[Motorola Droid 3] woodyman:
First I'd like to start off by saying this is in no way meant to start trouble with Motorola by any means, you guys are an amazing company that make some amazing products. However, as a fan of Motorola and a consumer here are my views and what I assume are the views of many other users. Both people who like root and prefer stock.

I'd like to start by thanking aggiechase37 who's post about Motorola opening up and supporting non-oem ROMs gave me the final push to make and post this thread. If you have not seen it please give it a quick read HERE, and second thanks to everyone who takes the time to read this, if you can please respond with your thoughts on how I feel, and if you agree please post to show your support, hopefully if the support network is large enough Motorola will see the importance and a real benefit to following through with some of what will be said. So tweet this link, give everyone a link to it, and have everyone you know register here at the Motorola support forums, so that they to can show Motorola how big of a community we are, and what we can do with them!

Now to get into the long part... enjoy!

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Thanks Motorola for the Droid 3, it was a great choice to continue the Droid series on your part, I loved my Droid 1, and still use it everyday, and I must say with all the neat features and upgrades you packed in really make it a true phone to marvel at. However, it does have it's shortcomings I'm sure you know more than all of us of all the little quirks in it, and I'm sure your working on some fixes for everyone so we can all really enjoy what this device has to offer.

So to start out, I have a few main points:

Customer Support

Developer side/Developer community side

Opening up a little

OEM supported ROMs

Lets start with Customer Support you guys have a great service record from me, I have never had any problems with contacting you about issues or anything, all of my experiences with you have been more than great, and for that I'd say you are doing a great job. However there are some people who don't get those same experiences, you guys have a wonderful network but there is always room for improvement, just keep that in mind for the future, the best survive and the average fail, so please be the best, because I'd rather have you not fail... The remain aspects of customer support are apart of the Developer Side and the Opening up a little sections below.

Next, the Developer side/Developer community side of things along with the Opening up a little. I understand the reason for you and others to not want the Developer community and to keep your phones and devices purely how you make them and nothing more, but this is old news, no one today wants this. Look at Apple, they are making suits out of their @$$. It's rather annoying to everyone, they are locked down, and since Android was introduced and your Droid 1 launched the Android world has exploded, and the philosophy behind Android is Open Source, so by you transistioning to more of the closed and 'locked' bootloader policy it's making you look more and more at what was the past in the mobile world, sure Apple is still here, but I assume that most of the people who have tried Android from Apple love the experience, and if Apple doesn't make some major changes they will simply become average, while Android becomes the best. So first some stats for you, as I'm sure you know already, but some may not, but there are over 500,000 new Android activations every single day! That's a big number, and it is rising. It has been proven look at just about every single Android device released, they are all rooted for the most part, whether its supported by the manufacturer or not. So root is going to happen no matter if you like it or not, but there are pros and cons to each way of looking at it.

so first the con side, root can be bad, it can ruin a brand new device and steal users info and all other kinds of nasty things, but root is also a nice tool, its good for all of us who want to truly be unlimted with our phones and devices, I'm not going to preach about all the benefits of root, if you want that I'm sure you can find thousands of other sites and blogs with that infomation, instead I'm going to focus on something root does for all of us. One of the root methods found in Android Froyo [2.2] was the 'rage against the cage' while it was an exploit that let all of us root our devices, it also was a way for true 'hackers' with ILL intentions to harm the people who had no idea and were innocent bystanders. Where as the people who found it simply had to use in order to root a device, they had no intentions of using it to steal identies and credit card infomation or anything else for that matter. But the 'hackers' who did are all piggy backing on everyone with the good intentions. With root not being endorsed it makes it easier for everyone to cause malware and harm to the Android name. Now if root was an exteneded option on Android rage against the cage may not have ever been found or used, because there wouldn't be nearly as many people looking for an exploit in the software. But with everyone looking those who want to use it to do bad things then their life is so much easier. They let us do the work and take the bullet and they get to take what they want. So think about it like this If root was an extra option from the manufacturer there wouldn't be nearly as many people trying to find a way to crack your software and make you look bad. Now root is still not something for everyone, but at least the option for it could and most likely would help Android and the manufacturers in the long haul.

Now onto the final point I have, OEM Supported ROMs I know its something you are first going to say will NEVER happen, but look at it like this, others have openly started to partially get to this stage, for example HTCDEV.com coming soon is the section on how to unlock bootloaders, that is good news and the developer community is happy with all that for now, as its a dynamic change in views which is wonderful news. Sony openly supports it as well, just check out this link Unlocking the boot loader | unlockbootloader.sonyericsson.com right on their site how to do it. Now I have to give you guys credit for trying you enabled an unlockable bootloader on the Xoom and now the Atrix, but I have yet to find details on how to do it from you. I have even called and asked various customer service people, most who had no idea what bootloader even was, and the few that did said that you don't support it and I should not do it, and will lose all warrenty from you. All of which I have no problem with. However it was known you supported the unlock the Xoom, otherwise you wouldn't have put it in, so why have your reps say no it's not supported and can't be done? So my first recomendation is to at least make a site or sub site about how to unlock the 'supported' devices witht he bootloaders, think about it, we don't have to come to you to get the info on how to do it, but if we can it makes you look better to all of us. Now onto the second part. like stated in that thread, with a few variations if you officially support unlockable bootloaders on all devices the developer community will love you and embrace it with open arms and your sales will sky rocket, everyone will buy Motorola over the others because of the new policy, but if you also say hey we support community developer ROMs on our devices not only will everyone love you, we will all pee our pants and praise the h**l out of you for ever! Now I'm sure you wondering how the h**l are we supposed to do that and make sure they all work like they should and deal with the head ache its more work than it will benefit. Well that all depends on how you go about it.

I've got plans all figured out on how you could do this seemlessly and easily with little headache on your part, other than making your devices unlockable. I would post it all, but if you are interested I wouldn't want someone like HTC or Sony stealing them and using them first. So I'm giving you Motorola first dibs on this. I also thought about you in the financial aspect so its not like you wouldn't get anything from this, you would also recieve a nice kickback from people using this service, so extra cash, developer and community wide spread peeing of the pants, love and praise for the ages could all be yours. I know even if you are interested it's not something that would be done next week or month, it would take some time to get it all together after we would iron out the details, but I think the investment on your part would go a long way. Hopefully everyone can show you this by supporting me in this thread. I will be posting links on twitter my twitter ID is @DroidConcepts, So if anyone would like to retweet please do, and tweet it yourself as well. I have also emailed this to Motorola, and within the next few weeks will present this to HTC, Sony, LG, and Google. If you or one of them is interested than great I would be more than thrilled to work with you, and I'm not even asking for any money, just a nice new device here and there.. So any feedback from you Motorola is very much welcomed and appreciated and I look forward to hopefully talking further about this, hopefully over the phone, or maybe a trip to the headquarters....

-Woody

I can be reached at the twitter username: @DroidConcepts or by email at woodyman@droidconcepts.com

I look forward to your response!

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I know this was long, so thank you all for following and reading, and PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE show your support so Motorola can not only see how important this is for all of us and the Android community but for them as well.

Twitter link: https://twitter.com/#!/DroidConcepts/status/102548734499495937

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I originally posted this here: https://supportforums.motorola.com/thread/55945

Please RT and support if you can!