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Root Can someone explain "s off" & the "wire trick"???

S-OFF lets you directly flash boot.img files from recovery instead of having to flash them using fastboot with the command "fastboot flash boot boot.img" that you need for S-ON. the wire trick refers to the need to connect to parts of the phone behind the cover as a part of obtaining S-OFF from what i've read. i'm not very interested in it, as it can ruin your phone if you're not careful.
 
flboy91 said:
I thought flashing through twrp was pretty simple ... Easier than that??? O_o
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With son, twrp, or any recovery can't flash the boot.IMG (kernel), you have to use fastboot.

With soff (security off) you can flash freely via recovery as nothing is off limits
 
hobbes said:
With son, twrp, or any recovery can't flash the boot.IMG (kernel), you have to use fastboot.

With soff (security off) you can flash freely via recovery as nothing is off limits
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This is basically what I was trying to say.
 
And to my understanding, you can just use EXT4. It's the fastest recovery, (having tested 3) and does flash boot.imgs
 
hobbes said:
With son, twrp, or any recovery can't flash the boot.IMG (kernel), you have to use fastboot.

With soff (security off) you can flash freely via recovery as nothing is off limits
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Thank bro (not too) short and sweet..
 
Guys, don't leave out that performing the wire trick in front of friends and/or family members will automatically boost you to genius hacker status:smokingsomb:
 
phw8558 said:
Guys, don't leave out that performing the wire trick in front of friends and/or family members will automatically boost you to genius hacker status:smokingsomb:
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This. LOL

To ze OP: S-Off is true root IMHO. S-ON is... "root" without the full advantage of root.

However-You can work around the S-ON... but HTC didn't want you to be S-OFF in the first place... so why not be S-OFF? LOL BTW-TWRP works like a charm. Just sayin'
 
With rooted s-on you can flash roms but not radio or kernel through recovery, s-off allows you to flash anything to the phone. Plus if nothing else the Juopunutbear programs progress prompts are hilarious to read while you're sweating the wire trick. ;-)
 
metal571 said:
the wire trick refers to the need to connect to parts of the phone behind the cover as a part of obtaining S-OFF from what i've read. i'm not very interested in it, as it can ruin your phone if you're not careful.
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After extensive research I can find very few people who have had issues with the process and there is 24/7 online support available. It seems like the most common issue is people having their sd cards wiped, usually caused by performing the wire trick before the program requests it. Also the site advises you to use a spare card while performing the process. I've done it to 3 phones without any problems, common sense prevails. One last thing, since the phone has been available for a year and no other means of gaining s-off has been discovered so this is it.
 
OverByter said:
Yeah but C'mon now, how hard is getting s-off? ;-)
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Well, some are having performance anxiety! ;)

metal571 said:
I just switched to 4EXT now I don't even see the point of getting s-off if all i have to do is reboot to recovery from my rom and then flash all from there. pretty awesome
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That's why I like it; you get to eat your cake (flash anything and easily) and have it too (security)!
 
I use 4EXT myself and believe that it's the best recovery available for our phone, but I've s-offed HTC devices before and just couldn't resist. To be honest I think that the wire trick is easier than having to play around with generating gold cards and the like. And whether you flash a file using fastboot or with s-off, the same security issues would be present with the file.
 
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