Bad News of the Day: Motorola is Installing a 'Root Checker' on VZW ICS Devices

[dgstorm]

We have some mildly annoying news to share with you regarding rooted Verizon Motorola devices. Motorola, at Verizon's request, has been installing "root checker" software on all Motorola devices that run Ice Cream Sandwich. This includes the Droid RAZR, RAZR MAXX, the Droid 4, and will include the Bionic once ICS rolls out for it. This "root checker" will basically allow any Big Red employee to check to see if your phone has ever been rooted. If they determine that it has it will likely void the warranty. Here's a quote with a full description,

What is a root checker? It manifests itself as a little scorecard visible when in recovery. Devices that have never been rooted show up as 0/0, while rooted devices score a 1/1. The kicker is that devices that have been rooted and then unrooted show up as 0/1 – in other words, anyone who boots into recovery can tell instantly if a device has been rooted, even if it was returned to stock. So if you break the glass on your DROID RAZR and try to return it, any Verizon employee can boot into recovery and see if you’ve rooted – which voids your warranty.

Now, obviously, there's no guarantee that a Verizon store employee would necessarily punish someone who brought in their phone for a legitimate hardware problem that had nothing to do with the rooting; however, it puts them in the position of doing so at Verizon's discretion. We thought you would want to know.

Thanks for the tip, bsweetness!

Updated: Apparently, the root checker is already installed on ICS Moto devices.

Source: PhoneArena

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[CR6]

They've got a root counter on the new Galaxy S3 as well. Good ole Verizon!

tap'n

[cali]

Sounds like Verizon, but won't be surprised to see the other providers follow suit.