[Droid Eris Android Development] bftb0:
Note that this ROM does not replace the bootloader - so, if you have the engineering bootloader on your phone, you might just want to flash the MR2 RUU (or the corresponding PB00IMG.zip) immediately after booting this (no point in doing the OTA twice). Or, for folks that know their way around fastboot, if they have the S-OFF bootloader, there is always the option to put an S-ON bootloader back onto the phone thusly[SIZE=+1]**[/SIZE]:

fastboot flash hboot hboot_7501a_1.47.0000_091023.nb0

I did things this way (no replacement of the bootloader) because most of the folks that did their Eris rooting the "old school" way - and have the Engineering bootloader on their phone (1.49.2000 S-OFF) are comfortable using adb or fastboot, et cetera - and probably have enough knowledge to manually replace their bootloader; whereas the late-comers to the rooting party (leakers and others) that are not familiar with these methods probably used "one click" or similar, so they probably don't have the S-OFF bootloader on their phone anyway.

If I was going to return a phone to VZW, and was concerned that a computer forensics expert was going to examine my phone (I'm 99.999% confident that this does NOT happen), I would apply the MR2 and then take the OTA after that.

Here are the reasons why (these are really only motivations for the ultra-paranoid):

- None of the dev ROMs have ever touched the "NVRAM" area of the phone, whereas the "leak" PB00IMG.zip ROMs did manipulate that. So, phones that went through a leak-flash install still have evidence (in NVRAM) that they have been flashed with unofficial software releases (from HTC), even if the so-called "ROM" has been replaced. The only way to over-write that is to re-write the NVRAM using a VZW-sponsored RUU (or corresponding PB00IMG.zip file). In my mind, that is the MR2, not the "Official" ( == Leak-V3) RUU.

- The same thing is true of the "misc" partition - evidence of fooling around with HBOOT+PB00IMG.zip files persists in the misc partition if you do not take steps to overwrite it. (I flashed and rooted my phone an absurd number of times yesterday (for testing), and right now my misc partition reports "2.19.605.1" because the last thing that I did was install the S-OFF bootloader using HBOOT and the battery-pull trick).

- Forensic evidence in the form of directory or file timestamps probably can determine if a phone has a non-factory, or non-RUU software on it. The same thing is probably true of very low-level (yaffs2) filesystem storage order - there is no reason to believe that the file storage order (relative to the linear page layout of flash memory) will be preserved with a non-stock installer.

But, as I said, the above considerations are for the truly paranoid. VZW doesn't look at phones that carefully, and probably can not for economic reasons - and all the things I mentioned above can not be determined easily (for instance by a retail clerk looking at the booted phone)

But in a way, it doesn't matter anyway - because of the "checkin" process that happens every time the phone boots up, and the pattern of phone activations or market history, Google and VZW have enough information available (between them) in the form of user activity that they could identify every rooted Android user on the VZW network - if they cared enough to do so.

As I said, if I were going to return a phone, I would do the "misc" partition hack, install the MR2 RUU (or matching PB00IMG.zip file), and then take the OTA - and then finally perform a factory reset. But even that is probably far more effort than is necessary.

bftb0

[SIZE=+1]**[/SIZE] Flashing the bootloader is the single most dangerous operation you can perform. Make damn sure the file you are planning on flashing has the correct MD5 signature, as "fastboot" does not check a single thing - it will allow you to flash total garbage to the phone.