Develop Bugs

recent presentation about unlocking and phone tweaking

At the DerbyCon hacker conference this past weekend, a buddy and i were asked to give a presentation about unlocking and modding of Android phones. Naturally, it's well below the level of most folk here, but if you have a friend who is interested in this topic they might get a lot out of this video...
Roamer & Deviant - Welcome to NinjaTel, Press '2' To Activate Your Device Now
youtube [dot] com [slash] watch?v=gz4w1kS1fHs
(i don't post here often, i just read... so i can't make a direct link)​
... our original idea was just to claim a table in the hotel bar and offer to show people how to tweak their devices, just giving a helping hand in case newbies were apprehensive. Due to a last minute speaker cancellation, we were tapped to turn this into a full-on presentation. So, i rapidly put together slides and we grabbed a few spare devices and off we went.
The main crux of what we hoped to do with this presentation (which is NSFW, by the way) was convince newbies that it's not very hard or risky to do this. People should not be afraid to try.
This talk is geared towards the HTC One V because hundreds of them were given away at this past summer's DEFCON conference (which, if you don't know about that, google and read up on the Ninja Networks. it was amazing!)
So, perhaps someone will enjoy it. If it convinces just one more new person to try hacking their Android devices, mission accomplished.

BOUNTY/PLEDGE to unlock Fire Phone bootloader

Update:
I did notice some users pledging, but didn't realized we actually got something going on, I'll be updating with an estimated pledge sum, I'm not naming individuals but at least summarizing this, the ball is rolling and hopefully the purpose of this (which is attract developers in a good, respectful and rewarding way) will pay off!
Dear Fire Phone owners:
We are looking very disorganized and scattered on efforts, we also have GOOD but limited dev support due to the quantity of Fire Phone owners and so the quantity of them that actually visit XDA is even lower.
So let's join efforts, I see @madushan1000 doing effort to unlock the bootloader and willing to blow his own qfuses for it, on his hard earned money.
If you know a developer, or are a developer, we must seek answer for the following answers:
1.- How many phones do you need to play around until you blow up the right qfuse?
(If the answer is n <= 10, I don't see why we can't all join a bounty *paid upfront* for that developer to buy the damn 10 phones ~$1350 dlls, if he gets it done on the first attempt, he deserves the remaining hard earned money solely for rewarding, and even more.)
2.- Is there any exploitable bug on the qcom trustzone that can at least trick into thinking the phone is unlocked? What would be needed to do so?
(If all that's required is a time and effort to do it, I don't see why we can pledge on a *serious* bounty and paid the developer $1000 dlls when done, if he is a reputed developer and has evidence or prior work, I don't even see why we can't paid upfront either.)
3.- Are you interested in a bounty for fixing the camera code on the existing CM11 rom? What would be the required incentive for it? (can you do it @ggow, @madushan1000?)
We should be able to brainstorm and just think in joining efforts, even if my questions or ideas are the wrong ones, hell! then just tell everyone out loud which idea or process is the right one! Let's work together people!
I just saw 13,000 fire phones sold in Ebay, what the hell?, 1000 fire phone owners that visit XDA can't pledge $1000 dlls?
If this is seriously not doable I will just delete the post right away, but let's at least seek some developers and show them we can organize a good offer, we might find some interesting results.

I will pitch in for an unlock. Not sure of amount until it happens.

The Fire Phones on ebay are still going for over a 100 each. With the new tablets announced today and as people forget the fire phone, the price should drop VERY soon... I hope. I would love to pick up a spare.

Got mine on eBay on $57.50, i hope devs can unlock the bootloader fix the camera and the NFC

Wow, I'm glad to see something like this going on. But I'm afraid I'm not going to be able to do any serious work until next month or so. My final exams coming up. And next I have to find a job.
Anyway, I'm working on a kexec module my spare time, Provided that it works, We can start developing a boodloader unlock. People with already bricked phones might be able to help too by trying to unbrick their phones following something like this http://www.androidbrick.com/ultimate-qualcomm-snapdragon-unbrick-guide-snapdragons-are-unbrickable/ . If someone finds a working method it would help very much for the development.
As per hal issues I proposed to have tow sets of libraries on the rom to bypass the amazon liblog.so issues. May be @ggow is working on it? I don't have to proper knowledge about android build system to do it, or the resources.

madushan1000 said:
Wow, I'm glad to see something like this going on. But I'm afraid I'm not going to be able to do any serious work until next month or so. My final exams coming up. And next I have to find a job.
Anyway, I'm working on a kexec module my spare time, Provided that it works, We can start developing a boodloader unlock. People with already bricked phones might be able to help too by trying to unbrick their phones following something like this http://www.androidbrick.com/ultimate-qualcomm-snapdragon-unbrick-guide-snapdragons-are-unbrickable/ . If someone finds a working method it would help very much for the development.
As per hal issues I proposed to have tow sets of libraries on the rom to bypass the amazon liblog.so issues. May be @ggow is working on it? I don't have to proper knowledge about android build system to do it, or the resources.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
- Bypassing the liblog issues unfortunately is only one part of the problem - that in itself is tricky to do. A mega amount of changes required to the android stack.
- The camera issues require the HAL source code from Amazon or they need to be written from scratch.
- I am currently looking into what can be done about the camera. I have started looking at the binaries to see if they can be patched.
- I have also been studying the bootloaders, @madushan1000 I'll message you separately when I have a spare moment.

Thanks, I'll try to help you with the hal stuff in the future.

We should see a flood of people joining this forum due the eBay sales. 120 plus a year of prime was what made me buy. I'd pitch in a bit if it were unlocked. After tax and shipping, the phone has only cost me $31. Better than a Windows phone as a spare I would surmise even without seeing my package delivered yet.. Should be here any minute from USPS.

And I'm still driving this to get more people to say I'm up with $XX for the bounty, seriously no one was replied with a quantity WTF?
If anyone is reading this and still doesn't understand, a "bounty" is to get your offering of money for our developers @madushan1000 and @ggow for helping us get our Fire Phones with an unlocked bootloader or with a decent camera on CM11
Example: I'm in with $30 for the bounty

count me on $20 for bootloader unlock

Thread cleaned.
Please discuss other subject matter elsewhere and keep on topic here.
Also, keep it respectful.
Thanks,
Darth
Forum Moderator

I needed prime and a phone and made an impulse decision I immediately regretted after I learned there is a locked bootloader. Put me in for 20.
Also, I have a small coffee roasting shop and if either of you devs are coffee drinkers send me a pm me and I'll ship you some good stuff. That's not a bounty, it is an effort to increase productivity.

I'm in for $20 if somebody can handle this. I'd like to have a solid phone to hack on that's not my main.

I pledge 20.00 US dollars to this.
Sent from my Fire Phone using XDA Free mobile app

I'll pledge 100 for an unlock bootloader.

I will throw in $20

I through in 30$ i am looking forward to it ?

I will throw in a new phone with prime and $100.

i will throw in $20 and been waiting for it

I would give another $20. It looks like Amazon has no plans for it. I emailed them a few days ago:
" Hi,
I understand that you want us to provide the steps to Unlock the bootloader for your Fire Phone device.
I'd like to bring to your kind attention that unlocking your phone’s bootloader will cause you to lose all the data from your phone and voids your phone's warranty. That is the reason why currently we don't have plans of releasing a bootloader unlock for the fire phone.
However, I've forwarded your message to our development team for consideration as we make further improvements. Customer feedback like yours is very important in helping us improve the Fire phone experience."

Verizon Note 4 Rooted!! Check description

As I was searching the Internet today I came across this! Can anyone verify it??
http://www.usoftsmartphone.com/t410056.html

For some reason I have my doubts about this. Not just that, but there is no link anywhere, just screenshots, which can be easily faked. This kind of thing happens in the gaming console arena all the time. People just do it for attention. Until a recognized developer we KNOW (on here preferrably......hsbadr????) can confirm this, Im going to rule it as fake.

chevycam94 said:
For some reason I have my doubts about this. Not just that, but there is no link anywhere, just screenshots, which can be easily faked. This kind of thing happens in the gaming console arena all the time. People just do it for attention. Until a recognized developer we KNOW (on here preferrably......hsbadr????) can confirm this, Im going to rule it as fake.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Although, he has some petty good video of startup, reboot, and maintaining root...as well as showing root checker etc. so time will tell.

The guys a FRAUD. The XDA mods locked down his thread cause he was posting lies about permanent root which he willfully failed to show verity upon request. He is only looking for attention by means of "Thanks." pay him no attention. He's a troll. lol

Farse
This looks like a waste of time...delete.

So there is no reliable system yet to root the Note 4?

They way most of you have been treating and talking about this guy, if I were him and really did have the solution, I'd say "eff ya".

plainbum said:
They way most of you have been treating and talking about this guy, if I were him and really did have the solution, I'd say "eff ya".
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Agreed. I don't understand why everyone is so uppity. What's the harm in just being patient and having a "wait and see" attitude, instead of calling him a fraud and dropping the ban hammer just because he hasn't revealed details yet. Unless we know for certain that he hasn't achieved root, then I don't think we should push him away, even if we don't like his methods. Keep in mind that there is a language barrier here also, so there may be some misunderstanding.

He already said many times he wasn't going to release it. He said it would hurt his business and Samsung would patch it.
Which translates to I've found something that will work on many Samsung devices so if I release it I won't be able to use it to make money in my business, because having a solution for only the Verizon note 4 is not going to do his business much good as he is from outside US.

spocko said:
Agreed. I don't understand why everyone is so uppity. What's the harm in just being patient and having a "wait and see" attitude, instead of calling him a fraud and dropping the ban hammer just because he hasn't revealed details yet. Unless we know for certain that he hasn't achieved root, then I don't think we should push him away, even if we don't like his methods. Keep in mind that there is a language barrier here also, so there may be some misunderstanding.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
All you have to do is look at his past post. He did the same thing with an LG device. Posting he has achieved root when he had not. When the mods finally asked him to provide proof he declined to answer. When he's been contacted on his site, his number, etc, etc, he declines to answer the question and left the LG community it's in a complete disarray. We don't need people posting root achieved notices just to get their thanks scores higher. The Note 4 community it's has been thru enough already. And if it was going to hurt his business to release the method, then why release I've achieved root. No thanks, the guys a complete fraud.

I can appreciate that reasoning, thanks.
Here a genuine question, not trying to be argumentative:
How is this situation with vnmobile different than the video posted showing the Galaxy S5 bootloader unlock?
http://www.xda-developers.com/verizon-galaxy-s5-bootloader-has-been-unlocked/
It appears that this dev (beaups) does not plan to release his methods either, yet he is not treated with the same disdain as vnmobile. Granted it appears that beaups has earned respect previously, but at the end of the day the same question remains: what is the purpose of sharing the video?

This guy definitely a fraud. His real name is Ngoc Vu and he's running a business selling tech equipments in Vietnam. Let me throw a few things on the table here.
1) Language barrier issue - Nope I speak his language and had visit his website and his facebood page. Just full of shi...
2)Hurt his business if he released the root fix? Another bull sh... 2 ways he could make money. a) release the fix and collect over 20k cash from XDA b) Offer a service to root the phone with a fee. Guess what? none existed.
Summary - he just want to drive traffic to his web site, and make his business more visible to the world specially XDA where everyone interested in cell phone/tablet and electronic equipments. Case closed!

i just saw this post. And i confirmed he is a Vietnamese guys. like me. ^^
But i am so surprise, because he used the Booloader and ROM from "hsbadr" of XDA forum.
- This is the post of HERO "hsbadr" (By hsbadr, Recognized Developer / Recognized Contributor on 13th August 2015, 10:46 PM) : http://forum.xda-developers.com/not...nt/firmware-safe-upgrade-to-lollipop-t3178148
------------------------AND this the post of the guy in Vietnam ^^ (it was 31-10-2015, 06:02 PM ) . in Asia country like Vietnam, the Day is first, then the Month. So his video was Oct 31,2015. After "hsbadr" released his tutorial. ^^ i wish i can upload photo for you guys.
http://vietfones.vn/forum/showthread.php?1047158
This: "N910VVRU2BOG5 - Android 5.0.1 : Fri, 31 Jul 2015" is f-u-c-king fake ^^
Pls Forgive him!!!

Keeping Windows Mobile 10 alive...

Hey everyone,
There is so much work on windows mobile 10 from all the users of XDA, and all the people we don't know about... does anyone have any idea's as to the following, or new ideas, to get a few more years out of windows mobile or even the possibility to revive it?:
Possible petition ideas:
a) a petition from x number of people to make Project Astoria available to all phones/select phone builds in the current windows phone 10 so that we can use Android apps (at least get continued app updates for a while longer using android apk's)
b) a petition from x number of people to make windows 10 updates for set devices through a product key purchase... we pay $$-$$$ for windows 10, 8, 7 licences... why not get a key for wm10 and then wm11 when it comes out and so on? if microsoft supports all the current phones hardware and manufacture a few new models... maybe this way we could revive it?
c) a petition from x number of people to continue updates for x time frame so that we can at least get a bit more out of it, maybe enough time to get some app developers to launch a single update or two for applications we really want using another petition from us.
[edit] One other idea I have thought of is maybe microsoft could release the code for astoria and windows 10 mobile... maybe for open source?
would be nice if the incredible people out there wanting to keep this alive had the tools to do so... could we petition this or approach them another way? [/edit]
Maybe a combination of all ideas into a petition and see what they decide to do. I personally have little money but if we all pledged $30+ to an update, had 1000 people willing to do it, I think microsoft would consider $30000 as an incentive?
Microsoft dropped this because of only having a tiny % of the market and the costs involved on maintaining it, so is there a way we can increase the percentage of devices if we get this working?
As I said above, if we could buy product keys for our phones to enable continued support, and also if we used a petition or other method to encourage and get results from Microsoft, then we could probably get other app developers of our choosing to follow suit (like Whatsapp, Waze, Viber, etc).
A petition is the only thing I can think of right now that just needs names and details, but we may have a legal stand point with newer devices getting continued support based on how long the expected support is for other devices from microsoft (what is the newest windows phone released with wm10?), google, apple etc... all ideas welcome
Example: in Australia all devices are warranted for a year, if sold here or manufactured and sold here... and that year is extended and often because someone will argue it to a tribunal (part of the fair trading route to take up matters with a manufacturer or seller) and say something along the lines of "TV sets used to last 10-15 years, my $2000 TV broke after the 2nd year, and the manufacturer/shop wont replace it" usually I get replacements after the 1 year warranty and I hear about entire Cars etc getting replaced entirely... Maybe if hardware has to work for an expected time, does software (that cannot be changed) that comes with a device? what about 3rd party applications for that software?
Any lawyers in the US, UK, Australia or another country reading this?.. Could you get us a few years continued updates with a similar clause?
Any route that works may even lead to reviving Windows Mobile
I would love some serious feedback guys, but please, don't just comment "No, why would Microsoft bother" or "I see no reason to try and revive"
What I hope to see is ideas, us working together... let's see if we can do this, anyone who wants to try or contribute please just say "yes" if you have little time
[edit] By the way for people needing instagram, pandora/spotify, facebook etc, I have a list of applications and links to .appx's that run (not always without a crash) currently (24th June 2019) and cost nothing. [/edit]

I wouldn't mind this. Still use a Lumia 640. I guess were it to fail, there's always trying to put WoA on Android phones...

Hi OP
I read your post and this can be a fantastic idea, but i didnt see soo much interest from the guys here in WM10.
Im still with the doubt about Whatsapp working beyond 31-12-2019 and nobody answer anything about that in my post. So i think, if people dont get "moved" about the posibility of having phones without whatsapp since 1-1-2020.... i really think that people just doesnt care about this OS.

degoogling cubot kingkong mini2 should be easier than this

I'd love to be able to do this post as a video like Tom and Andrew did the "Noob" video - but I can't splash out the million that that video MUST have cost
- in May bought cubot kingkong mini2 while briefly back in UK
- got it to unlocked bootloader, adb and fastboot command availability
- phone still works, which must mean google still is in control
- gave phone to local portuguese "gadget shop" (their real name), to "can you finish de-googling this please?"
- "yeah, we will try"
- two months later collected it, because: they were still "trying"
- like myself, they were unable to get lineageOS or any other working
- well, i really just want as little google sniffing as is possible
- if you read enough articles, you know the mean ways google sniffs on phone owners!
- any geek here to rid this phone of much of george google orwell?
- either I send it, or you run me through commands via zoom/skype?
- sure, I reward you for your time
Easy for someone who HAS done the same successfully with his own cubot kingkong mini2.
But hard if you think you just follow the guides available online....
Happy Sunday!

plusdy88 said:
I'd love to be able to do this post as a video like Tom and Andrew did the "Noob" video - but I can't splash out the million that that video MUST have cost
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
@azrienoch produced the You are a Noob video.

@azrienoch produced the noob video?
Congratulations to him then. Awesome job IMHO!!
That's th ekind of video that pulls in 40 million forum members.
Mark my words, as always