[Upgrading, Modifying and Unlocking] scott.t:
Hello and greetings to all, this is my first XDA post so please be gentle with me...

I recently started pondering one of the problem's I see a lot of people surfing these Forums suffering from, the dreaded "

Bricked Device

"

For whatever reason generally through no fault of your own, you may end up with a bad flash that results in your device becoming a worthless but very expensive paperweight. :crying:

Some examples of people suffering a bricked device:

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=2229416

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=2275035

http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=1926098

After doing a lot of research myself from suffering something similar I started to notice the general theme is always the same, people saying "wait for the device manufacturer to release the NVFlash!"

However in these instances shown above the RETAILER in question is ASUS and they are never going to release any kind of source, to any kind of NVFlash.. Because if they did, you have to reflect that would put them out of buisness, it's far more lucrative for the RETAILER (not the manufacturer) to just sit back and wait till you've got a problem with a shody update and then push selling you a new motherboard for your device. A new motherboard that in all likelyhood you dont even need and if you send in the device for repair that you would probably never even see being placed into the device in the first place when all they have to do is fix your broken bootloader.

Because the reality is, the Manufacturer being "TEXA'S INSTRUMENTS" have already made the full source of the NAND Flash to these devices readily available to the RETAILER and there partners in buisness.

It may surprise you and a lot of other people to learn that in fact you can already download The Official TEXAS INSTRUMENTS FLASH TOOL Ver: 1.6.0.0 from the following link: http://www.ti.com/tool/flashtool

Complete with the entire walkthrough guide available here: http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/Flash_v1.6_User_Guide

I know there are a lot of people out there on this forum that have been looking for this tool so I decided I would make my first post a link to the Bootloader Reflashing Tool for the majority of all ARM or OMAP based devices.

Please dont ask me how it work's, I'm happy to sit back and let those out there with more experiance in these matters take the plunge for themselves if it means in the long run we can all finally put Linux onto the Android Touch device with relative ease and recover from stupidness such as a Bricked device because of a crappy bootloader update where the RETAILER decides in there infinate wisdom to remove USB device support from the Jelly Bean Bootloader...

On the plus side, this means that in the near future when the right people get there hands on this tool (from the Manufacturer) we can all expect to see some far more funky flashing startup screens and some rad custom bootloaders :victory:

Thank you for taking the time to read my first post... :D

P.S: I also nearly forgot to mention this is the tool that LOCKS and UNLOCKS the Bootloader, so once people start making Bootflashes for there device to use with this tool then you wont see "Your Device is Unlocked" in your face everytime you turn on the device! (I wonder if that means we can recover our warranty, I can almost hear ASUS sqweak in protest!) :)