It goes without saying that each time there is a new batch of hardware that hits the market, you can be sure that hackers will be there to try to tinker and find their way around the software which has been loaded, prodding and looking out for any kind of potential “weakness”, so to speak. Hence, the first batch of Android Wear smartwatches that arrived did not have too much time before they were rooted and had their bootloaders unlocked in order for custom ROMS to be installed. The new Moto 360 from Motorola proved to be rather resilient in its own right, and since it relies on wireless charging, it is rather challenging to find a method to plug in a USB cable so that USB debugging can be enabled.
The Moto 360 does come with Bluetooth debugging support however, but that’s about it. Still, where there is a will, there is a way, and a certain Daniel Padilla managed to figure out just how one is able to come up with a custom cable. This custom cable will then be hooked up to the unused USB pins on the Moto 360, and getting the bootloader unlocked along the way.
This opens up the door for the installation of custom firmware, allowing one to alter the way the Moto 360 behaves, and also lets users install a custom recovery which will be a whole lot easier to backup, restore, or to flash software updates manually.
Filed in . Read more about Bootloader, Moto 360 and Motorola.