Unlocking Questions

[ebrown126]

I had my Thunderbolt unlocked and rooted which was the scariest but best decision. I had a great time with all the developer support and awesomes ROMs available.

Now I'm more cautious with the Nexus. Ive read to unlock the boot loader immediately if I'm going to be customizing the Nexus in the future which I'm sure I will want to but I have a few questions.

Once unlocked, does this prevent the OTAs from google? I read yes in the forums and during last week's podcast, Jerry had also confirmed that it could. He said that you can just go back to stock and get the update then go back to rooting. But wouldn't that just wipe the phone again anyway?

This wouldn't be a big concern to me but with there not being a separate memory card, wiping will cause me to lose all pictures and videos. Every ROM I installed on my TB resulting in me wiping the phone completely but at least all my stuff was still saved on the SD card.

As usual, thanks for your help.

 

[Cyber Warrior]

Only unlocking the bootloader will wipe your internal storage. If youre just updating or downgrading roms... then you wont have to worry about that. Once the bootloader is unlocked... thats it. Updates will not affect it or erase your storage. You would have to manually re-lock it.

 

[MRW1215]

Only unlocking the bootloader will wipe your internal storage. If youre just updating or downgrading roms... then you wont have to worry about that. Once the bootloader is unlocked... thats it. Updates will not affect it or erase your storage. You would have to manually re-lock it.

I'm still fairly new to rooting, myself; what exactly is the difference between unlocking the bootloader and getting root access? When I get my Nexus, I might be interested in rooting just to be able to use Nova Launcher. I've heard, though, on other phones, that OTAs will cause you to lose root access. Does this still apply with the Nexus? I know Nexus phones are supposed to be "developer phones", so I'm wondering if Google makes the OTAs in a way that doesn't cause one to lose root access?

 

[ebrown126]

Only unlocking the bootloader will wipe your internal storage. If youre just updating or downgrading roms... then you wont have to worry about that. Once the bootloader is unlocked... thats it. Updates will not affect it or erase your storage. You would have to manually re-lock it.

Thanks Cyber.

What about installing new ROMs? For my TB I had to do a Factory Reset/wipe, wipe cache, wipe Dalvik, then installed new ROM from the SD card. Do we not have to do that with the Nexus?

So, I would have to manually re-lock to get the new Google update. After the update, then I would have to unlock again. Wouldn't that wipe everything on the storage as well? Or is this truly a one time wipe?

 

[iBowToAndroid]

I'm still fairly new to rooting, myself; what exactly is the difference between unlocking the bootloader and getting root access? When I get my Nexus, I might be interested in rooting just to be able to use Nova Launcher. I've heard, though, on other phones, that OTAs will cause you to lose root access. Does this still apply with the Nexus? I know Nexus phones are supposed to be "developer phones", so I'm wondering if Google makes the OTAs in a way that doesn't cause one to lose root access?

Thanks Cyber.

What about installing new ROMs? For my TB I had to do a Factory Reset/wipe, wipe cache, wipe Dalvik, then installed new ROM from the SD card. Do we not have to do that with the Nexus?

So, I would have to manually re-lock to get the new Google update. After the update, then I would have to unlock again. Wouldn't that wipe everything on the storage as well? Or is this truly a one time wipe?

1. An unlocked bootloader will not prevent you from getting OTAs. A rooted phone WILL make the update fail.

2. Unlocking your bootloader merely disables the security checking that the phone does to make sure that you're installing only official software. This lets you flash a custom packages. Even if you flash Clockwork, you're still not rooted. You are only running once you flash the Superuser app and the binary that it needs.

3. As far as updates on rooted phones, you will need to wait until someone releases a rooted version of the new update - usually happens same day and is a zip that you just flash via recovery.

4. ROM flashing will be the same process as any other phone