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Flashing your device does not void your statutory warranty - FSFE Legal.
on: 2012-11-06
One of the main concerns of Android users is related with its warranty: whether flashing their device will void the phone assurance.
- FSFE Legal team has analysed this issue and the answer, if the consumer bought it inside the EU, is no.
- The consumer does not loose the obligatory 2-year warranty on the device just because the device is flashed.
- "A good test to see if it is the software’s fault is to flash it back with stock firmware/OS and see if the problem persists. If it does, it is not a software-caused problem. If it is not possible to revert it to stock software any more, it is also not a software-caused defect. There are very few hardware defects that are caused by software".
Matija Šuklje, FSFE Legal Coordinator and Carlo Piana, FSFE’s General Counsel state in their article that consumers can flash or root their devices, so to say modifying its software, without loosing the two years warranty of the good, provided by the EU law. Aimed to answer people's concerns about their warranty rights, most of them made during the Free Your Android workshopss, which FSFE is organizing, these two lawyers have written a joint blog post to clear it up.