[Discuss] [SPAM] Re: un-bastardized android

[me at mattgillen.net (Matthew Gillen)]

On 06/03/2011 07:28 AM, Edward Ned Harvey wrote:
> I know the Nexus One was un-bastardized for the short period that it was
> sold.  But it's really unclear now, how to find an un-bastardized phone if
> you want one.
> 
> Anyone have any advice on how to find/get un-bastardized phones?

HTC recently announced that going forward they would no longer lock
their bootloaders:
 http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-19736_7-20066896-251.html

I'm curious to see if this policy survives negotiations with Verizon et
al, but I appreciate the sentiment.  It at least takes one variable out
of the equation (that the manufacturer will pull an Apple and try to
brick your device if you root it).

The major advice I'd have to buy the older gen phones.  They are often
very well documented on how to root.  I got my droid-1s about two weeks
before they started shipping droid2s, but I wanted the droid1 because it
was so well known and popular in the rooting community.

> you can't uninstall without root.  Having rooted my phone, this implies I'll
> never apply any updates, and although I haven't been hit by any malware or
> blatant instability, I like to believe that updates are improvements...

If you use a ROM that is maintained, you'll get any updates at least
several months (or a year+) before the carriers would push an update.  I
got droids for my wife and myself, and I rooted mine, left hers stock.
I think she's only gotten two updates pushed from Vz in the last year
(one of which was a major upgrade from android 2.1->2.2, which of course
was several months after I had 2.2).  I get updates (to the core OS)
once a month on average.

It's certainly more work in terms of researching ROMs and such (not
unlike researching linux distros back when there started to be a huge
number of one-off distros), and some are much better than others in
terms of making regular releases and making those releases accessible
(not unlike non-mainstream linux distros...).

HTH,
Matt