Once unlocked, the One S Fastboot menu displays a huge ****TAMPERED**** sign right above where it indicates that the bootloader is unlocked. Though the Rogers One X doesnt display this behaviour, its presence in general is new to current-generation HTC devices, and is likely used to indicate to the carrier that the device was manually unlocked and didnt come like that from the factory.
RootzWiki, a site dedicated to tweaking and hacking Android phones, has written a great piece titled Dear HTC, Can We Have Our Phones Back? It details how, despite the companys public displays of affection towards the developer community, ceding one of the first bootloader unlocking programs in the industry, theyve taken steps in the One Series of devices to prevent users from getting at its innards once it is unlocked. As Steven Smith, the pieces author says of his experience: I am going to let everyone know now: do not plan on just stopping at rooting this and calling it a day, I tried to remove bloat with Root Explorer and came to a brick wall of denial. I found out you also cannot flash custom kernels in recovery mode.
It turns out that even with an unlocked bootloader, you cannot flash anything in the boot partition, only to the tmp partition that, once rebooted, restores the original kernel to its rightful place. This prevents user from easily, and safely, using code that isnt approved by HTC. Not to mention that the phone doesnt have a removable battery in case it gets into trouble with a particular hacking exercise.
