Fans of Motorola’s Droid X may have reason for second thoughts with rumors that it has an insane e-Fuse chip that “locks the bootloader and will brick the phone if the bootloader is modified. ”
From Droid World:
If the eFuse fails to verify this information then the eFuse receives a command to “blow the fuse” or “trip the fuse”. This results in 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.
The eFuse is a rewrittable module and thus once it has been tripped it can be repaired but this procedure can only be done by Motorola. It requires hardware (I’m not sure what type) and the program (I’m not sure what Motorola is using) written in JTAG.
However, some have countered that that the new may not be as dire as many are claiming.
“OMAP handsets already have e-fuse in place as part of the M-Shield hardware security technology built into TI’s OMAP system on a chip,” says Boy Genius. “It is on the very hackable DROID and the not-so-hacking-friendly Milestone, but it is not being used by Motorola to lock the bootloader of the handset. The current theory being put forth by the non-alarmists in the Android hacking community suggests that the DROID X is locked in a similar manner to the Milestone.”
So though the jury’s still out on jailbreaking, it probably won’t be enough of a reason not to purchase a Droid X.
[...] other day I mentioned reports that Motorola’s Droid X has an e-Fuse chip that some wondered if it “locks the [...]