[LG V30 Guides, News, & Discussion] atirox:
So, ChazzMatt, you started something... I just thought I'd share these details with you guys in hopes that it gets the ball rolling on something big.

I remember these boxes... My first experience with them was back in the days when Nokia was a huge name in phones. I had a Bell locked Nokia RM-579, which was the NA market 2730. Used BB5 SL3 security. Made it almost impossible to remove the USIM lock too... But from playing around with some of the software, uncovering factory service manuals, and playing with Nokia Diego, I found out that (at least, the Nokia factory boxes) those boxes interface with the phone in ways i only dream of. For all of Nokia's phones, they make special jig's that connect with contacts found on the PCB, typically under the SIM/USIM tray. To use them, you also need the special power adapter tool as well since the battery typically needs to be removed. I would guess that these boxes converted a standard serial port or USB port from serial signaling, to something similar (I think) to TTL or Transisitor-Transistor logic. Those boxes would allow you to make that phone your... you know what. You could repair any issues that had anything to do with software... Somehow obliterated the firmware? Fixed! Accidently flashed the wrong baseband and bricked your modem? No Problem! Need to reprogram baseband parameters? Piece of cake!

With the ushering in of the non removable battery, I assumed they'd go by the wayside... But apparently not... How they interface with the phone, I can only imagine... For TTL to work, you only need three pins... Your Tx, Rx and Ground. You could have the phone wired so that pin 4 of your micro USB port is hooked up to the Rx on the serial port of the CPU, then use pin 3 as your Tx and 5 is already your ground... Just saying. With USB-C there are a multitude of pins to choose from, and you only need three. Apparently they're doing something like this with those boxes because of the Franken-phones that have been reported... Which makes me wonder how those boxes worked...

I personally assume that those boxes also rewrite the security keys that tell the phone the software is valid. And at least in my mind, so long as the V30 you're flashing has the same hardware as another in terms of baseband and radio frequency support, then theoretically speaking you can reflash any portion, such as the modem firmware and paramaters as well as the system partition, you could theoretically speaking make a Canadian V30+ variant, or any other variant out there.

Now, the other thought I had comes from my days with HTC.... Ingenious people really... My last phone prior to the V30 was an HTC 10. Quick rundown on how it worked... HTC allowed unlocking the bootloader on all their phones except Verizon ones (for the 10 at least). Using their unlock would allow you to flash unsigned images to the System, User, and Recovery partitions for a custom firmware... This however left S-On, or Security On. The Sunshine team figured out how to set S-Off. This allowed you to flash whatever to wherever and change whatever you wanted. This meant you could change your general North American variant to a European or Asian variant and then back again if you so desired. You would change the model ID, then run the HTC firmware recovery executible on your PC, or boot into download mode on your phone with the firmware on your SD card, and presto, your phone would become that model as though it was that from day one. No signal issues, no battery drain issues, perfect software operation. I can vouch for this, as I converted my 2PS6500 (the NA variant), to a 2PS6200 (the EU variant) which worked flawlessly. I then realized I made it a European model and converted back to a North American one but needless to say, there were no problems at all... I don't know why the HTC 10 can be converted between variants with no baseband issues at all... I personally would think that when flashing a North American phone with European firmware it would cause the baseband to crash and cease working at all. That's what it does with all other phones I've accidently done it to...

I hope this helps to spur some of the brilliant minds on this forum to figure out if this is possible with the LG V30, or to help figure out the deeper darker secrets of this phone.