A wake-up call for the legion of smartphone 'rooters'

WIRED:'Rooters' are probing their smartphones and brainstorming ways to seize control of them, writes DANNY O'BRIEN

FIRST, A small correction. In last week's column I reported that I was not a gadget addict. The day after I wrote those words, I found myself in my local T-Mobile showroom, hypnotically buying a new phone. The Irish Times(and my wallet) regrets the error.

My new phone, curse its beautiful sleek lines, is the HTC Vision, renamed the “G2” for the US market. It’s an Android phone and is perfectly nice, but I’m not going to write a review of it here. Instead, I’m going to describe what happens among the most hardcore of geeks in the first few days of a new smartphone’s release. It’s almost a tradition now, like hunting season or the first cuckoo of spring: the Rooting of the Phone.

Android got its initial buzz among first-adopters from the promise that it would be an entirely open mobile platform. The code for the operating system would be available, and any Android owner could run any program on the device.

But for some owners, that’s not enough. What they want is the full promise of Android – to be able to remould and rewrite all the software on the phone, including the operating system itself.

Because Android’s source is freely available under a free software licence, an Android user can theoretically change the most fundamental behaviour of the phone. You could, for instance, rewrite the Android code to “overclock” the processor, getting an instantly faster phone for a small loss in battery life. Or you could rewrite the phone’s networking software so your laptop could connect to your phone and use its internet connectivity (what’s called tethering). Google’s fine with that kind of user power; mobile carriers much less so. The phone companies would rather you didn’t add new features to your phone without paying them extra for the privilege. Tethering in the United States, for instance, generally costs $10-$15 per month more on mobile contracts.

So the operators have told the phone-makers to lock users out of smartphones. The easiest way of doing that is to fence off the most powerful corners of the operating system from end-users’ reach so the operator keeps control of the phone’s “root” functions.

What I’ve been watching is the public attempt by the G2’s first buyers to wrest back control of their phones: rooting them. These super-users are metaphorically ripping apart their phones, in public, on discussion forums, wikis and chat channels. Hour by hour, you can watch them deconstructing documentation, decoding and probing their phones, and brainstorming ways to re-seize control.

Rooting, like hunting, attracts some controversy. Oddly enough, the controversy is generally not concerning whether these customers have the right to hack their own phones, but the legality and morality of the mobile operator’s attempts to stop them.

For a while after the first G2s were shipped, the blogs were full of rumbling threats because HTC, the maker of the G2, had not complied with their legal obligation to release the phone’s source code. The suspicion was that they were dragging their feet in order to avoid revealing how customers could root the phone.

As it turns out, when the source was made public, it didn’t help the rooters that much.

Most smartphones actually have two processors, and two operating systems. One runs Android and the user-facing applications. HTC’s lock is, the rooters now suspect, buried in the second of these processors, called the radio, which runs a more closed, and tightly controlled, operating system. Usually the radio manages the most sensitive parts of the phone, such as how it talks to the phone network. In the case of the G2, the mobile operators have also commandeered the radio to keep watch over the Android part of the device, like an unwanted bodyguard.

I and the other first adopters obtained temporary control access to our phone’s root account in the first few days of the G2’s availability, thanks to bugs in the Android half of the system. But now the smart and dedicated phone hackers must dig deep into the radio to find out how to unlock a more permanent fix.

HTC and T-Mobile have tried to use their power over the radio to stop Android users from having control over the supposedly open half of the phone. That’s sneaky – but the rooters are ingenious. Already they’re decoding the radio, poring over its design for any chinks in its armour.

I don’t know whether they’ll manage to seize control, but between them and the mobile carriers, I know which one’s motivations are more closely allied with my own. I just want to run the programs I want, on the phone that I bought.

That’s what Android promised, and that’s what the rooting community is working night and day to bring me. I only wish HTC and T-Mobile were as dedicated to my wishes.