Oh well, it ain't happenin' here, is it?

So, I've been lurking on this board for more than a year now, waiting expectantly and with the highest hopes for some kind of news that my AT&T Xenon had at long last been cracked and might be hackable.  This needlessly crippled and horribly frustrating device very BADLY needs to be "user-modified," if for nothing else than teaching shamelessly greedy AT&T a lesson in giving customers what THEY want instead of what Big Brother allows. 

Well, I've pretty much given up any hope here that there's anyone who really has any serious interest in accomplishing this, let alone any meaningful expertise to get it done.  Not that I'm capable of doing this, mind you, because I couldn't even hope to know where to start.  I'm simply a lowly user with just enough knowledge to know what I'm missing, but I'm no "techie."  Still, I've been strung along here, hoping against hope that some wise and determined hacker would eventually crack this phone into submission.  Looks like AT&T and LG are coming out the unchallenged and untouched winners here. 

This outcome is really too bad and so sad.  There are so many things that I hoped could be unlocked -- from the useless GPS feature that turns out to be little more than a money-maker for greedy AT&T (wouldn't it be so nice if Google Maps could be made to locate itself, as it is able to do on so many other devices?), to the embarrassingly stupid engineering that makes it impossible to archive important text messages or to conveniently save web pages from a third-party browser like Bolt or Opera.  The error messages say the phone is locked down in those cases to prevent security risks, but why won't the carrier (to which I'm paying literally thousands of dollars over the life of my contract) simply allow me to decide what I want to save to my own frickin' phone??? 

Beyond all that, if what you hackers have reported here is true, some of the "secret" archiving being done by this phone is a truly SCARY violation of all our privacy. It's an unforgivable security threat (not the phony kind that AT&T invents to block its customers from doing what they want), and I think it borders on downright CRIMINAL!  How can it be that this device is secretly saving every single PRIVATE search we're doing, or that it apparently is disregarding our "delete" commands and misleading us to BELIEVE that we're wiping text messages completely from the phone.  If it really is somehow saving everything in secret files, not only are we not being told about this, but officially we have no way to access or protect OUR OWN PRIVATE DATA! 

DO I UNDERSTAND CORRECTLY THAT IF WE HAVE TO RETURN OUR XENON TO AT&T FOR SERVICING OR REPLACEMENT THAT IT COULD BE POSSIBLE TO ACCESS OUR MOST PRIVATE DATA WITHOUT OUR AUTHORIZATION OR KNOWLEDGE??

For all these reasons and more, the Xenon DESERVES to be opened up to full CUSTOMER access, to give us users full control over our own data and all key features such as GPS.  There is no reason that I can see for a service provider to be able to so badly cripple our use of our own phones.   I wish success to everyone who seriously wants to accomplish this worthy goal, but time's running out.  It's really not going to do much good if the phones have already gone obsolete, and/or reached the end of their useful life.  I guess AT&T and LG have proven that they're the masters of their universe. 

Ah well. Lesson learned. For my future service, I'll just have to reject any phone or company that treats its customers with such contempt, as nothing more than money machines to be taken for a ride.  And based on the lack of any real progress or determination here, I guess I just can't count on having future phones hacked, since these companies have proven themselves so successful at preventing ANY effective tampering with this one.  (Which is simply another way of saying USER PREFERENCE AND CUSTOMIZATION.)

Thanks anyway, guys...

While it did sound like a nice rant, complaining here really doesn't help...

For what you want, you'll need to stick to either:
a) UNbranded phones
or
b) Phones that are known de-brandable and hackable

Unfortunately that usually means paying significantly more for the phone, as the carriers subsidize much of the phone cost.  Personally I still don't believe cell phones should have MSRPs in the $300+ range, but I don't make those rules, and I surely wouldn't be able to build myself a cell phone.

As for personal data, it's the same everywhere - hard drives, phones, memory cards/sticks... All can have data recovered from them, unless maybe you incinerate them, shred them to bits, or blend them.

Unlike the Vu and some other LG phones, the GR500/Xenon is based on a Sony Ericsson mobile platform (often referred to as SE, EMP, and for LG phones, LG 3G) which is much more difficult to hack due to the SE "CID" security which changes from generation to generation.

The security used on the GR500/Xenon appears to be CID54.  The newest level that has been cracked is only CID53.

Long story short, I don't think we're going to see a cracked Xenon for quite a while, if ever.  But hey, the phone was close to free for my first, and free for my second.  So by the time it gets cracked, I'll likely be shopping for a new phone anyway.

I'm definitely thinking my next phone will be Android... maybe a HTC model.  If not Android, at least something that is known-hackable before I get it.

And if you still care...

We now have access.
http://www.lg-xenon.com/lg-xenon-modifications/let-the-hacking-begin!/