[Galaxy Note 3 General] nicholaschum:
Well, Samsung can hide many things from the user such as KNOX Warranty Bit, but they can't get sued or issue compensation to people who were oblivious to it, they have the full right to make these changes to the device, especially if it first came out with the device. But on the S4 or the N2, it was introduced in a new bootloader update, so if you were aware of it, you could just skip the bootloader upgrade.

If they have allowed people to opt-out entirely from this function, that would cause a big hassle, what if I wanted to buy a second hand N3 with KNOX? It would be more complicated and you have to spend more time finding out if the second hand had KNOX enabled or removed. Even so, in general this route is unavailable, unless the KNOX was only issued on a specific model for enterprises, which would be more friendly to users, and corporate businessmen.

The fact that KNOX was used to base if the phone has a damaged warranty IS indeed poor, however, Odin shouldn't even be used at the first place by an average consumer, and Kies updates are highly unlikely to fail because of how it works, the MD5 is checked beforehand then the aboot.mbn is quickly pushed over and flashed on the phone itself, then it begins flashing the system, just like Odin, there aren't many Kies failures for the Note 3, and even if it does fail, you can just blame their software for bricking, but if you look at Google, you can barely see any results on failed Kies updates on the Note 3 due to some new features changed due to the MJ5 update for N3. There are only a limited amount of ways to cause the KNOX to trigger, that is to tamper with /system files, flashing a lower firmware, flashing a recovery, flashing a kernel or RDLV on unsupported firmwares. Most of all those reasons are due to Odin or deleting the KNOX app using root. The complex TrustZone secure boot ensures that Kies or other user-designed software SHOULD NOT tamper with the KNOX warranty when used...at all.

We have to get something clear, a computer is not a smartphone, a computer runs an entirely different architecture than a smartphone. First of all, anything you install to a computer can easily be wiped or reverted back to stock because everything is placed in a user-removable hardware (HDD), and most software runs the same on most computers because they use a relatively same processor configuration, either x86 or x64. A user-removable hardware, especially the HDD, can be replaced without damaging the warranty. This is what distinguishes a phone and a computer. You cannot change what is on the SoC if it gets damaged hardware wise, hence they added a 'check' to whenever you write something else to the chip, so that they know that you tampered with it. If you **** up the system on your computer, you could easily exchange the hard drive, and if it damaged the processor, get it changed, because processors have TurboBoost abilities whenever it needs to, and if it fried, it's the manufacturer's fault. Samsung have specific speeds the processor should be run at, maximum 2.3GHz, minimum 200MHz, it does not support 2.4GHz or 2.35GHz, etc. These cannot be changed, and if it did get damaged, they can easily check KNOX and/or system status to check whether it was a manufacturer defect.

Remember, A normal user should not be able to trip KNOX however they try. MD5 checksums on files are very important. If a user decides to lose power in the midst of updating, it's like updating a BIOS on your laptop, NEVER LOSE POWER.