Fresh 1.1 ROM on a non-rooted Hero?

[toasty]

I was in a Sprint store earlier today (to get my Hero serviced, unfortunately), and while I was messing around with the display unit they had, I noticed that the UI looked a little different than mine. My knee-jerk reaction was that it already had the 2.1 update, but when I went to check, it still identified the firmware as 1.5, but under build number (I think -- might have been Software version), it said "Fresh 1.1."

I was under the impression that you had to root your phone to run that ROM. Am I wrong about that? If not, why the heck are they using a rooted phone for display purposes at a Sprint store?

If I am wrong, and it can be done without rooting, would someone be kind enough to point me to some instructions to do it?

 

[momoceio]

Weird...I can think of a few possible things.

1) Someone came in and rooted the phone while on the display somehow
2) An employee rooted the phone
3) Someone returned a rooted/ROM'd phone and it somehow was made the display model

 

[tatonka_Hero]

haha, that's pretty funny that something like that would happen.

They could have rooted it through the terminal on the phone (I think?), and simply downloaded fresh onto the phone and went in and flashed it while still on the display.

 

[jeffreynothing43]

hehe...that's funny! some employee was smart...they're all like "yah, let's put fresh on there since it actually runs smooth. then people will really wanna buy this!"

bravo!

 

[NYCHitman1]

hehe...that's funny! some employee was smart...they're all like "yah, let's put fresh on there since it actually runs smooth. then people will really wanna buy this!"

bravo!

Clever!

 

[apollomaker]

Now that is some pretty sneaky marketing....

 

[Thefoodman52]