If you have purchased or thinking about purchasing a Motorola Droid, there is a bit of hoo-har going on over the smartphone at the moment about Motorola installing an authentication chip known as eFuse which basically shorts out the Motorola Droid X if unauthenticated software is loaded.
According to Casey Chan of Gizmodo by way of Engadget, Motorola has now given the official word on effuse which when it comes down to it, if a user installs unofficial ROMs on the Motorola Droid X, effuse won’t brick your device but will enter recovery mode.
This means once the Motorola Droid X goes into recovery mode, the device will be rendered practically useless until such times as the user installs officially sanctioned Motorola software, basically meaning it’s Motorola’s way and not your way.
Here’s the official statement from Motorola…”Motorola’s primary focus is the security of our end users and protection of their data, while also meeting carrier, partner and legal requirements. The Droid X and a majority of Android consumer devices on the market today have a secured bootloader. In reference specifically to eFuse, the technology is not loaded with the purpose of preventing a consumer device from functioning, but rather ensuring for the user that the device only runs on updated and tested versions of software. If a device attempts to boot with unapproved software, it will go into recovery mode, and can re-boot once approved software is re-installed. Checking for a valid software configuration is a common practice within the industry to protect the user against potential malicious software threats. Motorola has been a long time advocate of open platforms and provides a number of resources to developers to foster the ecosystem including tools and access to devices via MOTODEV at http://developer.motorola.com.”