Legend S-OFF, it's coming..!

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You might have seen this in the desire subforum already,
here's the confirmation: S-OFF HBOOT with fastboot features is also coming for Legend!



Coming soon to a topic in your neighbourhood!

WANT! Give me now. I care not for my grammar in this post. That is the degree to which I WANT THAT NOW!!!

I am aware that this might be a noob question but what does this S-OFF HBOOT with fastboot features enable???

Originally Posted by Chaotick

I am aware that this might be a noob question but what does this S-OFF HBOOT with fastboot features enable???

Search the forums. This has been asked for a million+1 times now. You should be able to find enough information on security/s-on/s-off.

Originally Posted by Chaotick

I am aware that this might be a noob question but what does this S-OFF HBOOT with fastboot features enable???

I guess a few people will wonder the same question...so...

S_OFF is another way of saying "security off"...which means that nand is unlocked and so is the bootloader.

This basically means that you can mod the system while booted. S_ON means security on...nand is locked and so is bootloader.

Therefore your phone’s security level can be set to S-OFF, thus bypassing a standard security feature which checks the signatures of firmware images before flashing them.

I *think* with nand unlocked we can apply metamorph themes, but that I am not 100% sure of myself....I sure hope so though!!

Originally Posted by c_man

I guess a few people will wonder the same question...so...

S_OFF is another way of saying "security off"...which means that nand is unlocked and so is the bootloader.

This basically means that you can mod the system while booted. S_ON means security on...nand is locked and so is bootloader.

Therefore your phone’s security level can be set to S-OFF, thus bypassing a standard security feature which checks the signatures of firmware images before flashing them.

I *think* with nand unlocked we can apply metamorph themes, but that I am not 100% sure of myself....I sure hope so though!!

Security is actually a flag set in Radio NVRAM.

HBOOT acts according to this flag being set to on or off. That means, locking NAND, checking signatures. Then there's engineering bootloaders.

ENG bootloaders ignore the security flag, and act like the phone is S-OFF, thereby disabling the nand lock and signature checks. As an added feature, it also allows for flashing images directly using fastboot, e.g.: fastboot flash boot boot.img. It also offers a feature (for developers) to test kernels, by doing 'fastboot boot boot.img' which does not actually write anything, but just boots the downloaded kernel image.

The HBOOT we will release will be very (if not 100%) close to ENG bootloaders.
It ignores the security flag in radio NVRAM (we can't set this, yet), and it allows for the extended fastboot features listed above.

This does mean, that if an OTA overwrites the installed patched HBOOT, the security-ignore and extended fastboot features are lost.
This differs from Radio S-OFF, whereas this would survive any OTA/RUU.

The intended effect however, is the same.

Originally Posted by ieftm

Security is actually a flag set in Radio NVRAM.

HBOOT acts according to this flag being set to on or off. That means, locking NAND, checking signatures. Then there's engineering bootloaders.

ENG bootloaders ignore the security flag, and act like the phone is S-OFF, thereby disabling the nand lock and signature checks. As an added feature, it also allows for flashing images directly using fastboot, e.g.: fastboot flash boot boot.img. It also offers a feature (for developers) to test kernels, by doing 'fastboot boot boot.img' which does not actually write anything, but just boots the downloaded kernel image.

The HBOOT we will release will be very (if not 100%) close to ENG bootloaders.
It ignores the security flag in radio NVRAM (we can't set this, yet), and it allows for the extended fastboot features listed above.

This does mean, that if an OTA overwrites the installed patched HBOOT, the security-ignore and extended fastboot features are lost.
This differs from Radio S-OFF, whereas this would survive any OTA/RUU.

The intended effect however, is the same.

appreciated the time to explain... thanks man!

[noob question] does this mean we'll be able to do the "fastboot oem unlock" like in the nexus one and just install custom ROMs after that without having to go through the whole messy goldcard/downgrade/root procedure?

(wait, let me guess... we'll need to be rooted to get this S-OFF thing working, wont we?)

Originally Posted by ieftm

You might have seen this in the desire subforum already,
here's the confirmation: S-OFF HBOOT with fastboot features is also coming for Legend!

Coming soon to a topic in your neighbourhood!

Something for me to alpha test too??

Any more news for this?