On 29 November 2013 09:48, Brian May <brian@microcomaustralia.com.au> wrote:
I haven't voided the warranty on my Desktop computer by installing Linux on it. Why should it matter if my computer is considerably smaller and has a touch screen instead of a keyboard/mouse?
Because around the world, a whole load of phones were returned and replaced as faulty under warranty after people bricked them while trying to install custom firmware, and retailers don't have any way to tell the difference between hardware failure and software-failure-via-user in an embedded device. (What is the clerk at Carphone Warehouse going to do? Pop over the phone, solder wires onto the JTAG pads, boot up a serial debugger, etc? No, they're just going to go "oh.. it doesn't turn on. Guess we'll replace it then.") You and I see it as a small, portable computer, but everyone else up the chain sees it as a device. They think that installing a new OS on it is a bit like opening up your television and wiring a microwave oven up to it. You'd never think your warranty was valid if you were soldering new components inside a television, right? To the manufacturer, your mobile firmware is just another component. And their warranty is on all the components as a whole; not just some of them. They'll come around to the idea that it's a computer sooner or later. They've already made it easier/safer to flash firmwares, because I guess they figured that results in less bricked phones coming in under warranty.