AndroidGood and EVO

3.16.651.3 HTC EVO 4G LTE JB update breaks a lot of root things

roottools - for some reason we don't have an alt tag hereThe new patch to fix some of the bugs with the last round of Android Jelly Bean was released yesterday for the HTC EVO 4G LTE. I probably should have screamed that people should wait and also to never trust an OTA, but I didn’t think it would be this bad.

I personally haven’t taken the OTA, but I did flash the radios without the touch screen drivers. So take anything from here down as third-party information and don’t hesitate to let me know if an issue has been resolved, is incorrect, etc.

The new update, if taken, breaks the touch screen in recovery, leaving recoveries working but unable to accept any input. Captain Throwback’s radios and image removed the new touch screen driver, so those flashing it do not need to worry about that. I’ve also seen reports of TWRP failing; ClockworkMod seems fine, but then again CWM is not used as much in the EVO world. There are also reports of the volume buttons not working while in recovery, which would mean you can’t select anything.

Those using Voodoo OTA Rootkeeper who accepted the OTA also may have noticed they’re now unrooted. I can only find a couple of complaints about this, so your mileage may vary.

Even though the HBOOT is the same, some are reporting that DirtyRacun now is throwing up errors when attempting S-OFF. This probably has more to do with DR checking for a version number on the baseband than it does with active anti-hacking measures, but the ability to achieve S-OFF may be gone for the moment. I don’t know exactly how the exploits in the ‘Racun are done, so it’s possible some of the old methods were patched in a module other than HBOOT.

You cannot downgrade to the 3.15.651.16 firmwares via RUU to replace the busted touchscreen driver.

We also have one report of a dead phone following an update, but only one, so put that in the fluke category for the moment.

So embraced developer/root community, you can’t downgrade via RUU, can’t S-OFF via ‘Racun, touched-based recoveries are reportedly broken due to the new touch screen driver (at least TWRP), and your root was removed if you used Voodoo OTA Rootkeeper.

Here’s the thing – if it were one of these things, I’d pass it off as “well, sometimes things break.” This update took out held root via Rootkeeper, and it took out recovery by changing a touch screen driver. I’ll save my whinnying about it taking out the new S-OFF method until I hear some more.

If you can’t touch the screen in recovery, you can’t install the SuperUser/SuperSU binaries to achieve root. You also can’t install a custom ROM via recovery in the normal fashion. If the volume up and down buttons are no longer working in recovery mode, this means you can’t select something to flash from a text-based recovery.

If you’re not S-OFF, you can’t flash an unsigned PG75IMG to fix the touchscreen driver issue.

I’m hoping this is all a big series of unrelated events, but it sort of looks like a straight up attack on the root crowd under the guise of a touch screen driver issue. Shake up the ants; see what they do. Hopefully I’m wrong, and hopefully some of the reports are as well. But the short of it right now is do not flash the OTA if you want to root without pain.

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Paul E King

Paul King started with GoodAndEVO in 2011, which merged with Pocketables, and as of 2018 he's evidently the owner. He lives in Nashville, works at a film production company, is married with two kids. Facebook | Twitter | Donate | More posts by Paul | Subscribe to Paul's posts

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