yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] NegativeOne:
I've noticed that "what's the point" is often not really valid with dealing with corps like this. I was wondering about technological reasons.

I should imagine that the Dev version is completely unlocked. What would be the point of them signing the BL on a Dev device specifically made for unlocking a bootloader?

@flamus - It could conceivably be outside of VZW's hands. All that needs to be is, same base model, and LTE 4g sim card slot. Take existing SIM and go.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] skennelly:
I think we are all just trying to think optimistically. However, the DROID X had a completely unlocked dev edition and it was useless for DX owners. :(

*Sent from my Galaxy to yours through tapatalk
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] flamus:
Yeah. Sense they could just not sign the BL or skip the security check on a hardware level.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] Jugger naut:
Verizon is definitely monitoring these threads......After being screwed by Verizon and its locked bootloader BS this was posted on youtube http://youtu.be/cMpV2jJelso (Just replace the word Motorola with Verizon and it may relieve a little frustration :D) Anyway after taking the phone back to get another so it could be sold to someone who didn't even know what a bootloader was the poster was told the store had no Bionics in stock and to come back next week. This drug on for three weeks till the poster finally got his girlfriend to call in and act like she was interested in buying either an Iphone or a bionic and was assured there were quite a few of each in stock. The poster showed up at the store seconds after the call was made and was told there were no bionics in stock?????? After arguing with the store manager for almost half an hour (who was on the phone constantly with someone dictating his every reply) the poster demanded to talk to who ever was on the phone. The manager then disappeared into the back room and came out with a replacement Bioinic. He then apologized for everything that had happened and explained that everything that had been done had come from upper management and his job would have been in jeopardy if he had done anything. While doing the paper work the manager looked at the poster and smiled he said "football spike priceless"

A) Never underestimate how much of a ?#%%! Verizons upper management can be

B) Never include part of your name as your Youtube username and the city you live in

C) Never waste time on the guy stuck in the middle
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] pkd600:
I had thoughts like this as well. Is the community here large enough to really make an impact like this? What if we started a call drive for lots of people to keep calling verizon tech-support and asking for an unlocked bootloader. That would bog down Verizon's call-centers and create those annoyingly long waiting times when people call in for support. Things like that directly hit Verizon in the wallet, which is probably the only way we would ever be able to convince them that the locked bootloader was a bad idea.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] papi92:
So when is Adam buying his SIII to try and bypass the bootloader
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] Kipland007:
I read somewhere that he was getting it shipped overnight to him... yesterday. So presumably he will be getting it today. I also heard he will start his own thread on here with progress once he gets started though.

Hopefully soon.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] papi92:
I was jw no rush just exciting having him on this. Read a lot of amazing things about him
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] NegativeOne:
That makes no sense at all. Those people have reactive jobs... they work and get paid for X hours a day, their jobs don't have backlogs... VZW will just have less time to handle other issues, but it won't cost them extra money.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] newuser134:
If I remember the diagram link posted earlier somewhere on this thread, it showed that the phone used a hash function while booting up to calculate the hash of the loacked bootloader, then it would also decrypt the signature which was the encrypted hash, then compare the two together, if they matched, all was good. So there is no physical data stored anywhere on any phone that it checks, it only checks and compares data gathered in two different ways from the software (boot image or bootloader on the phone), so regardless of the signing keys used, if the hash generated at boot matched the encrypted-then-decrypted hash, the phone will boot, so theoretically the bootloader from the dev version should work on the locked version AS LONG AS all the hardware is the same, and I doubt Samsung went as far as making a different hardware version just for Verizon THIS quickly after the regular version release, even the red version on AT&T hasn't been released yet.

So assuming the hardware is exactly the same, even if flashing an alternative bootloader to the locked version hard-bricks the phone, if we were to get our hands on the dev version bootloader, since it's not technically "custom" and is still signed by Verizon or Samsung, it would most likely NOT brick the phone, I bet the dev version is the exact same as the regular version with a signed bootloader except the bootloader is set to s-off, or that it won't check for a signed boot.img and recovery.img, it comes with a system.img without rw permissions, but when they say "unlockable", they probably mean it will allow you to change the permissions to rw (root) and then flash your own boot.img or kernel, and even if it is set to s-on initially, I bet there will be an unlock tool available so you can turn it to s-off without having to mess with the bootloader signature, so theoretically since that one has an official, unbencrypted bootloader from Verizon or Samsung, I bet that bootloader will work on the locked phone just as well. Anyone else with more knowledge about this feel the same way as I do? Samsung knows there aren't THAT many people that want to unlock their phones, and if they sold over 9 million phones before it even came out, I doubt they're releasing the dev phone for making more money from it, it is their trick to give us the unlocked bootloader without actually going against Verizon and unlock this one. Anyone else feel the same?
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] pkd600:
Yes it will. Your only looking at direct effects. Verizon, like many large companies, pride themselves on offering a great customer experience and excellent customer service. Calling in and complaining does two important things:

A) Creates delays and waiting times at call centers. This tarnishes the whole customer satisfaction thing. When other users call about problems and get put on hold for 45 minutes, 99% of them have no idea why and just assume Verizon has poor customer service. Then they consider taking their business elsewhere. Minimizing waiting times at call centers is VERY important.

B) Creates dialog with those at the bottom with "reactive jobs" and those at the middle/top (managers/executives). The managers and executives want to know why the call centers are bogged down and how the situation can be rectified. The employees at the bottom start chatter about how many customers keep calling in to complain about the locked bootloaders.

These things get noticed. Poor customer service leads to decreasing revenues when customers leave. Honestly, I don't know if this would even work. It was a thought. The community here is large, but it might not large enough to really make an impact.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] NegativeOne:
It's not like this is the first time this has happened. People get pissed about every flagship phone with a locked bootloader. VZW knows what's to come. The upper management won't give two craps. They know it will die down in a month or so.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] pkd600:
This is exactly the type of mentality they rely on. It's the whole "I'm just one person, what could I possibly do". It's false, one person can make a world of change.

As for upper management, of course they will care if people put the pressure on them. Most upper managers and executives are quite sheltered away from these lower level issues and problems and in fact, probably don't even know much about the locked bootloaders at all. What they do care about though is that customer satisfaction remains high, because customer satisfaction transfers into the bottom line, and that's the stuff they actually care about.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] NegativeOne:
It's upper management who made the decision to lock them. Anyway. We're off topic. If you want to continue this discussion, feel free to start a new thread or PM me, but I won't continue here.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] Cruiserdude:
I think there's more than a little possibility that this dev edition may actually be a "master key" type device. You have to look at the politics of the whole thing. The press release from Samsung for the dev edition came out before the phone even officially launches due to the huge backlash they are obviously getting. If you read into the press release, its pretty obvious that Samsung is calling Verizon out. They mention specifically that ALL other versions come with an unlockable bootloader directly from their respective carriers, without explaining why the Verizon version does not. Obviously, they cannot straight up call them out, but they have made it pretty clear that it was a Verizon decision, not their own, if that wasn't obvious already. Samsung themselves must have agreed to lock the versions they sold to Verizon, but have no restrictions on selling the exact same device without the lock directly to customers. Verizon has to allow compatible devices on their network, its just that typically these devices are only sold by Verizon. But Samsung can sell a compatible device directly, and I see no way Verizon could legally block it if it has all the proper radios.

Samsung has nothing to lose if the Dev edition cracks all the other bootloaders, and Verizon couldn't blame them, as porting the bootloader is a hack and they can't guarantee the locked bootloader won't be hacked, even if its done with the help of their own product. So the dev community would be responsible, not Samsung. Sammy isn't Moto, they never wanted the device locked in the first place, as they seem to realize the value of helping the dev community out. They make their money whether they sell you a phone directly, or sell it to Verizon where you buy it, so they have no vested interest in getting you to buy their dev edition over the version sold in VZW stores, and they know that even most people who want an unlockable BL will be scared off by having to pay full price. So even if all they sell is a single dev edition, and that unlocks all the regular versions, it will boost sales of the phone through Verizon stores, which is good for them. I would imagine they would rather sell them to Verizon than to individuals anyway, as Verizon is likely to buy warehouse loads of them to stock up before the inevitable Apple lawsuit. So something that increases demand for our version will cause Verizon to stock up that much more from them, and both companies win.

Granted, that is all complete speculation, and a bit of wishful thinking. But my point is that Samsung isn't Moto, and has no vested interest in keeping these devices locked. There's really no reason they couldn't have just made this version to unlock the rest, and I don't see why Verizon would need to approve anything before they could release this, since its not technically an unlocking tool. Samsung's track record, the fact they understand that throwing the dev community a bone boosts overall sales, the language in the press release, and how quickly it came out (clearly in response to our outrage) all give me hope that this device is the key. I guess we'll find out soon enough.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] Kipland007:
God I hope this is the case.... sounds possible but I will be shattered if not.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] flamus:
@Crusuerdude +1 great post and hopefully it all works out.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] skennelly:
^ Makes sense and I hope you are right. The fact that this dev phone is announced prior to the phone's release date hopefully says a lot.

*Sent from my Galaxy to yours through tapatalk
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] NegativeOne:
I'm a big huge fan of Samsung right now; if this is the case, i'll continue to be a customer. If not, well, I won't throw away my $3k samsung 60 inch LCD TV, but I'm not getting another one. (It still has spotlighting around the corners, but I'm willing to forgive that).

When's the dev phone coming out?
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] cmg5461:
Fathom this..

Why would samsung offer an unlocked version of the phone.. for devs to use.. who will develop software for other phones? Rom development is HUGE. This would be a waste of samsung's time and money if the custom ROM's were useless on standard phones. Why? Devs would not buy, because they won't need it.

Translated: I'm willing to bet this phone is the master key to all of our phones.

We will get the unlocked bootloader and will be able to see what encryption is used.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] neyenlives:
Exactly! It would make no sense to ask developers to buy a phone to develop software on if it cannot be loaded on the bulk of the devices already in circulation.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] antp121:
Exactly. It's like Sammy way of saying fu vzw. I applaud them
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] mattydangerfox:
I hope this is the key as well, but didn't Motorola release dev phones that didn't allow developers to create anything used on the standard Moto models? Not anything substantial, anyway. Correct me if I'm wrong; I just can't think of anything.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] macdroid01:
so who is getting this developer phone that knows how to determine this, and WHEN!?! So excited about this. :cyclops:
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] antp121:
Yes but moto is hardware encrypted. Sammy is software :)
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] mattydangerfox:
That's true, but I was just commenting on the logic of using the dev phone to develop for all others. I seriously could see Samsung doing this (as opposed to Moto) , but I just wanted to play devil's advocate.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] antp121:
They are getting a dev phone to try and port the unlocked bl...
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] mattydangerfox:
I was commenting on this point. I know why we want it and what the possibilities could be :D
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] Kipland007:
They? Is this referring to the extra money raised for AdamOutler?
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] rothnic:
I'm not sure where you are getting this information. The Qualcomm SecureBoot functionality allows the PBL (need hardware access to, to modify), to verify the signature of the SBL (sbl, aboot, etc). The chipset has hardware functionality where you can select one of 32 public keys to use for verification. This allows the manufacturer to have 32 different product lines signed with different private keys to maintain product separation. It is very much possible that the development bootloaders won't work on the standard verizon phone.

This is a very possible outcome, but it is worth testing out. However, from my reading of the chipset functionality, I definitely would not volunteer to test it on mine. I'd suggest AdamOutler testing it out with his phone he'll have the ability to bring back from a brick.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] OldManJames:
You guys might want to slow down on how high your hopes are getting. I'd bet against the dev phones bootloader being our saving grace

Sent from my SCH-I535
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] LLStarks:
It'll be useful for research if Adam doesn't figure out the locked one first.

I suspect that once we get the dev phone, it won't be as simple as copying and pasting partitions. Certain devs want to try this, but without a debricking setup, is very dangerous.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] NegativeOne:
Most of the last two pages has been wild and uninformed speculation bridging on pure imagination.

"Dev" phones are just unlocked for hackers. It's a marketing thing. You know the modding community will continue to develop stuff like CM9 just for the DEV GSIII... Trying to divine the nature of the device based on possible reasons is just going to start rumors.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] mattydangerfox:
I heard the dev GSIII was going to paint my apartment. :)

I was just trying to point out that the existence of developer phones doesn't always mean anything for the carrier models.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] mattydangerfox:
Although I wouldn't complain if this was an exception
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] tonu42:
Someone that makes sense? He must be from rootzwiki, cause those are a dying breed on xda. But I agree with you 100%.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] TheHobbyist:
Wow. All of these posts are not development related at all. Take this stuff to a general thread or the irc channel. This thread is for devs to communicate to us and for us to share our experience with their software.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] piiman:
hmmmmm kind of like your post was right?
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] Loglud:
And your post also.

On a good note while i was digging around last night through the source code I did notice something really nice about the SGSIII that should make you all very happy. As the guys at epic have noted, the kexec flag is marked, meaning that kexec can crash the existing kernel with one of its own. Now what does that mean you may ask. I'm glad you asked.

For those of you that do not know there are 5 primary partitions that are contained on most phones and android devices:

X-Loader

This partition is usually the partition with the most basic hardware inits such as base gpio (buttons) and power toggles​

bootloader

This is the partition that contains what most of us as dev's hate the most, the dreaded boot signature, and boot instructions. When a bootloader is locked down it can be because of either a hardware lock, see OMAP4 processors Sec_On Pin, or a software lock, HTC's S-Off. When a bootloader is said to be locked, it can have two reasons for this, a signed header or an encryption algorithm on the entire partition.​

recovery

This partition is the one every one loves to see Clockwork Mod on. When not signed the partition can be flashed and used. ONE THING TO NOTE HERE IS THAT WHEN YOU USE THIS THREAD, YOU ARE SHOWING THAT THIS IS NOT SIGNED, Or the signature is not checked!!! This is intersting because it its self may show a security hole. The recovery might be what checks the CWM recovery flash images signature.​

boot

Perhaps one of the most interesting partitions on android devices. The boot partitions contains the binary for the kernel, and the inframs for the initilization of the os. This partition in this case has said to be signed, with a signature check in the bootloader that checks the validity of a boot partition, meaning there is no changing this.​

system

Contains most of the information on the OS. At this point all the framework and android settings get loaded. This partition is not signed, meaning we can modify to our will​

userdata

Contains the userdata, such as games and such​

Now one thing to note is that there are two initialzation points, the first of which occurs in the boot parition and the second of which is in the system's /etc/init files. One thing that i would be interested in seeing is if you were to use this place to load in a new partition or an SD OS. for example:

system1 partition init:

kexec -l /sdcard/kernel --reuse-cmdline --ramdisk=/sdcard/ramdisk

system2 partition can then have an init that mounts a block partition from the sdcard onto the system partition.

mount /dev/block/mmc1... /system

Now what does it all mean? This current method means that we can reload a compleatly new os onto a devices kernel and all. AKA Jelly Bean.

For those dev which hope to find a way to make it work i point you to the following posts:

2nd-init can be used for a second init after the first one to allow for kexec to be run (might not need this)

kexec for ARM I might have to modify some kernel memory allocation issues but it should work none the less with the flag.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] Senryo:
No, his was a reminder to stay on topic. Which I will reinforce.

Stay on topic guys. A mod has already cleaned this thread twice and warned of infractions the 2nd time around.

As for what the dev phone may do to help us... here's my thought on that option. I'm not sure it'll make much difference. I think the dev phone will open up more things, so that we can see the calls that are used during boot, see what the checks are specifically, and see if there's something we can do about it from the software side. I don't think we'll get far by just flashing the device with the dev phone boot images because we tried that with Sprint's, and it resulted in a brick. Sifting through the software and reading all the hardware checks via JTAG will eventually come to similar conclusions, just by different methods. If Adam has a phone in hand, I think that will lead to an answer sooner. The dev phone would only serve to clean up the code in the ROM, but that's assuming the devs, for some reason, write worse code than Samsung.

Correct me if I'm wrong =) and I hope that thought isn't off-topic.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] s197:
That was a great summary, thank you for that (and bringing this back on topic).
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] newuser134:
How do we get to and modify the PBL? Can it be done with jtag equipment? I have already learned how to disassemble my phone, and if it requires me to take it apart and learn how to use jtag, I am willing to do it. When I had an EVO 4G with Sprint, I rooted it to remove and add apps, but I never installed any custom ROMs or kernels. I probably will not install ROMs or custom kernels on this phone either, all I need is NAND backup capability and removal of bloatware, and we have already achieved that, but to show Verizon that they will never force us to do what they want, I am willing to take my phone apart, research and learn how to use jtag, and unlock my bootloader just to prove to Verizon that they will not keep me out of my own phone even if they try, because they don't have the right to. Anyway, my question is can the PBL be modified permanently if hardware access is gained, and how do you do that?
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] ExodusC:
Thanks for all that, Loglud. I'm familiar with this type of exploit for loading custom ROMs on previous devices I've owned, as they were Motorola devices.

It's just painful to know we won't see official CyanogenMod 9 support, because they won't acknowledge devices that don't have unlocked bootloaders, even if a method such is this would theoretically allow us to have 100% compatibility with, for example, the developer edition.

Still, I'm glad to know we have proof-of-concepts of this type of method working. My main hope is that all the awesome developers here will continue to support our device in the long run.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] rothnic:
I understand everything you are saying, but not really what you are getting at. How is what you are saying different from this: http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1760678

I don't think we will have any issues getting some form of AOSP on the phone with kexec, but the main thing slowing us down is that the device configs in CM for the S3 were private until yesterday. The vzw one is still private, but the sprint one should give us a good starting point.
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] newuser134:
Sorry for asking this, but assuming you're not referring to Cyanogen Mod, what is CM in your post quoted above?
[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III] Stam2000:
Forgive my stupidity but could it be possible to do what was done with HTC phones using an XTC clip? That's how we had originally gotten S-Off on the Incredible 2