One of the things I have despised about the iPhone from day one has been the locked down nature of the device. Google promised to provide an alternative solution that would be more open in the form of Android. Sadly ever since Androids initial release on the G1 handset manufacturers and carriers have been locking Android down more and more. It seems this locking down has gone to the next level on the new HTC G2.
When you reboot the G2 all the contents of /system are rewritten to factory defaults. This means any root acquisition is temporary until the phone is rebooted. The good folks over at XDA Developers have a thread talking about rooting the G2 and currently the issue mentioned in this post.
I must say this is a little ridiculous. It’s understandable that manufacturers don’t want to support Android devices that have been rooted. A lot can go wrong with you root a device including turning a fancy phone into an expensive paper weight. Reasons like that make a policy of voiding warranties on rooted phones likely and understandable. With that said if somebody is willing to void their warranty to root a phone they should be left to doing it.
This behavior seems to countermand one of the bigger selling points of Android which is the fact it’s not as locked down as the iPhone. Frankly as Android becomes more and more locked down I’m failing to see much reason why people should chose it over the iPhone. Currently it seems the most open phone on the market is the Palm Pre which could completely change if HP decide to remove the ability to easily activate developer mode on future devices.