The T-Mobile G2 is one of the hottest handsets to land in the hands of Android fans over the past few weeks. That is quite an honor when you consider all the new Android handsets that were recently introduced at CTIA. All was milk and honey with the G2 until an insidious self-repair mechanism was discovered on the handset. For those that have not been following this story, the G2 has an annoying feature that will revert the handset back to stock as soon as it is successfully rooted. Root = reset = back to stock, a less than desirable situation for those that like to hack their handsets.
To help understand what is occurring, Android Guys reached out to T-Mobile for clarification. Rather than a jovial “you are mistaken” answer, Android Guys received this rather serious and discouraging official response about root access on this flagship Android handset,
Code-Level Modifications to the G2
As pioneers in Android-powered mobile devices, T-Mobile and HTC strive to support innovation. The T-Mobile G2 is a powerful and highly customizable Android-powered smartphone, which customers can personalize and make their own, from the look of their home screen to adding their favorite applications and more.The HTC software implementation on the G2 stores some components in read-only memory as a security measure to prevent key operating system software from becoming corrupted and rendering the device inoperable. There is a small subset of highly technical users who may want to modify and re-engineer their devices at the code level, known as “rooting,” but a side effect of HTC’s security measure is that these modifications are temporary and cannot be saved to permanent memory. As a result the original code is restored.
This statement clearly states that rooting will not be allowed on the G2 due to a security measure implemented by HTC. HTC has a reputation for being “hacker friendly” but this move and its recent cease and desist action against shipped ROMS suggests otherwise.
Thankfully, the G2 is an HTC phone underneath its T-Mobile branding and I am sure that xda-developers (and other Android hackers) are all over this handset trying to find a workaround that will let you root without automatically reverting your G2 handset back to stock. We will keep our ears to the ground and will let you know if any persistent root measures are developed.
[Via Android Guys]