A warning to anyone wanting to root their HTC EVO 4G today: don"t accept Sprint"s OTA (over the air) update when you receive the phone. It will block access to systems that allow users to complete the rooting process. "Rooting" your phone is the process by which you give yourself full administrative rights over all of your phone"s functionality, much like jail breaking an iPhone. It"s a way for people to install custom versions of the pre-installed OS or to install unsupported third-party applications. More important to Sprint, though, is the ability to activate the 4G hotspot feature free of charge. After charging $30/month for the service, Sprint will likely do anything in its power to stop users from accessing the feature for free. The update, which, according to MobileCrunch, comes at the heels of last minute bug found in the functionality of the SD card reader in the EVO, doesn"t just fix the storage bug; it also restricts you from rooting your phone.
The tip comes from Unrevoked, one of the development teams responsible for the root package that was completed weeks before official release. The small amount of time it took developers to produce a working root package for the EVO was nothing short of staggering. Much of that likely is tied to the fact that Google gave out 1000 of these devices to developers at their annual I/O conference in May. Allow that much development talent free access to a device, and it"s no wonder that a root package was developed posthaste.
Unrevoked is vowing to dig in to the OTA and wrangle out a solution when they get access to it, but for now they urge potential rooters to reject the OTA when it hits the airwaves.