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I have a friend who googled for "How to update phone to KitKat", found a website that walked him through installing an unofficial build on his phone, and he pro

I have a friend who googled for "How to update phone to KitKat", found a website that walked him through installing an unofficial build on his phone, and he promptly messed it up and broke his phone. Took it back to the phone shop, complained that is was broken, was given a replacement. The question is, is the gains from users like you or I worth the loss from those types of users, either from refusing them and upsetting them, or helping them and paying for fixes?

userbinator 9y ago
Alternatively they could make it dead-easy to recover from such situations. IMHO the MediaTek platforms have excelled at this --- all you need to do is find the right software (the harder part for unbranded/generic devices, but Samsung could certainly provide downloads) and you can do a reflash, even if the internal storage is completely wiped. It's the same process they use to put the original software on them at the factory.
- sschueller 9y ago
  They could have a recovery partition (personaly not a fan of this) like all pc do these days. Would make it super simple to restore. They could also reactivate the warrenty if you restore the phone's OS like some router manufacturers do.
  - vetinari 9y ago
    If you damage your bootloader, no amount of recovery partitions is going to help you. ARM SoCs are slightly different in this regard compared to PCs. On PCs, it takes an extra effort to damage UEFI or BIOS.
    - userbinator 9y ago
      The MTK SoCs have an embedded boot ROM which is really read-only and can't be modified, short of physical damage; and it has enough code to act as a USB device that their flashtool can communicate with. It boots into this "download" mode if it can't find a valid partition on the eMMC or the power button is held down while being plugged into USB. It makes me wonder how the other popular smartphone SoC platforms handle this "initial format/install", because the internal storage is certainly going to have nothing on it, not even a bootloader, when first manufactured.
      - jiggunjer 9y ago
        I think they all do something similar, either via JTAG or USB. The problem is the drivers, software and ROM needed to flash the device are very confidential. My experience with the mediatek flashing software on Windows was that it looked like one of those hacker tools that generates a license key for Photoshop while installing a trojan.
        userbinator 9y ago
        If you're referring to SPflashTool, it certainly has a very different appearance but keep in mind that it was originally a factory tool, so the programmers didn't spend much time making it "pretty" --- there's source code floating around that you can inspect and compile yourself if you're that worried.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]

userbinator 9y ago

Alternatively they could make it dead-easy to recover from such situations. IMHO the MediaTek platforms have excelled at this --- all you need to do is find the right software (the harder part for unbranded/generic devices, but Samsung could certainly provide downloads) and you can do a reflash, even if the internal storage is completely wiped. It's the same process they use to put the original software on them at the factory.

sschueller 9y ago
They could have a recovery partition (personaly not a fan of this) like all pc do these days. Would make it super simple to restore. They could also reactivate the warrenty if you restore the phone's OS like some router manufacturers do.
- vetinari 9y ago
  If you damage your bootloader, no amount of recovery partitions is going to help you. ARM SoCs are slightly different in this regard compared to PCs. On PCs, it takes an extra effort to damage UEFI or BIOS.
  - userbinator 9y ago
    The MTK SoCs have an embedded boot ROM which is really read-only and can't be modified, short of physical damage; and it has enough code to act as a USB device that their flashtool can communicate with. It boots into this "download" mode if it can't find a valid partition on the eMMC or the power button is held down while being plugged into USB. It makes me wonder how the other popular smartphone SoC platforms handle this "initial format/install", because the internal storage is certainly going to have nothing on it, not even a bootloader, when first manufactured.
    - jiggunjer 9y ago
      I think they all do something similar, either via JTAG or USB. The problem is the drivers, software and ROM needed to flash the device are very confidential. My experience with the mediatek flashing software on Windows was that it looked like one of those hacker tools that generates a license key for Photoshop while installing a trojan.
      - userbinator 9y ago
        If you're referring to SPflashTool, it certainly has a very different appearance but keep in mind that it was originally a factory tool, so the programmers didn't spend much time making it "pretty" --- there's source code floating around that you can inspect and compile yourself if you're that worried.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]