[Motorola Droid and Milestone General] Lowbytes:
We already tryed the same - here you can read what happened!

Motorola "Milestone" the smart-phone with a clear limitation!

The main purpose of this article is to discuss certain details and inconsistencies with the European Motorola flagship product - the Motorola Milestone.

Lately Motorola has started to advertise the Milestone aggressively and comprehensively. "Unlimited Possibilities" and "Smart-phone with no limits" are listed as the main features of this device.

Granted, using this device really gives the feeling of a milestone, when it comes to design and finish. The overall quality is very good.

The phone itself is also a milestone in other aspects: Android enjoys a growing community of fans, main points being the many possibilities to customize the Open source OS. The main highlights of this scene are Custom ROMs, which can change every possible aspect of the phone, from the UI appearance to adding new kernel modules and new drivers. The custom ROMs also add a possibility of a superuser acount by default. Features and functions can be taken from one phone and added to another one. It has also been noticed that the Custom-ROMs run much faster and much more stable than the standard ROMs of the phone. However, changing the ROM results in a loss of the manufacturer provided warranty. This is not a problem for most members of this scene -- also known as "modders" -- since most of them are driven by the wish to be in control of the smart-phone and have total control over the software.

With most Android mobile-phones it is possible to flash a custom ROM, even with the sister model of the Milestone, which was released in the USA under the name "Motorola Droid". Both of the models are identified by the same hardware codename "Sholes", possibly the internal name for the device.

Now for the downside of the Milestone: Motorola restricted large parts of the modification freedom. They have ensured that this model can only load signed ROMs. The signature can only be checked by a special key, hard-coded into the hardware. Because of this we cannot start custom ROMs on the German and possibly on every other Milestone. None of the European customers expected that - and why? It was known that the same device was successfully modified in the USA, the only difference is the radio-module. Of course the internet communities are not happy with this. There have been many discussions in the Motorola Customer Center, Developer Forum and Facebook page about this.

At this point, we'd like to point out that Motorola possibly has some custom software on there, and possibly wants to defend this. Of course this is just an assumption, since Motorola hasn't released a clear statement towards this, therefore we'll leave this point open. Technically it shouldn't be hard for them to give us an update which frees the boot-loader. We are ready to give our IMEI and the device's serial number to Motorola, to forfeit the warranty and delete the licensed software and in the future refer to their device as a developer phone. The same is possible with the Google's/HTC's "Nexus One". You just have to enter an special command to unlock the boot-loader, then you get a message on the phone, which states that you are forfeiting your warranty, if you continue with the process.

The Official responses from Motorola are saying nothing more to us than: It's not our responsibility to discuss why the American model has an open boot-loader and the European one doesn't have one. To make matters worse, Motorola is saying that they are not going to implement and/or release this "developer function". This raises the question: Is the Droid a Motorola device or not? Since it _has_ this function! Given the difficult situation of Motorola's mobile phone division, to treat American and European customers so differently is beyond our understanding.

Thanks to lengthy trials, the scene has managed to modify some parts of the software, but the elementary parts are still locked for us. Contrary to previous experiences, replacing and modifying the kernel is not possible on the "Milestone". This fact decreases our chances to fix problems, after Motorola stops supporting the Milestone (which is a fairly common practice, when bringing a new device to the market, with the same hardware specs, to push the sales). The Community is more likely to purchase the successor of the Milestone, if they would honour our requests.

What would also have been acceptable for the Community, would be if this fact had been known from the beginning. If this were the case, some of us would not have bought this device, instead they would have chosen one from the competition (This is actually something that Motorola suggests as an alternative).

The customers outside the USA feel handicapped, for a reason.

Links:

Motodev Blog response: Custom ROMs and Motorola's Android Handsets

Custom ROMs and Motorola's Android Handsets - MOTODEV Discussion Boards ( Custom ROMs and Motorola's Android Handsets - MOTODEV Discussion Boards )

Custom ROMs and Motorola's Android Handsets

by lorifraleigh on 02-12-2010 04:41 PM - last edited on 07-16-2010 12:06 PM

My name is Lori Fraleigh and I manage the technical team behind the MOTODEV program at Motorola. We provide tools, like MOTODEV Studio, and a variety of technical services including application testing services, developer education materials traditional technical support and serve as experts on our discussion boards. Today I'm stepping a bit outside of my day-to-day job to try to answer some questions we have seen not only on MOTODEV, but on various other sites. I've worked with a number of other Motorolans to bring you the information in this post.

For the Android application developer, MOTODEV provides a wealth of resources to help you create and bring your applications to market. We provide a comprehensive Eclipse-based development environment, MOTODEV Studio, as well as SDK add-ons which provide emulator images that represent the software on our handsets. To aid developers who may not have access to physical handsets, or who may wish to test on a carrier network unavailable in their physical location, we provide access to handsets via the Motorola Virtual Device Lab at DeviceAnywhere. All Motorola application developer resources can be found at http://developer.motorola.com.

We understand there is a community of developers interested in going beyond Android application development and experimenting with Android system development and re-flashing phones. For these developers, we highly recommend obtaining either a Google ADP1 developer phone or a Nexus One, both of which are intended for these purposes. At this time, Motorola Android-based handsets are intended for use by consumers and Android application developers, and we have currently chosen not to go into the business of providing fully unlocked developer phones.

The use of open source software, such as the Linux kernel or the Android platform, in a consumer device does not require the handset running such software to be open for re-flashing. We comply with the licenses, including GPLv2, for each of the open source packages in our handsets. We post appropriate notices as part of the legal information on the handset and post source code, where required, at http://opensource.motorola.com. Securing the software on our handsets, thereby preventing a non-Motorola ROM image from being loaded, has been our common practice for many years. This practice is driven by a number of different business factors. When we do deviate from our normal practice, such as we did with the DROID, there is a specific business reason for doing so. We understand this can result in some confusion, and apologize for any frustration.

We do hear your feedback and read your posts - whether on our MOTODEV discussion boards, our Owners' Forums, our Facebook pages, Twitter, or a variety of other sites on the web. We take the time to understand the issue and then pass the information on to the appropriate product (or other) teams within Motorola. We then try to respond with explanations or updates as we get the answers. Thank you for your continued feedback.

If you have further questions, comments, and feedback, you can comment on this post as well as use the following sites:

Use of open-source software at Motorola: http://opensource.motorola.com

MOTODEV and Android application development on Motorola handsets: http://community.developer.motorola.com

End-user support for handset owners: https://supportforums.motorola.com/community/google-android