I love the Samsung hardware, and own an S6 - mostly because I was excited about Gear VR - but I really wish I could root my phone without forever tripping some "Knox" bit that might theoretically have repercussions in the future, and at the very least would affect resale value.
In an ideal world, root would be a built-in feature, which can only be accessed through some obscure code, like the developer settings. It would show a big scary warning, and it would have su app controls included. Rooting the phone could trip some bit, sure, but a full factory reset should reset it.
The only reasons I can see not to do this are 1) extra work supporting people who've messed up their phones. Easy enough to fix: we don't support phones while they are rooted. 2) allows removal of built-in apps. But really, just because you can't uninstall the stuff doesn't mean you have to use it, so is there really a benefit there? And 3) it would take a bit of development effort to add the feature. Perhaps the demand just isn't sufficient to justify it. But I find that hard to believe. Unless there's a 4) that there's a segment of the buying public that would actually be scared to learn a phone could be rooted or something?
The actual reason to not do it: They don't want you to. We sold you this, don't fuck with it like that. You technically own it and can root it, but then if it slows down you don't blame the root you blame the phone. When your friend sees your non-factory clean S6, he associates all those custom features with an S6, and not a rooted S6. They made a product and want everyone to use it and see it as they intended, rooting detracts from that. You have every right to, they just don't want you to.
When your friend sees your non-factory clean S6, he associates all those custom features with an S6, and not a rooted S6.
Wouldn't the fact that "you can do all these cool things once it's rooted" increase the perceived value and help drive sales and push towards manufacturers making it easier to root? IMHO the big selling point is all the apps, not just what software came with the hardware.
If you apply this reasoning to iPhones, Jailbreaking should also increase the preceived value of an iPhone. Yet, jailbroken iPhones are the most vulnerable iPhones on the market, so it could actually be detrimental.
Not if people mess up their phones I suppose. Personally all I really want is proper full image backups, and a few little tweaks like the ability to turn off the stupid sound whenever it's plugged in and proper nighttime colour filtering.
From a security standpoint, allowing a user root access means allowing others to modify the underlying filesystem without validation. This means things like Samsung Pay become vulernable. Tripping the Knox counter is the only way to ensure that the software hasn't been modified by a malicious party. The majority that enjoys using Samsung Pay is a bigger than the minority that benefits from rooting. While the reasons you state are a probably factor, I think security is the biggest reason for the bit.
Right, which is why they can go ahead and trip it when you root, but there should be a way to completely factory reset, including resetting Knox. That said, we manage to make credit card payments online via rooted devices all the time, so I'm not sure the idea holds water that payments via a rooted device are completely impossible. (Still, I can certainly see that it might not be worth their time. The factory reset shouldn't be very difficult though.)
Apple their bricking last week and this is very much because of the liability shift October last year. If manufacturers cannot show their equipment is safe the merchant pays for the fraud which means merchants will not accept those means of payment as a result.
In an ideal world, root would be a built-in feature, which can only be accessed through some obscure code, like the developer settings. It would show a big scary warning, and it would have su app controls included. Rooting the phone could trip some bit, sure, but a full factory reset should reset it.
The only reasons I can see not to do this are 1) extra work supporting people who've messed up their phones. Easy enough to fix: we don't support phones while they are rooted. 2) allows removal of built-in apps. But really, just because you can't uninstall the stuff doesn't mean you have to use it, so is there really a benefit there? And 3) it would take a bit of development effort to add the feature. Perhaps the demand just isn't sufficient to justify it. But I find that hard to believe. Unless there's a 4) that there's a segment of the buying public that would actually be scared to learn a phone could be rooted or something?