Will I void my warranty by rooting my phone?
If so are there ways to enhance the phone without voiding the warranty? Like any custom roms that don't require the phone to be rooted?
To flash a ROM you need root. Root voids warranty. You can always revert as if you "never rooted" in case you need to take your phone in.
THere is no way they can void your warranty over the air? If not it sounds like my only danger is bricking the phone.
Not exactly sure what you mean by that; like if you root they somehow can tell "wirelessly" that you have, thus voiding. Not that I have heard. There was something like that with the iPhone I believe hearing, maybe not though. Or something they were working on, meaning not released.
And in terms of bricking your phone, that is supposed to be incredibly hard. Am sure someone has done it somewhere but you should be fine.
People say it again and again but it's worth repeating; read read read and read again. Then proceed.
Thnx for the replies.
Related
Yes yes, tampering with the hardware of a device voids the warranty. But does it actually make a difference? Cant you just unroot your device, and send it back into the store for a brand new one (if something breaks, etc etc)? I feel kind of stupid asking this question but i honestly dont understand the difference between the two. Answer please?
Depends, I'm not sure if you can unroot the Evo. My Moment I could unroot. If the phone doesn't start up, then you're okay.
The first Evo (rooted) I bought fell in the toilet, the right side of the screen stopped working, all I did was uninstall Superuser and any rooted apps via ADB and they never suspected a thing.
You could still boot into recovery though but they never tried I guess
sW333t11 said:
Yes yes, tampering with the hardware of a device voids the warranty. But does it actually make a difference? Cant you just unroot your device, and send it back into the store for a brand new one (if something breaks, etc etc)? I feel kind of stupid asking this question but i honestly dont understand the difference between the two. Answer please?
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Yes, you can just Unroot but just make sure to flash the S-ON zip first. They are big to say it voids your warranty, but I don't think they really go through phones all that much to check for evidence of rooting. But, don't take advantage of this being an option. It gets old seeing all the people on here who brick their phones because they don't know what they are doing then just returning it for replacement because they didn't read something closely enough. These antics only hurt all of us in the end, just more excuses for Sprint to jack it to us on insurance etc.
Thread moved to Q&A.
Nah its not me with the problems, my phone is perfectly fine. I was just wondering because one of my friends wants me to root their phone and such, but they're kind of hesitant because of the whole waranty being voided thing. With the S-On zip though, this unroots the enitre phone back to stock? I forgot to mention this before but the phone that would possibly need unrooting is an Evo purchased a couple weeks ago.
The if you used unrevoked, the s-on tool sets your nand security back to s-on, and then running a ruu with reflash all stock software. Doing these two things will completely unroot you and make the phone eligible for warranty stuff.
Got it. Thanks a bunch.
yea when we root its all software crap and so with software its easily taken on and off just gotta know what your doing. As for as hardware mods if you take your phone apart that voids the warranty .
Apologies if this has been covered before- searched a couple of times with no joy...
Waiting for delivery of my Defy and still not sure what mods to do...Having read about a lot of UK models having the dreaded ear-piece fault, I'm just wondering:
1. what I can do that can be undone if my phone develops this fault?
i.e. Is it possible to root the phone, remove some of the Motoblur bloatware, overclock and scale, and still be able to return it to it's original state if the earpiece goes? (or at least make any mods undetectable!)
2. From what I've read it is possible to skip the Motoblur registration. Would I still be able to use the phone portal- what apps require the Motoblur registration?
Basically I'd love to tweak the phone but am paranoid about voiding the waranty!
Thanks in advance!
Once you are rooted and have recovery installed backup your system before doing anything else. If something happens restore the backup and unroot. Only problem might be if you have some type of hardware issue and can no longer boot the phone.
There is always risk, but that will help.
rbeier1221 said:
Once you are rooted and have recovery installed backup your system before doing anything else. If something happens restore the backup and unroot. Only problem might be if you have some type of hardware issue and can no longer boot the phone.
There is always risk, but that will help.
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Thanks. Is it the case that you can mod the phone any way you like as long as you backup, restore and unroot before returning the phone for any possible warranty claim? Would a Mototola tech be able to tell that the phone had been modded and then reset to it's original state? Just wondering if I'd be better to wait a couple of months for any possible fault to appear...Thanks again.
cwhiggs said:
...am paranoid about voiding the waranty!
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If that's your primary concern, tweaking isn't really an option.
As soon as you start fiddling with the software, you technically void your warranty.
That said, most fiddling can be undone and if the phone were to end up in a state that you couldn't boot it to fix your fiddling, there's a fairly good chance that the engineers wouldn't be able to boot it to discover what you've done.
Not to mention, from past personal experience, a lot of front-line engineers that actually deal with faulty handsets that are sent away for repair don't really care or may not be bright enough to be able to tell that you've messed with your phone.
Thanks. Think I'll go ahead and mod it. Been reading the relevent posts/stickies and from what I can see as long as I'm carefull and follow the various steps closely and in order, I'll be unlucky to brick it. Think I'd get pissed off waiting several months for any fault to show- just wary of the earpiece going and then being told I'm screwed coz I've played with the software! Thanks again.
I've had my phone about a month now and it's going great. No complaints or issues (proximity sensor is behaving itself nicely). I'm now thinking of rooting it and getting CM7.
A few questions:
1) Does rooting void warranty?
2) Is it possible to 'unroot' and go back to the stock rom and have the phone exactly as it was out of the box?
3) I'm on software version 1.72.405.3. I'm guessing I'm going to have to downgrade to be able to root my phone?
4) What is the likelihood of bricking my phone and is there a way to unbrick it if such a thing happens?
1. Yes. Rooting does void warranty, as fas as i know.
2. I believe you can do so by flashing official RUU package.
3. Yes, you would have to downgrade first.
4. There is a possibility of bricking, but it should not happen if you follow all the steps needed.
If i am wrong on some points, someone more experienced should correct me.
The previous points were quite right. You shouldn't be scared of rooting, just read enough and follow the instructions very carefully and you should be just fine. People tend to speak about how someone has bricked their phone etc. but these guys with bricked phones never show up anywhere so there's a kind of a paradox I'm not saying that trying to root couldn't harm your device, I'm just saying that if you do everything very carefully and "by the book" the chances of bricking are very minimal if any.
Oh and if you haven't seen this, heres a good guide to get you through http://wiki.cyanogenmod.com/index.php?title=HTC_Desire_HD:_Full_Root_Guide
Hi all, I've done a fair bit of searching and reading up but not sure I can find definitive answers to whether there are any downsides to rooting my One X.
I am thinking similar to tethered jailbreaks in the iOS world, where if you run out of juice you have to cable up to get it to boot up etc.
I would like to root, so I have the freedom to use a few of the tweaks and mods on xda (such as the tweak to change the default - read too high - auto brightness levels), not sure I will actually replace my entire rom at this stage, just root so I can use some of these minor tweaks.
so, is there anything that I need to genuinely consider before making the leap, some specific questions that spring to mind are;
1. Can I always easily revert it ?
2. Read some posts where people are struggling to charge once it hits 0% ? Is this an actual problem if I just root ? I do not want to brick a phone or have to prize open the case to take batteries out etc
3. If I chose to replace ROM's in the future, are there actual apps that more or less backup all your apps and settings so you can just reload that one app after a new ROM is installed, restore a backup and I am good to go, or do you have to manually setup everything from scratch again ?
Thanks for any advice you guys can offer.
ta
Mart
The only downside to rooting is you get hooked on flashing. It's very easy to get back to stock. As long as you have proper RUU for your region that goes with your CID and all is fine.
At present, the only rooting method involves unlocking the bootloader. It can be locked again. But it's 'relocked' rather than 'locked'. So your warranty is still void in some cases.
I'm waiting for root method which doesn't require an unlocked bootloader. Or non HTCDEV Unlocked bootloader and S-OFF before I do mine, but that's just me
Sentinel196 said:
So your warranty is still void in some cases
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HTC will only refuse your warranty if you balls up your phone as a result of flashing roms. Everything else such as hardware defects will leave the warranty in tact.
Okie, so I wrote this guide up for someone in another post, and a few people said it was very helpful so i hope it can get stickied here.
Also i know this information is All over the place but it was a bit scattered for me, but id like to post it here in my Fellow N900T Owners section
I'll give a brief explanation in the differences. The Colors of the titles indicate how safe/dangerous it is to modify one of these things and wether it will void your warranty, Green=Wont void your warranty, and easily reversible. Orange=Void Warranty, Reversible, But starting to get Dangerous, Red=Definitely Voids Warranty, and if screwed up, could ruin/brick your device Definitely Voids Warranty, and if screwed up, could ruin/brick your device
Rooting: When you are rooting your device, you are basically forcing your stock version of android to allow you (the user) root access, therefore allowing you to bypass/allow signature verification for apps, now this could be anything from homebrew apps that you are making yourself...to the naughty pirated apps, and i don't encourage the latter. Rooting your phone does NOT void your warranty, you can always UNROOT. By giving yourself root access to your phone, your allowing the next to happen:
Flashing a Custom Recovery: Ok ill explain this as simple as i can...Mostly all if not ALL android phones have a stock recovery, this is a safeguard in case some kind of software fault happened in the phone(stock software fault or what have you). Flashing a custom recovery would be your next step after Rooting a device (IF) you want to go further than apps, meaning Kernels, Roms etc. Now the reason you must Root your device in order to install a custom recovery, is because like explained above signature verification....Now this is when you begin to tread in warranty territory, once flashing a custom recovery...your warranty has become VOID, however what the custom recovery allows you to do is a multitude of things, but the most major is Flashing .ZIP files, which most roms are in the form of, now not only Roms are in ZIP files, so are kernels,mods,baseband firmwares, etc, with that being said, different phones/devices use different methods of flashing roms, lets say for example you somehow screwed something up on a samsung really bad, and it wont boot, however, you can still get into download mode...then you're safe, because samsung uses Odin to flash the entire phone back to stock meaning Recovery/aBoot/Data/System and bring you right back, but if you hard brick it, theres only 3 ways out from that...and they all suck....number one, is call me and send it to me to Jtag it for you ..but it takes long and its not that cheap, #2, Desolder the chip (whichever it is on the device that has caused the problem) and replace it...and thats not an easy task at all, ive done it once to an S3 successfully, after that i never wanted to do it again, and this was back when they were really expensive, and lastly....#3.....and this one is the worse....go buy a new one SO BE CAREFUL!
ROMS: So now that we have a custom recovery, a rom is basically a heavily modified version of Android! and let me tell ya, i love them...i love so many of them, there are sooo many different things that you can do with roms, but the most desired from what ive gathered, is so people can remove the bloatware that comes with their phone when they buy it from the carrier/manufacturer. Thats not all tho, there is way too much to get into, but some roms allow you to Overclock your phones CPU/GPU, and change the Behaviors of the phones hardware, and the major component in roms that allows that is the Kernel.
Kernel: Now dont totally quote me here, im still learning kernels, but a kernel is basically the binary software in the phone, almost like a bios that when modified from stock, changes the behavior of MOST of the hardware, not all. Now i could be wrong and anyone please feel free to correct me, now i do want to give you a shot of my own advice here...if you dont know what you are doing, kernels are dangerous to a noobie..before i started messing with roms and kernels, i tried to get the best understanding i could, and ill be honest with you, i blew up a couple S3's doing so. but im still learning. so if you're unweary or still not educated enough in the hobby to get to it, please read more up on it, because as none of these guys here that are devs nor people like myself that are trying to help intend to destroy your device on you, so please be careful for your own device's safety, and to save yourself money and a broken heart.
Knox: Ok now correct me if im wrong here, because im still learning as this is new to me, i only saw it on the MJA bootloader on the S4 on Jellybean from Sprint when they first OTA'd it, but knox looks to be Samsungs pathetic try of not lettings us Access the devices binary software, like an encryption, or to only let us access and modify certain things, also samsung has added a flash counter, which will tell them how many times you have flashed a new rom, once the knox counter is tripped....your warranty with samsung is gone, if youre lucky and you bring the phone into a local carrier store, theres a good chance the guys working there will have no idea how to even see if, from what ive learned you must be in download mode to directly see the knox counter.
I Hope this helped and shed some light on some information, and please if anyone has anything to add or to correct me if im wrong anywhere please do so ^_^
P.S. To be totally honest, theres always a way to restore your device and even get the flash counter back to 0 again and put everything back to normal, if an experienced tech looks at it and puts it in download mode unless all is restored, hell be able to see everything, but honestly, if you pay off the phone, you havve nothing to worry about, but then again, i dont care much for warranties, so it all depends on how savvy with fixing problems when they go wrong, but if you ever need i can help you, im pretty experienced when it comes to everything but developing atm, i was a microelectronics major in college, so my expertise is mainly in hardware i.e. if you hard/soft brick the devvice i can usually get it out of that.
please excuse my typing, i type extremely fast, and i have a mechanical keyboard and i think some lettings are startings to give way such as the V key.
So this is what i came up with ^_^ i hope this helps and please feel free to correct me or Add to this by commenting in the posts below and ill change the write up as needed
Hope this heellppsss
Questions please
Update: 2/17 Thanks for the Knox info towle! gonna add it
I would just like to add a few things. The Knox flag isn't reversible. Once it's tripped, there's no going back. Flashing a custom recovery will trip the Knox flag. Depending on how you root, that could also trip the flag. There are a couple rooting methods that go around it, but if you're planning on installing a custom recovery, it will be tripped anyways.