They got me. . I have had my rooted Galaxy S4 for a couple of years, rooted from within an hour of purchasing it. But that was when it was running Jelly Bean. Kit Kat brought Knox with it and thus the booby trap was laid. Do you know that the phone has a binary counter which tells it whether or not you have changed the kernel? Well, it does, and if you have gained root and then tried to UNroot, it will trip the Knox counter from 0x0 (valid) to 0x1 (warranty violation). It looks like this (not my phone)
The Knox trigger cannot be flipped no matter what you do. No hack for it exists. It essentially bricks your phone. So, even though my pre-Knox rooted kernel was within warranty, UNrooting it flipped the switch. My T-mobile equipment protection would have been void if left rooted, but UNrooting it voided the Samsung warranty as well. AND it bricks the phone.
So, suddenly without a phone I have purchased an LG G2 (because it is almost exactly the specs of a Samsung GS4, but a tad better), and I will be leaving Samsung because of Knox which I did not ask for and is now mandatory across all smartphone devices Samsung makes. It stinks of clandestine government tampering with the Samsung infrastructure. Let me explain:
In a rooted Galaxy device running Knox, you cannot do the following:
Set up an encrypted Exchange account using Activesync
Set up a 3rd party encrypted folder on an SDcard
This is strange, because those two operations involve using an encryption using keys that Samsung does not provide and cannot get. But you can easily do it on a non-rooted device. WHY? It stinks of NSA. It is a dealbreaker and I will never buy another Samsung. Makes sense because Samsung rules more than 1/2 the market for premium smartphones. And NO, Apple is nowhere near being concerned with user privacy. They have been working with the NSA more deeply than perhaps any other manufacturer. Microsoft is the worst offender, but they have a miniscule market share in comparison to Apple or Samsung.
I will post the review of the phone when it arrives tomorrow.
The Knox trigger cannot be flipped no matter what you do. No hack for it exists. It essentially bricks your phone. So, even though my pre-Knox rooted kernel was within warranty, UNrooting it flipped the switch. My T-mobile equipment protection would have been void if left rooted, but UNrooting it voided the Samsung warranty as well. AND it bricks the phone.
So, suddenly without a phone I have purchased an LG G2 (because it is almost exactly the specs of a Samsung GS4, but a tad better), and I will be leaving Samsung because of Knox which I did not ask for and is now mandatory across all smartphone devices Samsung makes. It stinks of clandestine government tampering with the Samsung infrastructure. Let me explain:
In a rooted Galaxy device running Knox, you cannot do the following:
Set up an encrypted Exchange account using Activesync
Set up a 3rd party encrypted folder on an SDcard
This is strange, because those two operations involve using an encryption using keys that Samsung does not provide and cannot get. But you can easily do it on a non-rooted device. WHY? It stinks of NSA. It is a dealbreaker and I will never buy another Samsung. Makes sense because Samsung rules more than 1/2 the market for premium smartphones. And NO, Apple is nowhere near being concerned with user privacy. They have been working with the NSA more deeply than perhaps any other manufacturer. Microsoft is the worst offender, but they have a miniscule market share in comparison to Apple or Samsung.
I will post the review of the phone when it arrives tomorrow.