDA: I9100XWLQ2
Phone: I9100XXLQ6
SiyahKernel S2-v5.0.1 and notihng ROM only root
Thanks for answer, because I do not will brick my device.
Thanks a lot for goot work Chainfire.
Beast wishers
CarbonFighter
#1. A company has to educate it's technical support employees about *standard* fixes. A rooted/unlocked device is by no means *standard*. I think this is the primary reason they prefer to only give warranty to stock devices.
There is very little analysis done by technical support. Its a list of if-then-else scenarios that lead up to a fix, replacement or denial of service.
The smartest people in the company is making and designing the device. They could probably fix any problem caused by root or lightning ---but they are not running technical/warranty support.
Simply put, it's easier for a company to just deny service if the device state is *un-familiar* instead of hiring competent people that can analyze a specific problem and find a fix.
#2. This is sort of like the XDA mentality of "using search first". There will be a multitude of ways a device can be fixed. But, time and effort must be given. Companies design these "locking" mechanisms so the average to semi-power user is dis-incentive-d to hack a device.
#3. Basically, this is what they are saying:
If you are smart enough to get around the lock, you should be smart enough to fix problems caused by it ---or find/pay someone to fix it for you.
You paid us to make a complex device for you, and to an extent, will support it if it fails on you after we made it. Just don't "loosen this (software)screw" as the things behind it, when broken will cost us more than what we have profited from your payment if we fix it.
#4. If a device costs X amount to make, if you expect instant replacement warranty, be prepared to pay 2X+profit to buy the device. If you expect no warranty, you pay X+profit only. Thankfully, we mostly pay for devices somewhere in between.
Companies actually incorporate the failure rate of a device to its pricing. If they allow their devices to be unlocked easily, warranty premiums will skyrocket.
#5. With this I end with an idea. All that device lockdown and warranty limits allows companies to sell the device much cheaper.
Imagine paper, you can fold it as you will and write on it as you want after you have bought some. But, you don't see paper companies giving warranty support on crumpled paper.
The price of paper would skyrocket if suddenly there was a law that required paper companies to provide warranty on crumpled paper. Or, paper companies would just find a way to lockdown paper so normal users would not be able to crumple it.
Thanks for answer, because I do not will brick my device.
Thanks a lot for goot work Chainfire.
If you take your device in for hardware problems, the first step the repair tech takes is to re-flash the device back to factory standard software.
Then repair the hardware (if the standard software doesn't fix the problem), and hand it back to the owner.
If a person is able to load custom software in the first place, it should be safe to assume they do regular backups, right?
I wish you would reconsider putting *any* apps in the google store. These people have most decidedly gone darkside.
Triangle Away is not support android v2.3.6? My device is GT-S7500. I was try and not support, feel abit disappointed. Please help and support of Android v2.3.6 and Galaxy ace plus (GT-S7500). Thanks.
Please add support for Galaxy s duos..
you can find details about this phone here
and the dump file from here
Thanks In Adv...
please Help!
Thank you ! My device Samsung Galaxy mini2 (GT-S6500), stock rom and root. Very good work Triangle Away 2.9 apk ! Counter: 0, and Official rom, yellow triangle is no !!!
Thank you very much !!
My device : Samsung Galaxy S Player 4.2
Samsung Galaxy Premier GT-I9268
I am suffering from hardware problems and Samsung reject warranty since my device was rooted
Samsung Galaxy Premier GT-I9268
I am suffering from hardware problems and Samsung reject warranty since my device was rooted
I wanted to use triangle away to regain access to the ota updates nothing more and yet now samsung have branded me as a evil hacker and even triangle away cant help me.
I hope you continue your hard work and fight for our right to do what we want with or devices (so long as it doesn't affect the hardware)
I would be happy to pay for your tool if samsung made it even harder to work.
Wish you can schedule GT-i9268 in next release, thanks a lot.
file at
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=40143230#post40143230
0. There are one or more hardware PROM-like fuse which is automatically fried if an electrical montoring circuit detects overclocking, overvoltage on the plugs, water damage etc. So such
hardware-destroying events can void the hardware warranty independently of any software. For instance the overclocking fuse is burnt if too many clock pulses occur in a single second.
1. In the phone board or SoC design put a hardware lock which prevents overwriting the first 64K (or some such small number) of bytes in the main flash chip. Put the first stage bootloader, IMEI, MAC and a few other immutable things there during manufacturing, then burn a old school PROM fuse to block all later changes. One of those things would be a manufacturer public key used for signing official second stage bootloaders.
2. There is an official second stage bootloader, which will chainload any 3rd party unlocked bootloader, but will refuse to run if it's signed code does not contain a copy of the device MAC or IMEI (some devices only have one of the two).
3. A signed copy of the unlock bootloader is available from the manufacturer web site in exchange for entering the serial number and paying a small fee for a warranty plus service. The order procedure includes a step that technically verifies possession of the specified phone, so you cannot easily buy a bootloader to hack someone else's phone without their consent. The download bundle also includes any required GPL source for that phone and the inclusion of the unlock hopefully satisfies GPL3 requirements.
4. When checking for hardware flaws, the repair tech inserts a custom SD card with a "tech support" bootloader (not IMEI specific), which runs the stock firmware with preinstalled tech support test programs from the SD card (Apple stores do the same when you bring in your broken MAC). This way none of your data is lost (the fault you are complaining about may have prevented you from making your usual backup!).
5. If the hardware test shows broken hardware that can be replaced without replacing the flash chip, this is done and you get back your phone with your unchanged data and software.
6. If the hardware test shows broken hardware that requires a new mainboard, the test software on the service SD card does a nandroid backup of both flash (including recovery and bootloader) and internal sd card to a blank area on the test SD card, and the tech then takes out a replacement board/phone and restores your data and code onto the new board. As part of the process, if you have the special paid unlock bootloader for the old serial number, you are given one for the new board serial number as part of the replacement procedure.
7. If the hardware test shows no problems, but booting from your installed flash fails, the tech will offer to reflash stock firmware from a copy on the tech SD card, you may accept or decline, but if you decline, no further troubleshooting is done.
8. Now the tech will test if things work with the recommended factory firmware and follow his usual yes/no procedures for determining known forms of bad settings etc.
Notice how there is no increase in tech support costs (in fact, the bootable tech SD card will speed up testing even of stock phones, as the tech will have less initial gymnastics to do with lock screens etc.), also notice how the reflash offering equally covers a failed OTA update that bricked the phone.
To prevent abuse of lost/stolen tech SD cards for stealing data of phones, they refuse to boot unless connected to the shop WiFi or shop computer USB cable (whichever port is not broken) of the repair shop they have been assigned to, with card blacklisting a routine back office operation in the shop.
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Please I am looking to see if anyone can help me track my Galaxy S3 that someone stole from me on March 26. Please it is urgent as I do not have my 6month old childs pcitures and videos backed up or uploaded to my computer...anyone that can help please email at imade_oke@hotmail.com thanks!
Seems to work, though, in setting, about device, Status, Device status shows Custom.
Purchased anyway...
@dvdclub Google gets virtually nothing from their software or from anything Android-related. 99% of their income comes from advertising, and I'm feel like I'm still underestimating on that one.
In reference to countless other comments blaming Google, Samsung, and various carriers, I would be inclined to agree with all of them except Google. My biggest reason is twofold: Google executives are constantly complaining about the patent landscape, in which this is extremely related to, and they have maintained their Nexus series, their trademark line of one phone and two tablets with the latest version of Android, as exclusively unlocked, and in the case of their phone, unlocked and with untethered GSM support. They also have elected to keep the Android OS free and open source, to where I have even heard of people installing it on former iOS devices such as the iPod Touch. That last one is only a secondary reason.
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