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HTC locks down Incredible S against custom ROMs too, starts a fight with its best friends
The Thunderbolt, you might have noticed, marked an unpleasant change for HTC by making it a tiny bit difficult to replace the company's own Android software with your favored community-sourced alternative. Well, turns out it's not alone and could in fact be just be the tip of an unhappy iceberg heading our way. The AndIRC guys responsible for cracking it open have also noted with some distress that the Incredible S -- likely to become the Droid Incredible 2 in the States -- features a similar signature check when flashing recovery images. In short, that means any ROMs that don't know HTC's "open sesame" password, won't be allowed to ride on your device. Bogus? Totally, dude.
HTC Thunderbolt rooted for real, locked files nearly soured the deal
They thought it would be easy, but they were wrong -- AndIRC developers reportedly spent the last 72 hours readying the new HTC Thunderbolt for custom ROMs. Today, they emerge victorious, but that victory is bittersweet, because it may signify the end of a generally hacker-friendly era from the folks at HTC. While devices from the Taiwanese manufacturer have traditionally been easy to modify, the hacker community found Verizon's LTE flagship fully locked down, with a signed kernel, signed recovery image and a signed bootloader. FOF. Of course, if you're just looking for a way to overclock your Thunderbolt, you probably don't care about all that. You'll find all the (exceptionally lengthy) instructions you need at Android Police. Just be careful out there! [Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
