Develop Bugs

IMEI CHECK.CO.UK i think i got em uncovered

hello lads, wish everybody is fine and doin well, ive been doing some intelligence and detective work around around the weired fact that IMEI check are the only guyz around with an unlock solution for the UNIVERSAL.
what i accumilated was kindda weired. according to information gathered from this website and specially from my favourite two super stars (BUZZ lightyear and Mchinegod) those legendary stars got it all fine lolll.
what i found is.
IMEI check has some source in HTC inovations in taiwan.
this source has probably supplied em classified Hardware Software information on how to unlock the Universal.
second speculation is that they also has a source that has unrestricted acess to the IMEI-Unlock code database. and he supplies them the assigned codes for some percentage from every unlock they make.
in both cases there is an insider who must ve supplied critical info on raming this device into the corners.
just for the info, i mentioned before that i had a weired problem and that is i wanted to unlock my MDA pro and T-mobile the netherlands told me that my IMEI doesnt exist in thier database or its not a T-mobile universal varient. however i managed my way in contacting someone in HTC and my honest source tracked my IMEI back to T-mobile the netherlands, i offered this source paying him money to gimme the unlock code but he refused in great honesty and said, the entire HTC cant supply me these codes not for free not for a fee, acoording to a business agreement with the T-Mobile. after a while, i got an email from T-Mobile telling me that they have my Unlock code right now and they are ready to supply me the code for like 70 euros or something,,
that shows that there are some leaks around between HTC and its business partners and, our freiends at IMEI check, has foudn some way to access these leaks and make some money.
wish i explained my theory
best regards
shady

why dont they offer then an online unlock... you send them imei number and money... they send you unlock code....
there is an other way they do it

€70 is much less than I was first asked for to have an Unlock code. It was more like €175, and that was for a little Samsung phone before T-Mobile took over One2One.
After you've been using the device for 1 year, your first year contract is finished. After this first year contract, the Universal belongs to you - NOT T-Mobile - and you are therefore legally entitled to do anything you want to with it, including unlocking it. T-Mobile CANNOT legally deny you this right - if they could, the central IMEI databases which disallow network access from stolen devices would simply disallow access to other networks from your IMEI.

thas exactly the point
asking for physical acess to the machine while still sayint that they will not open it and hat all stuff will be made through cable. sooo i think this provides perfect diversion.

Yeah, I think I said in an earlier post that the whole thing about 'sending your Universal in because physical access is required' is a load of bullcrap. It's as shady said, they have an insider at HTC which really makes me question the ethics of their dealings in the first place. I don't think I like these guys very much.

I think you forgot something US (imei-check):
We killed JFK, we are green and we come from Mars. Somewhere on other forum I saw that someone says that we like to collect the MDA PRO's. Yes we love to swim in them . We are aliens and we like that.
These declarations are as true as your conspiracy theory.
WE HAVE NO connection with HTC or any other manufacture or operator. We are just a bunch of programmers which like to work till late not to stay and see if anyone comes with anything for free for us.
This forum should be called Warez and freeware searchers since here all you can read is where to download such software and were to get such thing for free. Only a handful of people from here does developing, rest just a bunch of beggars (sorry for the previos spelling mistake, but hey I'm not a native speaker ).
Florin Mandache
Director of MIGsofT LTD (imei-check.co.uk)

Imei Check
I resent your comments regarding the rest of us no-hopers being 'baggers'.
If it wasn't for forums like this you guys wouldn't have any business cos the vast majority of us would have returned our pda phones due to lack of network support.
I have no qualms paying for unlocking but the networks take the mick by making you wait weeks for the unlock codes.
I dare say you guys have learnt from this forum and if you didnt charge 50 squid for a universal unlock code you would get more respect.
We all have a part to play mate so just remember this:
Without consumers(or baggers as you like to call us) you would have to latch onto somting else so give us a break !!!

i vote with jonboy. if u dont respect this forum why are you on it,,, i have no idea actually + if you think my claims are wrong, there is no need to insult all of us, my friend the way you answered is a hard proof that at least some of my claims have taken a byte at the neck of the truth.
anyway thanks for calling us baggers, but again as jonboy says, these baggers are the guyz making business for you and giving you money. so i wont call em baggers cuz if its not for them you would ve been a bagger.
you IMEI guyz are asking for astaggering 74 E to unlock well i have to mention that T-mobile unlocked my MDA pro for 70 euros which is still 4euros less than what you asked + i dotn have to send it all the way to another country or stuff.
again thanks dear brother for insulting the forum and its people.
best regards
shady

florin_m said:
I think you forgot something US (imei-check):
We killed JFK, we are green and we come from Mars. Somewhere on other forum I saw that someone says that we like to collect the MDA PRO's. Yes we love to swim in them . We are aliens and we like that.
These declarations are as true as your conspiracy theory.
WE HAVE NO connection with HTC or any other manufacture or operator. We are just a bunch of programmers which like to work till late not to stay and see if anyone comes with anything for free for us.
This forum should be called Warez and freeware searchers since here all you can read is where to download such software and were to get such thing for free. Only a handful of people from here does developing, rest just a bunch of beggars (sorry for the previos spelling mistake, but hey I'm not a native speaker ).
Florin Mandache
Director of MIGsofT LTD (imei-check.co.uk)
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Click to collapse
Florin, you are a fool.
'nuff said.

florin_m said:
I think you forgot something US (imei-check):
We killed JFK, we are green and we come from Mars. Somewhere on other forum I saw that someone says that we like to collect the MDA PRO's. Yes we love to swim in them . We are aliens and we like that.
Florin Mandache
Director of MIGsofT LTD (imei-check.co.uk)
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Click to collapse
Are you really who you say you are? If you are, you must be about ten years old because that statement is so immature, not fit for a grown mature adult.
BTW, where are all the warez on this site? I haven't seen any, or am I just blind, naive or both? We all visit this forum so that we can "hack" some the system parameters of our devices to enhance them and give them "personalities" we like or prefer to have.

actually, i think this florin is just a very erogant man, i still am feeling offended that he called us beggers. do everybody really has to be a developer. well mr wiered headless brainless, when u go to a Dr to take out the permenant disease out of your head do u become a begger, when you go to psyciatrist to take the wiered erogance of your soul do u become a begger, so if you think that when u go to a pro that well help you get rid of all of these wiered stuff in your miniature nature that will make you a bagger, then we might also be considered bagger. and by the way plz when u speak to people again try to get first some schooling second learn some ethics
again lads, just think deeply if our ideas on this forum about how IMEI check got thier hands on the unlocking codes are wrong, what would piss thier boss off, hehehe if someone said soemthing thas not right about me i wouldnt really start a fight on someones wrong calims, but if he uncovered my business then ill fight to recover it back, even by insulting people heheh
best regards
shady

shadykw said:
my friend the way you answered is a hard proof that at least some of my claims have taken a byte at the neck of the truth.
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you lost me here - why you are so sure you are right just because someone responded to you? No offence, but what you said is questionable in the first place... and i simply cannot understand what has the pricing got to do with this? it can be 100 euros - so what?? WHY are you so unhappy?
and generally he was right, most people do not produce anything new for the device, the max we do is copy-paste. Its the truth - why are you complaining - what have you done?
btw, i have got nothing to do with them, never used the service and do not know anyone there in any way... so that you will not say i am from their company too, just because i have a different opinion to yours. And it will not prove that you are 100% right - i hope this is clear at least.

im sorry guyz, i aint no dectaort here and ieve never said im right i just speculated some stuff, and to be honest as i said, i have no proof, its just speculation, and im not complaining about the price the market is open, u dont like someones service, take another. and i have no offense against anybody as well i havent attacked him, it was just someone that began attacking all the forum not me only. and again, im not so sure and im not running an invistigation here buddy, and im usually dotn speak so much here in the forum, but i just dotn wanna get kicked whenever im gonna say soemthing someone is gonan call me a bagger. and yes not everybody is doign something cuz so simply not everybody is a developer, does the fact that im in another field rather than IT or software development must make me shut up and not even talk.
well guyz im sorry anyway if i attacked any body or offended anyone without intentions
again im sorry for that
best regards
shady

igs said:
shadykw said:
my friend the way you answered is a hard proof that at least some of my claims have taken a byte at the neck of the truth.
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Click to collapse
you lost me here - why you are so sure you are right just because someone responded to you? No offence, but what you said is questionable in the first place... and i simply cannot understand what has the pricing got to do with this? it can be 100 euros - so what?? WHY are you so unhappy?
and generally he was right, most people do not produce anything new for the device, the max we do is copy-paste. Its the truth - why are you complaining - what have you done?
btw, i have got nothing to do with them, never used the service and do not know anyone there in any way... so that you will not say i am from their company too, just because i have a different opinion to yours. And it will not prove that you are 100% right - i hope this is clear at least.
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well said that man
The rest of you n00b-muppets need to shut the hell up. I've known Florin for quite some time now and back in the early days he was of great help to the Windows Mobile community and still is today. To be quite honest, he's right, the majority of you are all beggers. You all want something for nothing. Why should someone break their back to make YOU happy? What have YOU done for the community? Why should anyone spend their precious time helping YOU when all YOU do is leech information?
You want the "truth" behind imei-check? They spend alot of time working on devices to get them unlocked. Sometimes they kill the devices. Said devices cost money. Then when all the hard work is over and they start to earn a reward from their work, some jumped up little prick decides to reverse engineer the software and sell it on ebay. Thats why you have to send Universal's in to them.

I would like to react to this
that shows that there are some leaks around between HTC and its business partners and, our freiends at IMEI check, has foudn some way to access these leaks and make some money.
And please do not take this like "racism" or anything else.
HTC is a Taiwanese Company POINT ! In Taiwan China Korea (Much difficult in Japan) Money is the most important thing ! I was living Before in HK, and has often be oblige to deal with the mainland but the things is that Money can buy anything over there or allow you a lot of things. I had last year a "Weird" problem with a Taiwanese PC, Pocket PC, smartphone manufacturer. Well I was dealing for a potential of 300 Units (PC) and things were going well at the begning until... they bypass me and contacted my client to make business with them.
This is how things work there and will always work.
If you take for example Korea... nobody follow any contract, in Fact in business matter it works like this, you firs sign the contract, and then you discuss about the term of the contract. If for example you want to "punish" a Korean company you just has to force them to follow a contract (this is the worst punition for them)
Once again, there are no racism in my story I am living in Asia since a long time now, my wife is Korean/Japanese and I had the chance to live, before I met my wife, with a Chinese lady (Be quiet on this one ok )

Absolute bollocks :roll:
Did you even read the rest of the posts here or did you just read the first one and reply straight away?
How exactly does this show that there are leaks? Where's your proof? One dumbass hatches a theory and you take it as gospel :roll:

nedge2k said:
Absolute bollocks :roll:
Did you even read the rest of the posts here or did you just read the first one and reply straight away?
How exactly does this show that there are leaks? Where's your proof? One dumbass hatches a theory and you take it as gospel :roll:
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Just share experience, that all

hey guyz, again ive said there is no proof these are just speculations, and again im not a damn developer, as far as i remeber ihavent insulted anyone, would you plz choose a better language describing the people on this forum,, if you think that we are all beggars, fine dont be around us, but plz just stop this insulting. and why are my words so painfull, i just said what i though nothing more. specially that in various threads in this forum, some guyz managed to get the codes from HTC so im not totally inventing a story, i think prooving me wrong would be much easier that saying all of this, jesus why is insulting so easy

florin_m
A year ago i unlocked more than 20 phones (s100 and 9090) with imei-check's help so don't say we all beggars here.
Would there be an online service soon to unlock the MDA-PRO? Because sending your MDA to England isn't accepltable for everyone and i really need to use the service quite often.

@florin_m
hi florin,
i seriously doubt, that you've programmed an unlocker for Universal, just few days after it was released to the market.
Either you have/had:
1. engineering prototypes with certain bootloader functions opened
2. access to special service SD cards
3. bootloader passwords
4. access to IMEI/lock database
i'd say 2. or 4. is right
BTW, why do you call your company IMEI-CHECK?
Wouldn't it be more apropriate to call it unlock-programming ?
IMEI-CHECK is invoking a vision of checking IMEI against a list or such...
buzz

Still no free CID unlock????

If I missed a thread where this was solved then sorry, but I can't believe the only way to CID unlock the Dash is to pay some website 38 bucks for the "service". If they have the software to do it, then why don't we? The whole thing seems ridiculous...

dmtomlinson said:
If I missed a thread where this was solved then sorry, but I can't believe the only way to CID unlock the Dash is to pay some website 38 bucks for the "service". If they have the software to do it, then why don't we? The whole thing seems ridiculous...
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or, you could just pay the 41 bucks US and quit worrying about it. Like you, I waited and waited. Easier just to pay the cash and get on with your life instead of wasting a lot of time constantly checking for the free solution.
Since there is at least a solution, I'm sure nobody is working on it nearly as hard as if there were no solution available. IMEI-CHECK (as much as I don't particularly care for them personally) have permanently bricked a few devices to find out the HTC solution and are now in a position to charge whatever they feel they can get. Not a single other unlocking service can do it so it can't be all that easy.
My .02

Huh IMEI-CHECK now require you to email them a scanned photo id, either your passport or driving license after you have paid, and don't mention this before hand. So its no-longer an instant CID unlock. So if you have an S620 it might be worth skipping the current WM6 beta and waiting a bit longer for a free solution.
Dear IMEI-CHECK customer,
Due to the increase in paypal frauds we have to increase our verifications.
Because you are a new user we need to verify you.
How to become verified user:
1. Please email us a copy from a photographic id (passport or driving licence) which will match the same name and address used on the paypal account.
2. You are a previous customer who ordered at least 2 months ago without having any reversed payments from paypal
Regards,
IMEI-CHECK Team
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Click to collapse

They did verify me within an hour of me sending a photo of a gas bill so I guess thats pretty good. But even after CID unlocking the WM6 upgrade still says INVALID MODEL ID. So you need to follow the instructions here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=295845

What? Are the legally allowed to collect such information?

what is rediculous is you expecting someone to spend their time to break the lock so that you can flash your phone to a rom that wasnt originally designed for your phone when you bought it, and to make this solution easily available for you to access, and for them to do it for free. move out of home and join the real world. you should thank them for finding a solution and only charging a modest amount.
if you cant afford to put gas in your car, dont buy one

hondaguy said:
what is rediculous is you expecting someone to spend their time to break the lock so that you can flash your phone to a rom that wasnt originally designed for your phone when you bought it, and to make this solution easily available for you to access, and for them to do it for free. move out of home and join the real world. you should thank them for finding a solution and only charging a modest amount.
if you cant afford to put gas in your car, dont buy one
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I dont think it's rediculous since we got the Hermes free unlocker in this forum months ago already. Guess you would change your thinking when you know more in the forum, at least you will not be so confident as above.

athena1973 said:
I dont think it's rediculous since we got the Hermes free unlocker in this forum months ago already. Guess you would change your thinking when you know more in the forum, at least you will not be so confident as above.
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If you want a free unlocker, then make one yourself. If you don't know how, then don't complain that there isn't a free unlocker

merwin said:
If you want a free unlocker, then make one yourself. If you don't know how, then don't complain that there isn't a free unlocker
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Thats dumb and a waste of effort. The person who figured out the hermes CID unlock could easily apply the same technique to the excalibur -they just don't own one. I'm sure he would have worked with us if we all offered to donate the £20 we gave to imei-check or might have even done it for free had he known the situation with WM6 and CID. I think someone else profitting from our hobby of playing with different ROMs is totally wrong.

merwin said:
If you want a free unlocker, then make one yourself. If you don't know how, then don't complain that there isn't a free unlocker
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1, It is not me who 'complain' here.
2, I can image all the free applications you are using are purely made by you
3, Pls go through as much information as you can in this great forum before you try to challenge, I am tired to such kind of style.

IMEI-CHECK
I would be careful sending photo ID and other persoan information to a company that cannot protect their company from fraud. How can you ensure that your information will not compromised and used elsewhere.Just my 02. of caution.
indiekiduk said:
They did verify me within an hour of me sending a photo of a gas bill so I guess thats pretty good. But even after CID unlocking the WM6 upgrade still says INVALID MODEL ID. So you need to follow the instructions here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=295845
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Click to collapse

athena1973 said:
1, It is not me who 'complain' here.
2, I can image all the free applications you are using are purely made by you
3, Pls go through as much information as you can in this great forum before you try to challenge, I am tired to such kind of style.
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Click to collapse
Yeah. I'm a hypocrite!
Problem: HTC Tornado... I wanted to have the screen dim all the time
Solution: I wrote the completely free application, Tornado PowerControl
Problem: HTC Tornado/HTC Excalibur... I wanted to be able to overclock the CPU based on CPU usage
Solution: I added that feature to Tornado PowerControl
Problem: I wanted to convert the old nokia RTTTL ringtones into MIDI format., as well as to other monophonic phones
Solution: I wrote the completely free application Tones4All
http://merwin.bespin.org/t4a
Problem: I wanted to be able to convert said RTTTL ringtones into said formats without downloading any applications
Solution: I wrote the completely free web-application, Tones4All PHP
http://merwin.bespin.org/t4aphp
In conclusion:
Yeah... I do nothing to help the community, or to create solutions myself.

merwin said:
Yeah. I'm a hypocrite!
Problem: HTC Tornado... I wanted to have the screen dim all the time
Solution: I wrote the completely free application, Tornado PowerControl
Problem: HTC Tornado/HTC Excalibur... I wanted to be able to overclock the CPU based on CPU usage
Solution: I added that feature to Tornado PowerControl
Problem: I wanted to convert the old nokia RTTTL ringtones into MIDI format., as well as to other monophonic phones
Solution: I wrote the completely free application Tones4All
http://merwin.bespin.org/t4a
Problem: I wanted to be able to convert said RTTTL ringtones into said formats without downloading any applications
Solution: I wrote the completely free web-application, Tones4All PHP
http://merwin.bespin.org/t4aphp
In conclusion:
Yeah... I do nothing to help the community, or to create solutions myself.
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Click to collapse
well you owe it to every person that likes to install 3rd party software on their phone to write these programs.....lol
we all come to these forums because we like tinkering with our devices and trying different things. i am gratefull to all of the people with techinical knowledge that spend their time extracting roms and writing free programs that i can use. if i had the know-how i would do it to. what pisses me off is the people that think it is their god given right to be able to access this kind of info for free. i cant believe someone actually said that we should donate the money imei-check charges to the guy that wrote the free unlock program for the hermes instead of paying imei-check. either way you are paying for it. most hobbies cost money, whether it be the cost of materials or products (paints, canvas, models, remote controlled devices, etc) that are used while enjoying your hobby.
i am not saying that i wouldnt take advantage of a free solution, i am just saying it is rude to expect and demand one. i have paid for their services twice and it was well worth it both times as i was able to change roms on my qtek 8500 that was missing calls and now i am able to use the wm6 rom on a different device because someone was nice enough to give us access to it. i believe that some things are worth paying for, especially when it allows me to do something or use something that i enjoy. some of you believe that it is wrong to pay someone for their time and expertise and open threads demanding a free product while the rest of use enjoy our different roms. if you stand behind your beliefs i can respect that too, though

hondaguy said:
well you owe it to every person that likes to install 3rd party software on their phone to write these programs.....lol
we all come to these forums because we like tinkering with our devices and trying different things. i am gratefull to all of the people with techinical knowledge that spend their time extracting roms and writing free programs that i can use. if i had the know-how i would do it to. what pisses me off is the people that think it is their god given right to be able to access this kind of info for free. i cant believe someone actually said that we should donate the money imei-check charges to the guy that wrote the free unlock program for the hermes instead of paying imei-check. either way you are paying for it. most hobbies cost money, whether it be the cost of materials or products (paints, canvas, models, remote controlled devices, etc) that are used while enjoying your hobby.
i am not saying that i wouldnt take advantage of a free solution, i am just saying it is rude to expect and demand one. i have paid for their services twice and it was well worth it both times as i was able to change roms on my qtek 8500 that was missing calls and now i am able to use the wm6 rom on a different device because someone was nice enough to give us access to it. i believe that some things are worth paying for, especially when it allows me to do something or use something that i enjoy. some of you believe that it is wrong to pay someone for their time and expertise and open threads demanding a free product while the rest of use enjoy our different roms. if you stand behind your beliefs i can respect that too, though
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You said it better than I ever could have! I'm sure that imei-check bricked more than a couple phones making their solutions, and they deserve to be compensated for their hard work

hondaguy said:
i cant believe someone actually said that we should donate the money imei-check charges to the guy that wrote the free unlock program for the hermes instead of paying imei-check. either way you are paying for it. most hobbies cost money, whether it be the cost of materials or products (paints, canvas, models, remote controlled devices, etc) that are used while enjoying your hobby.
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Click to collapse
You misunderstood me. Only the people willing to fund the development pay, once its done the rest get it for free. This is a typical scenario for software development where the creator doesn't directly benefit from the creation of the software (he doesn't own the device in question), but with it comes the recognition of the one who was successful in making it. If the recognition isn't enough then thats when cash gets involved. From the beginning XDA Devs, and SPV Devs for that matter always sought their own implementation of things to further their skills and learn more about our devices and how they work. I don't see anything positive in supporting imei-check.
Heres something for you to read
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/shouldbefree.html
And like I said, he probably didn't even know there is the need for a CID unlocked for the Excalibur. AND, with your opinion that no-one on this forum should ever ask for anything I don't see how he would ever find out.

Eric S. Raymond writes in The Cathedral and the Bazaar: "Every good work of software starts by scratching a developer's personal itch."
So, I will try to cause some itching now:
Excalibur uses Samsung OneNAND chip, itsme developed a tool to access the non-OS sections of the chip, ie: where the CID area is stored.
The simlock data is stored on the first 0x20000 bytes of the gsmsection.
Wouldn't it be easy to dump CID & SimLock area before unlocking, pay for imei-check's unlocker and dump CID & SimLock area after unlocking and then compare?
If everyone unlocking provides this information, someone will come with a solution sooner or later...

Theres more about that here:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=285003&highlight=bkondisk
and it being used to unlock the StrTrk:
http://www.spv-developers.com/forum/showthread.php?t=6581
But it doesn't mention how they obtained the decryption key for the StrTrk or how to find it for the Excalibur. Unless I missed that.

Despite the stuff about decryption I dumped using bkondisk as you said and found my SuperCID (31 31 31 31 31 31 31) at 0x2a0dc
The command I used was:
prun bkondisk -v0 -b0 -n500 \firstblock.img
But that dumped more bytes than you need. Also since the CID among a bunch of other strings so I doubt this is the right place.

indiekiduk said:
You misunderstood me. Only the people willing to fund the development pay, once its done the rest get it for free. This is a typical scenario for software development where the creator doesn't directly benefit from the creation of the software (he doesn't own the device in question), but with it comes the recognition of the one who was successful in making it. If the recognition isn't enough then thats when cash gets involved. From the beginning XDA Devs, and SPV Devs for that matter always sought their own implementation of things to further their skills and learn more about our devices and how they work. I don't see anything positive in supporting imei-check.
Heres something for you to read
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/shouldbefree.html
And like I said, he probably didn't even know there is the need for a CID unlocked for the Excalibur. AND, with your opinion that no-one on this forum should ever ask for anything I don't see how he would ever find out.
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This is exactly what I was thinking. The reason why we come here is for sharing, applications, information etc. So far I don't see any superman can write whatever he needs by himself thus he could proudly shout to others who expect a freeware.
I am using Firefox, it is free, I never feel guity to expect the next more powerful version --even though I really could not write one by myself.

What a dope
Before you start patting yourself on the back, I have tried your so-called progam Tornado Power Control. I have decided to place it in my junk Mobile apps folder, soon to be deleted. And please quit whining..it is very unbecoming.
merwin said:
Yeah. I'm a hypocrite!
Problem: HTC Tornado... I wanted to have the screen dim all the time
Solution: I wrote the completely free application, Tornado PowerControl
Problem: HTC Tornado/HTC Excalibur... I wanted to be able to overclock the CPU based on CPU usage
Solution: I added that feature to Tornado PowerControl
Problem: I wanted to convert the old nokia RTTTL ringtones into MIDI format., as well as to other monophonic phones
Solution: I wrote the completely free application Tones4All
http://merwin.bespin.org/t4a
Problem: I wanted to be able to convert said RTTTL ringtones into said formats without downloading any applications
Solution: I wrote the completely free web-application, Tones4All PHP
http://merwin.bespin.org/t4aphp
In conclusion:
Yeah... I do nothing to help the community, or to create solutions myself.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

[S-Off Bounty Topic] Donate for S-Off (more than $ 1900 at 29 May)

As many of you may know, unlocking the One X with the tools on the HTCDev website doesn't give you full freedom on your own phone. You can flash new roms, but other things like radio's and hboots can't be flashed because the phone doesn't have S-Off. Also there is the issue of warranty, users with a HTCDev unlocked phone are having problems with getting warranty from HTC, also with issues that are not caused by unlocking or other software. There are a lot of devices where S-Off has been achieved, but sometimes it took a great amount of work and time. My last phone, the HTC Desire was the one of the first HTC's to ship with S-On and it took almost a year to find an exploit to gain S-Off. I don't know anything about what it takes to reach such a milestone but I did appreciate it very much. It finally allowed me to flash a different hboot so I could install a lot more applications on it. (see topic)
Long story short:
To speed up development it may be a good idea to give something back to the developers who spend a great amount of time in getting to that ultimate goal: S-Off.
The idea was proposed in the S-Off Discussion Topic and there some people, including myself, have already promised to donate an amount of money to
the first group or person who develops a safe, simple to use method to get S-Off.
Of course we don't want people keeping all their secrets for themselves, but that is a risk when you set a bounty on something. My hope is that people will be fair and if someone made a great contribution, they will be acknowledged by the group or person who made the final solution and maybe can share in the prize money. But something like that is difficult to catch in words beforehand, let's first wait what the results are. Then when the solution is found, I think we are all reasonable enough to find a satisfying solution if the situation calls for it.
Like stated, we are searching for a safe, simple to use solution. Safe and simple are words that are up to interpretation. What is simple for some maybe witchcraft to others. Again to compare it to my previous phone, the HTC Desire, what the Alpharev team (now Revolutionairy) has achieved is what I call a safe and simple solution. Then there is the issue of different bootloaders/radio's, there are a lot of different combinations and the One X is only a month old, so there will be a lot more combinations by the time we get S-Off. I think it is fair to only count solutions that work with the latest WWE OTA/RUU available at the time the solution is proposed, or the method must provide some way to downgrade to the needed software to let the method work.
I hope everyone who promises money will also pay if the solution is found, so only fill in the spreadsheet if you are really willing to donate to the developer who finds the solution. How we exactly are going to collect that money is debatable, but I think Paypal is the easiest solution. Collecting the money beforehand is impossible, because we don't know if the solution is ever found. I myself will pay $ 20 to the developer who finds the solution.
If you want to donate, fill in this spreadsheet
The minimum amount that you can donate is $ 5
Obviously there is no maximum, but for now the maximum via the spreadsheet is 50 dollars/euro's/pounds. If you want to donate more that's very nice, but then please send a PM to abc27. There were some fake entries with high amounts, so to prevent this, just send a PM so we know it's a genuine donation.
It is fine to post in this topic that you have donated, to keep this topic on top. But please do not post without filling in the spreadsheet, because I'm not going to check the entire topic for people who have posted that they'll donate but didn't fill in the spreadsheet.
If you want to see the people who've donated and see the total amount, click here
And I need to thank abc27 for creating the spreadsheet, which was a way better idea than counting the donations in this topic by hand

Donation The Hall of Fame:
Drefsab 20 British Pound
Evil-Dragon 20 British Pound
Johncore 20 British Pound
jmpmjmpm 20 British Pound
jonas2295 30 US Dollar
Orca74 25 Euro
nsane 50 US Dollar
preacher65 20 British Pound
dortok 20 British Pound
birkoffsjunk 20 British Pound
nikorette 30 US Dollar
doublecheese 100 US Dollar
Lainen73 25 Euro
bleary 20 British Pound
angusc 20 British Pound
salada2k 30 US Dollar
Frank G. 25 Euro
skylinegtrvspec 50 US Dollar
Jezzy11 20 British Pound
(minimal amount for getting in the Hall of Fame: 20 GBP / 25 Euro / 30 US Dollars, will try to update once a day)

US$ 20 from me

- reserved 2 -

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dHBheXJMMjZsQ2RWNmo3NEVwTUIxdlE6MQ#gid=0
Use this. It's a much more elegant method.
Edit: Fixed a small error in the spreadsheet. Should be working now.

Put me in for £20 for now, I may add more later if the exploit is still not found but this next month i've got a lot more outgoings than usual.

abc27 said:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dHBheXJMMjZsQ2RWNmo3NEVwTUIxdlE6MQ#gid=0
Use this. It's a much more elegant method.
Edit: Fixed a small error in the spreadsheet. Should be working now.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That is indeed quite a bit easier. I will update the first post with the spreadsheet.
edit: can you implement a feature that the minimum amount is 5 dollar/euro/pound?

wph said:
I hope everyone who promises money will also pay if the solution is found, so only post when you are really willing to donate to the developer who finds the solution. How we exactly are going to collect that money is debatable, but I think Paypal is the easiest solution. I will pay $ 20 to the developer who finds the solution.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I had posts like this several times on HD2 forums, so I will say it again. I will be very happy to donate for s-off about 20 euros, but my only problem is that I cant use Paypal from Serbia. So to do that I would need some other solution.

Already over €100 / $100 adjusted for exchange rates.

do you have a link to see the spreadsheet directly so we can see the totals?

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ArpcAQiUWv5XdHBheXJMMjZsQ2RWNmo3NEVwTUIxdlE#gid=0
There you go. It's at the confirmation page of the form too.

Thanks for start that thread mates.
20€ here.
P.D: I think that topic can be improved a little, lot of people here aren't native english speakers (like me) and the word "bounty" can be unknown for them so I propose a topic like:
"[S-OFF BOUNTY] Donate here to archive S-OFF"
Include "Donate", that is a more common word onto the topic, will improve the visibility of the thread.

Unfortunately the student budget limits me but I am happy donating £10

Put me down, for £10. Would do more but things pretty tight for a few months.
Sent from my HTC One X

$30 from me to the developer who achieves a safe way to get safety off
Sent from my HTC One X running LeeDroid eXtreme 5.0.0

clyder said:
I had posts like this several times on HD2 forums, so I will say it again. I will be very happy to donate for s-off about 20 euros, but my only problem is that I cant use Paypal from Serbia. So to do that I would need some other solution.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Any ideas on solutions that do work for people without access to PayPal?

wph said:
Any ideas on solutions that do work for people without access to PayPal?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Direct Debit wire?
Postal Cheque?
Cheque?
I'm sure it can all be sorted.

I'm assuming that whoever posted as Mike1986 with €600 was a troll? It was flagged and deleted anyway.

I can do $10, maybe more but I'll pledge $10 for now.

20 USD

How much does the ads-developers site make every year

Hello,
I just want to know since there was a set of prizes worth $4 million that I think was being sponsored by Samsung how much does XT a development make every year? Obviously you are under no obligation to tell me since it's probably a private firm or maybe ohm by a larger firm. I only ask because most of the money this page because the developers store their hard earned software here and the forms that relate to them and they publish the results of their builds to these forums.
If I don't have quite right please still free to correct me. Please send a no circumstances at defensively and trying to lose your cool. We live in the capitalistic country thank God at least for now until socialism tries to take over. Or continues to try to take over.
Great Darlas I just wondered if any of the money was shared with the developers make the site possible. Are any or all of the developers actually paid by the proceeds from the site? Is any type of compensation whatsoever to the developers for their hard work that make some money that is generated by ADS that the owners of the site profit from? With just for now a set of $4 million in prizes I would think that the amount of money that the site generates is astronomical. By the way where do I sign up for these prizes see in all the videos?
If the developers are not making any money from this, G is the way that they can be made possible?
This is a perfect site for making money because of all the ads in the fact that people come here almost every day for a new set of operating systems to put on the phone, and that the source code from one phone can be used for many phones in general, well at least 60 to 80% or more. Feel free to correct my figures.
Go
Btw your friends does not work very well with voice dictation
Especially with the program called Swype. Example if I
say period it's supposed to put a dot, if I say question mark it should put a?
I wouldn't complain except that you need your text boxes are extremely hard because we're you touch is not where the cursor goes. This makes editing impossible especially at the end of the line. As such ask for your patience because I'm highly disabled list nerve damage and it's very difficult to work your forums. It's not just with this keyboard software it is with others as well. Could you try to fix us as soon as possible

heartspeace said:
Hello,
I just want to know since there was a set of prizes worth $4 million that I think was being sponsored by Samsung how much does XT a development make every year? Obviously you are under no obligation to tell me since it's probably a private firm or maybe ohm by a larger firm. I only ask because most of the money this page because the developers store their hard earned software here and the forms that relate to them and they publish the results of their builds to these forums.
If I don't have quite right please still free to correct me. Please send a no circumstances at defensively and trying to lose your cool. We live in the capitalistic country thank God at least for now until socialism tries to take over. Or continues to try to take over.
Great Darlas I just wondered if any of the money was shared with the developers make the site possible. Are any or all of the developers actually paid by the proceeds from the site? Is any type of compensation whatsoever to the developers for their hard work that make some money that is generated by ADS that the owners of the site profit from? With just for now a set of $4 million in prizes I would think that the amount of money that the site generates is astronomical. By the way where do I sign up for these prizes see in all the videos?
If the developers are not making any money from this, G is the way that they can be made possible?
This is a perfect site for making money because of all the ads in the fact that people come here almost every day for a new set of operating systems to put on the phone, and that the source code from one phone can be used for many phones in general, well at least 60 to 80% or more. Feel free to correct my figures.
Go
Btw your friends does not work very well with voice dictation
Especially with the program called Swype. Example if I
say period it's supposed to put a dot, if I say question mark it should put a?
I wouldn't complain except that you need your text boxes are extremely hard because we're you touch is not where the cursor goes. This makes editing impossible especially at the end of the line. As such ask for your patience because I'm highly disabled list nerve damage and it's very difficult to work your forums. It's not just with this keyboard software it is with others as well. Could you try to fix us as soon as possible
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think you have failed to understand exactly WHY this site exists. Tip, it is not for the money....

mf2112 said:
I think you have failed to understand exactly WHY this site exists. Tip, it is not for the money....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I do understand why this site exists period and I wouldn't be surprised that you actually make a lot of money orange that you barely break even . I am just curious to to know whether you make a lot of money are you barely breakeven. I only ask us because there was a set of $4 million in prizes being given away . Maybe that was just to third parties companies generosity. Does it hurt at all to ask these questions? /Can /will you answer them?
Also can you answer how I can sign up for the prizes?

heartspeace said:
I do understand why this site exists period and I wouldn't be surprised that you actually make a lot of money orange that you barely break even . I am just curious to to know whether you make a lot of money are you barely breakeven. I only ask us because there was a set of $4 million in prizes being given away . Maybe that was just to third parties companies generosity. Does it hurt at all to ask these questions? /Can /will you answer them?
Also can you answer how I can sign up for the prizes?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Never heard about the prize so I am not sure. It doesn't hurt to ask although I am not sure this is the proper forum for it, and I am not sure why you felt the need to inject a political message into it, that tends to be frowned upon here as the site is about mobile phones and mobile phones aren't political.
As for your other questions, you might PM svetius. You certainly won't get an answer about finances posted back on a public thread, and frankly I doubt you will get an answer to it at all since you don't need to know it. I apologize if that seems rude, but this is a business like any other and is under no obligation or duty to show anybody anything with regards to finances except the owners.

mf2112 said:
Never heard about the prize so I am not sure. It doesn't hurt to ask although I am not sure this is the proper forum for it, and I am not sure why you felt the need to inject a political message into it, that tends to be frowned upon here as the site is about mobile phones and mobile phones aren't political.
As for your other questions, you might PM svetius. You certainly won't get an answer about finances posted back on a public thread, and frankly I doubt you will get an answer to it at all since you don't need to know it. I apologize if that seems rude, but this is a business like any other and is under no obligation or duty to show anybody anything with regards to finances except the owners.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Those are the only two questions I'm really asking. Is this a for profit business? And that's a subquestion of that I wondered if the developers work for this business or if they work as a volunteer project? I know that if this is a for profit business it would not exist except for the developers putting up their ROMs and other support here for the many users. I think it would be good if it is a for-profit business Khala that perhaps the business gives some support monetarily to the developers. Is there is a 4 1/2 million dollar set of prizes as it said in the videos, I would love to be signed up for that and I wonder where I can?
I just think sites that are built upon the developers backs or other people's efforts should give back to those people more then just hosting in their software if and only if the company is profitable. On this page alone I see there are three ads. The other side is if this is a business and it needs help because it's not profitable and we can help it then maybe we can give donations? As this is a very valuable resource it to be nice to know what condition it send financially so it
doesn't fail to disappear like so many thousands of other business over the last few years.
HP

mf2112 said:
I think you have failed to understand exactly WHY this site exists. Tip, it is not for the money....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I agree.

I agree too
Sent from my MT11i using xda premium

The prizes in that competition are provided entirely by Samsung.
If it's the same competition I think you are referring to, you would need to publish an app on Samsung's store, and the most popular apps on a given date win...
Regarding developers, we have introduced a program recently to give a small number of developers phones and tablets to develop with. This is still a relatively small program, but I'm sure with time it will expand a bit, in a controlled manner

heartspeace said:
Hello,
I just want to know since there was a set of prizes worth $4 million that I think was being sponsored by Samsung how much does XT a development make every year? Obviously you are under no obligation to tell me since it's probably a private firm or maybe ohm by a larger firm. I only ask because most of the money this page because the developers store their hard earned software here and the forms that relate to them and they publish the results of their builds to these forums.
If I don't have quite right please still free to correct me. Please send a no circumstances at defensively and trying to lose your cool. We live in the capitalistic country thank God at least for now until socialism tries to take over. Or continues to try to take over.
Great Darlas I just wondered if any of the money was shared with the developers make the site possible. Are any or all of the developers actually paid by the proceeds from the site? Is any type of compensation whatsoever to the developers for their hard work that make some money that is generated by ADS that the owners of the site profit from? With just for now a set of $4 million in prizes I would think that the amount of money that the site generates is astronomical. By the way where do I sign up for these prizes see in all the videos?
If the developers are not making any money from this, G is the way that they can be made possible?
This is a perfect site for making money because of all the ads in the fact that people come here almost every day for a new set of operating systems to put on the phone, and that the source code from one phone can be used for many phones in general, well at least 60 to 80% or more. Feel free to correct my figures.
Go
Btw your friends does not work very well with voice dictation
Especially with the program called Swype. Example if I
say period it's supposed to put a dot, if I say question mark it should put a?
I wouldn't complain except that you need your text boxes are extremely hard because we're you touch is not where the cursor goes. This makes editing impossible especially at the end of the line. As such ask for your patience because I'm highly disabled list nerve damage and it's very difficult to work your forums. It's not just with this keyboard software it is with others as well. Could you try to fix us as soon as possible
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
BTW for typing via swype, have you considered trying the XDA app or Tapatalk? Much easier to use, as it's a native android app...
For the punctuation, I think that is a restriction of the voice to text software used within Swype, which I think is provided by Nuance.

I suggest you start typing your posts like everyone else if possible. Your voice dictated ones are horrible. They remind me of the kind of garbled messages spammers send or the garbage that results when lazy spammers scrap content and put it through an article spinner. Either that or get some decent voice dictation software.

BretonGirl said:
I suggest you start typing your posts like everyone else if possible. Your voice dictated ones are horrible. They remind me of the kind of garbled messages spammers send or the garbage that results when lazy spammers scrap content and put it through an article spinner. Either that or get some decent voice dictation software.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm curious were you in a bad mood when you posted that, or were you just lacking enough charity to have any responsible foresight?
I use voice dictation because I had a bad operation which left me with severe nerve damage and muscle damage and muscle atrophy throughout my upper body; I am in moderate to severe pain about 24 hours a day even while undergoing pain management treatment. I used to run a worldwide software development organization with world-class developers for governmental programs. Forgive me if voice dictation is being my arms for now, and most likely rest my life.
But please if you can recommend voice dictation software better than Nuance on Android please do tell me about it. Google is still a large leap behind. I do not know of any others, do you? Perhaps this is a calling for you to write one to help many without the ability to type. What languages do you know? How proficient are you at programing? What is your background and education? I'm sure I can touch base with some of my old research buddies in the government who would love your donated time for such a project, if you have any programming skills or development background or even research background in linguistics, speech algorithms, or other related technologies.
hp

I suspect she is a teenager. There are quite a few here.
I don't know of any other voice dictation software, sorry. Never had a good opportunity to use it so I never investigated any of the available packages out there personally beyond a guick google once. Actually your posts were not any worse than many of the ones I read by the teenagers here with their abbreviations. :-/

Why cant we s-off without that app? No Bashing! Just a Question

So its been a while since i had an htc.
The last one i had was so easy to root s-off super cid.
when it wasnt, i always loved the challenge.
If i recall you had to extract a file called mmcblk0p4 and modify it. Or just modify it with a hex editor right on your phone and place it back with a root explorer. actually i still have it in an old folder.
What is the problem here? How did htc fix that exploit? Why cant we figure it out?
Not that i dont appreciate an awesome app that does it for you. But i always loved doing it myself.
Not trying to bash or start a debate over moralities. Just an interesting and informative convo.

where there is a will there is a way!

Well actually I guess because the people who were discovering the exploits actually created sunshine and are distributing methods via this app only.

There's nobody that can use the app to figure out how the actual app does it?
Maybe I am thinking its more simple than it is. I know i sure as hell cant.

myphonesbetter said:
There's nobody that can use the app to figure out how the actual app does it?
Maybe I am thinking its more simple than it is. I know i sure as hell cant.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's an old discussion, but if you look up the Sunshine app thread you'll come across the explanation of why they decided to charge and what went into achieving S-OFF. Short answer: it's really hard.

Been about a year since i logged in apparently.
computerslayer said:
It's an old discussion, but if you look up the Sunshine app thread you'll come across the explanation of why they decided to charge and what went into achieving S-OFF. Short answer: it's really hard.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That is the perfect answer. it really hard.
its because some people are lazy and others are greedy thats why.
Honestly paying for an app to just do everything takes the fun out of it. Im not a coder or anything but most of what i have learned is from flashing phones and modding video games lol. Just dont have quite enough of an obsessive personality to be a full on mr robot.
I can see making a payed version that does the work for you and takes away the risk of bricking your phone. for the people who just want want want.
This im sure would make more than enough to cover costs. especially if the dev was in india or something.
Used phones with cracked screens or broken headphone jacks are a dime a dozen.
Or how about someone just reverse engineer the sunshine app. Or FIND AN EXPLOIT. and release it to the forums.
FAIR GAME right?
This team spent 100s of dollars and 100s accumulative hours to exploit something that costs 100's of millions of dollars and who knows how many hours to create and distribute.
The development thread seems so commercial now. Wouldn't be surprised if most of them were making money data mining selling info to advertisers.
Isnt that where the real money is these days.
I cant pay for it for the same reason i cant pay money for the better gun in a video game. Just pay to win. doesn't feel the same.
Also android is open source and free.
It blows my mind that only this one group of people can figure out how to do this.
Seems like the fact that there is money to be made would encourage more guy fawkes' to create some friendly compotish.
Plus if more "exploiters" could start from there then eventually it could end up so much more refined. Just like everything else on these forums.
Anyways sunshine is free and along with water gives life to the entire planet. I think they got the name wrong.
walmart mod group. buy out all other "developers" (hackers) and charge the people that keep this whole thing going.
I can appreciate and even envy the business sense and intelligence it takes to do what they do. cant say if i was in their shoes i wouldnt do everything i could to monetize it. But its just sad to the the community go down the toilet. This forum used to be so much more exciting. it seems like it used to create developers now you just pick a rom and move on. mother ****ing sad face.

You do realize, if it was trivial and cheap to do, the dozens of people who come complain would have done it sometime in the last three years.
We even publish detailed write ups, and source code snippets to parts of sunshine, including vulnerabilities and exploits. We get people 90% of the way there.
Even with use giving away critical parts of the project, people still don't release free versions. Why? because it isn't easy, and it isn't cheap. You are going to ruin a lot of phones along the way, and your work on the "cheap ones" doesn't apply to the new expensive ones, you are starting over from scratch with each generation, often with each firmware release.
We don't sell data to anyone, no ads on our sites or apps, even the numerous free apps like weaksauce and depixel8 have no ads, nor do their associated websites (not counting the thieves that rehost them with ads, thats not us).
We bought out no one, we pay no one to develop for us. We reinvest funds into more phone and equipment, sometimes some booze, and often into charity. Even google called us out for our charity work on their VRP blog.
Good luck on your endeavors, I encourage you to make a free alternative, to invest the money and time we did out of your own pocket. Neither of us are educated in security or computer scienece, we picked it up along the way when trying to hack on phones. No excuses! Anyone complaining should be working on an alternative. Don't expect much donations, or if you put a price on it don't expect much money from it, it isn't there.
myphonesbetter said:
Been about a year since i logged in apparently.
That is the perfect answer. it really hard.
its because some people are lazy and others are greedy thats why.
Honestly paying for an app to just do everything takes the fun out of it. Im not a coder or anything but most of what i have learned is from flashing phones and modding video games lol. Just dont have quite enough of an obsessive personality to be a full on mr robot.
I can see making a payed version that does the work for you and takes away the risk of bricking your phone. for the people who just want want want.
This im sure would make more than enough to cover costs. especially if the dev was in india or something.
Used phones with cracked screens or broken headphone jacks are a dime a dozen.
Or how about someone just reverse engineer the sunshine app. Or FIND AN EXPLOIT. and release it to the forums.
FAIR GAME right?
This team spent 100s of dollars and 100s accumulative hours to exploit something that costs 100's of millions of dollars and who knows how many hours to create and distribute.
The development thread seems so commercial now. Wouldn't be surprised if most of them were making money data mining selling info to advertisers.
Isnt that where the real money is these days.
I cant pay for it for the same reason i cant pay money for the better gun in a video game. Just pay to win. doesn't feel the same.
Also android is open source and free.
It blows my mind that only this one group of people can figure out how to do this.
Seems like the fact that there is money to be made would encourage more guy fawkes' to create some friendly compotish.
Plus if more "exploiters" could start from there then eventually it could end up so much more refined. Just like everything else on these forums.
Anyways sunshine is free and along with water gives life to the entire planet. I think they got the name wrong.
walmart mod group. buy out all other "developers" (hackers) and charge the people that keep this whole thing going.
I can appreciate and even envy the business sense and intelligence it takes to do what they do. cant say if i was in their shoes i wouldnt do everything i could to monetize it. But its just sad to the the community go down the toilet. This forum used to be so much more exciting. it seems like it used to create developers now you just pick a rom and move on. mother ****ing sad face.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

Sunshine has been about since the HTC One M7 days, I paid and used it on my M7 and M8 and about to use it on 2 x M9's, me personally, I really dont have a problem paying the $25 for it to do what it does, personally I think its dead cheap for what these guys did to get around HTCs so called fixes.
Now on to why it even costs in the first place, imagine whilst developing an app to this level, how many phones you had to buy and destroy along the way, this app isnt just for pretty much every HTC made since the M7, of course you are going to want some of it back, if you didnt, you'd be bankrupt in 2 days, with every release of firmware or every new phone release, the app needs to be modified and updated, Hell, you pay $200 for Microsoft Windows for the same reasons.

jcase said:
You do realize, if it was trivial and cheap to do, the dozens of people who come complain would have done it sometime in the last three years.
We even publish detailed write ups, and source code snippets to parts of sunshine, including vulnerabilities and exploits. We get people 90% of the way there.
Even with use giving away critical parts of the project, people still don't release free versions. Why? because it isn't easy, and it isn't cheap. You are going to ruin a lot of phones along the way, and your work on the "cheap ones" doesn't apply to the new expensive ones, you are starting over from scratch with each generation, often with each firmware release.
We don't sell data to anyone, no ads on our sites or apps, even the numerous free apps like weaksauce and depixel8 have no ads, nor do their associated websites (not counting the thieves that rehost them with ads, thats not us).
We bought out no one, we pay no one to develop for us. We reinvest funds into more phone and equipment, sometimes some booze, and often into charity. Even google called us out for our charity work on their VRP blog.
Good luck on your endeavors, I encourage you to make a free alternative, to invest the money and time we did out of your own pocket. Neither of us are educated in security or computer scienece, we picked it up along the way when trying to hack on phones. No excuses! Anyone complaining should be working on an alternative. Don't expect much donations, or if you put a price on it don't expect much money from it, it isn't there.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thanks for the response. It would be nice to get a response on the actual q i posted lol. (different thread)
I guess its easier when its trivial.
Its good to hear you guys donate some of it. and that youve release the majority of the code. i guess people are just lazy.
Honestly you dont need s-off. The main reason i would want it is incase i need to go back to stock for warranty reasons. In which case the money would be worth it. still more fun do follow a write and learn about what i am doing in the process.
As far as data mining im talking about some of the more popular roms and apps out there. not just in the htc forum. Just a thought. why wouldn't they.
And the question isn't why its $25. I get that. It is totally worth it. Its so easy to use. I used to spend hours troubleshooting to get my phones s-off'd and running smooth on all the roms. now you can do it in seconds. these days i just pick one that works better than stock and stick with it. seems like stock updates kill the phones now.
Its why hasn't anybody exploited sunshine or made a completely different app that does the same thing. Or even better a write up on how to do it yourself.
To say its expensive on the older phones is a stretch and to say its too hard is eh.
I couldn't do it but you guys did (very quickly). so that means there is some 8 year old that could do it in his sleep.
And to say its out of pocket is a stretch when its a payed service. Most business endeavors or charities require some sort of investment.
And you can make a large chunk of the money back selling a bricked phone for parts. especially if its the latest model.
Why don't you guys release the code for free when you once you pay yourselves back. If more people started out where you left off (much like how you guys started) then the next generation would take no effort. If there were a thousand people testing and communicating and working together then the cost and time would be nothing.
There is nowhere to start anymore. there used to be all kinds of write ups that forced you to learn more about how everything works. then naturally some people figure out what they are actually doing are inspired to improve on it (sunshine for example). but now its just seems so overwhelming. Like nobody is there to help out when you get stuck.
I guess it dragged a little deeper than i wanted. But every time someone asks these questions it turns into insult matches or just the copy pasted comment of i don't think $25 is too much. if you cant afford that then blah blah . then all credibility is lost and people are persuaded to think as the majority of commenters think. Mouthbreathers will be mouthbreathers. But they are the ones that make this consumer based economy function properly.
Again, not trying to bash the people that put their time into this. More so trying to spark thoughts in people's minds who would normally just follow suit. Highlight different perspectives.

myphonesbetter said:
Its why hasn't anybody exploited sunshine or made a completely different app that does the same thing. Or even better a write up on how to do it yourself.
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Many people have tried to crack sunshine, I'm unaware of anyone being successful. It is actually pretty funny seeing how many hours people put into cracking SunShine, it is an worthless endeavor considering that most of the calculations are done server side, cracking the app doesn't get you anything as it is done server side. They would need to hack our WAN facing server, proxy through it and then hack the "offline" box we do the work on. This would be a felony on many levels. I like to think most people are honest, and don't go committing felony violations of CFAA over the fact that an app isn't free.
As far as a different app, it is hard, it is expensive, and most people with the skillset or drive, are tackling bigger problems.
Far as a writeup, we make plenty of them, where are your technical write ups?
myphonesbetter said:
To say its expensive on the older phones is a stretch and to say its too hard is eh.
I couldn't do it but you guys did (very quickly). so that means there is some 8 year old that could do it in his sleep.
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Click to collapse
None of this is "very fast", it all has years of research behind it. Research we did, we put the time and money into. Yes even on old phones it is expensive, the software we use (IDA Pro and Jeb) alone are $1000s a year in licensing fees. Considering each person needs a license, its very costly. And yes, we are not thieves, we actually have licenses in our names. Many models we have spent money on, never sell more than a couple licenses. So the more popular models also fund the work done on models that don't make any sales. Sure we could just not add support for oddball models sold in only one country, but what fun is that.
myphonesbetter said:
And to say its out of pocket is a stretch when its a payed service. Most business endeavors or charities require some sort of investment.
And you can make a large chunk of the money back selling a bricked phone for parts. especially if its the latest model.
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The investment would be the out of pocket part, money to start projects doesnt just magically show up. New HTC u11 is what $600 bucks? One we fried the soc and mmc on? What $50 if we are selling it honestly (cause that thing wont EVER be repaired, and screen is about the only part re-usable)? Plus we run the risk of our debug builds leaking if someone is able to extract memory from the device, no thanks, not reselling a burned phone for $50(or even $300) and risk losing everything we have worked on for the last few years.
myphonesbetter said:
Why don't you guys release the code for free when you once you pay yourselves back. If more people started out where you left off (much like how you guys started) then the next generation would take no effort. If there were a thousand people testing and communicating and working together then the cost and time would be nothing.
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We have released plenty of free training material, white papers and example source code for people to start off of. Those resources would be much better than starting off with SunShine source code. As we have said, when SunShine is done, we will open source it. Considering no one does anything with what we do release, I have doubts anyone would do anything with everything we don't release. We were sure we would get 0 sales on Droid Turbo after publishing that write up, we thought someone would have a free exploit written that day. It has been years, nothing so far.
myphonesbetter said:
If there were a thousand people testing and communicating and working together then the cost and time would be nothing.
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LOL. People don't contribute to most mobile OSS projects, go look at copperhead, look at their commit history. I'm even guilty of it, my contributions besides projects I helped started are minimal (even my commits to AOSP are few).
myphonesbetter said:
There is nowhere to start anymore. there used to be all kinds of write ups that forced you to learn more about how everything works. then naturally some people figure out what they are actually doing are inspired to improve on it (sunshine for example). but now its just seems so overwhelming. Like nobody is there to help out when you get stuck.
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All of our write ups are still up, and we still publish more each year, I don't know what the heck you are going on about here. Please take the time to look rather than just make such claims.
myphonesbetter said:
Again, not trying to bash the people that put their time into this. More so trying to spark thoughts in people's minds who would normally just follow suit. Highlight different perspectives.
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Again, feel free to use the free resources we have and continue to provide to the community for free to build your own. We DO NOT discourage people from doing so, we actively encourage it by publishing a fair bit of our work for free. I even traveled on my own dime (not sunshine money, not someone else's money, but from my paycheck) without reimbursement to Las Vegas with Tim Strazzere and Caleb Fenton to provide trading FOR FREE. We over filled the maximum occupancy for the room. We were not allowed to take any more people.
In reality, and not to be insulting, it is pretty obvious you didn't properly research all of this.