Intrested in modding a Droid X? The OS might be able to self-destruct.

[thewayne]

They've programmed in an "eFuse" that checks to see if the phone has been tampered with, and if it has, it bricks the phone.

So much for the open source aspect of the Android operating system.

"...the booting process becoming corrupted and resulting in a permanent bricking of the Phone. This FailSafe is activated anytime the bootloader is tampered with or any of the above three parts of the phone has been tampered with."

In all fairness, this is more to do with the operating system, not installing programs. Still, if something in the OS got corrupted through no fault of your own, it could brick your phone, which would be a very unpleasant possibility.

http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2010/07/14/droid-x-actually-self-destructs-if-you-try-to-mod-it/

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/07/15/1317205/Droid-X-Self-Destructs-If-You-Try-To-Mod

There are Slashdot posts that say the original posts on this may be inaccurate or total FUD, so, as always, take it for what it's worth and YMMV.

Comments

[silveradept]

That's not right. Although it does seem like the logical extension - if DRM doesn't work on the software side, force the hardware to fail if something looks like it modded it. Rrrrrrrgh.