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by victorhooi 4585 days ago
That's a terrible analogy.

Firstly, a PC != mobile phone.

This isn't a bloody OpenMoko phone - this is a working consumer device that's sold to you as a "dumb" device. It's like buying a television or DVD player, flashing some weird third-party firmware, then taking it back and saying, gee, it just stopped working...

Or flashing your car's ECU chip.

The manufacturer is certainly not expected to fix your mistake. They might for goodwill, but they have no obligation to.

Yes, there is certainly a danger in the proverbial grandma flashing her phone (why do we always pick on grandma's? I mean, geez, Hopper Grace was a grandma wasn't she? Lol).

I've seen countless phones soft-bricked by bad flashes. It's like upgrading your BIOS - if you get unlucky, or the power goes, you're SOL.

Google's just being responsible. The whole point of Android is that you can sideload ADB's easily.

Think of it as a entry test - if you can't load a non-PlayStore ADB onto your handset, you have absolutely no business installing a custom ROM.

Put it this way - you ask me how to flash your car's ECU.

I say, well, firstly, you need to pop open the bonnet and read me some numbers. And then you said to me, "Gee, how do I do that? I've never popped a bonnet open".

My next thought would probably be, "Err, are you really sure you want to flash your car's ECU?".

Cheers, Victor

1 comments

Actually, it's quite a good analogy. I have installed Linux on half a dozen newly purchased PCs and was just recently flummoxed by UEFI and trying to retain a Windows partition. I had to make an informed decision to do without Windows entirely on this latest machine. The effort to install an aftermarket ROM is similar.
No it's not a good comparison because you cannot brick a PC installing Linux. At most you lose any data that wasn't backed up, but you can then just use the normal recovery discs to get your machine back (which is a process the average user is expected to do every few years anyway - if just to fix the natural decay of Windows)