For all you folks who love to hack, jailbreak, mod and tweak your smartphones (and take a fair bit of joy in doing so!) here’s a real dampener. Hope this doesn’t spoil your day, but fiddling with the Motorola Droid X software can destroy your phone for good. This, due to the eFuse tamper-defense mechanism built in the hottest gadget in town.
Phone manufacturers have always been at loggerheads with people who love to use the phone the way they want, by modding it. But Motorola takes this war to an all new level. How else can you explain this new system which will simply waste your phone if you tamper with the OS?
This eFuse, true to its name will ‘trip’ if it fails to verify firmware information when you start the phone up. This firmware information is what you call ROM in modding lingo. So if you load up custom ROM’s and start up the phone the eFuse is pressed into action.
Once it fails to verify desired firmware information, the booting process becomes corrupted and you have a dead duck in your hands! It is a rewritable module and so, can be repaired, but only by Motorola, without proprietary hardware and software which no one knows about.
And you can be pretty sure that Motorola is not going to repair a phone which you bricked on purpose. They put this mechanism in place so that you cannot tamper with the phone, and if you do, well enjoy!
So what’s the key takeaway from this?
Two things actually, spring to mind. One, it is indeed a sad scenario for those who love to customize locked down phones. Droid X has been one of the most eagerly anticipated launches of the season and that it would be loaded with such a hideous defense-mechanism, was completely unknown.
On the other hand, this is a completely good reason not to try and jailbreak your Droid X. It is a good enough phone to own with pride, rather than lust for customizing it and sulk in the failure to do so.
But as a final take on this eFuse mechanism, it would be fair to say that Motorola has pushed the envelope this time around. There is no way in which a phone which people will buy with their hard earned money can be justifiably bricked just because they may want to opt for some customization. A big thumbs-down to the Droid X for this!
Update: It’s Rooting, and not jailbreak. My bad! (Thanks to ePandu)
