Database Users

ADP1 incarnation of the Dream and copy protected apps

Newbie disclaimer: I've researched this but I have no practical experience with Android and the Dream. I'm trying not to be irritating but please bear with me if this has been asked a thousand times before (can't find anything useful by searching) or if I've got completely the wrong end of the stick.
I'm considering paying out for an ADP1. I'm concerned to hear that the ADP1 won't access copy-protected stuff on Android Market.
What I would be happy with - and this is my question - is the ability to choose to flash RC33 onto the ADP1 and have access to copy protected stuff, or flash ADP1.5 on and have the dev tools but not be able to access copy protected software.
My concern is that the restriction to Android Market is based on some kind of device identifier (if there is one) rather than based on the firmware running on it. I suppose I'm also asking if mainstream RC33 can be flashed onto an ADP1.
Is this the case? Have I got it all wrong? Is this flamebait? Should I give up and stick to engorging myself on Steve Jobs' manhood instead? Who knows.
Grateful for any help!

It will all work. You can flash almost any build and get paid apps. just look in the development section to get the builds and it will all be fine.
Sources: I did it myself

So just to confirm...
Thanks for your help - I just want to absolutely make sure that you're referring to copy-protected apps and not just paid apps that aren't copy-protected before I shell out. Is this the case?
Really appreciate the information!

synthclarion said:
Thanks for your help - I just want to absolutely make sure that you're referring to copy-protected apps and not just paid apps that aren't copy-protected before I shell out. Is this the case?
Really appreciate the information!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you flash a TMo US or TMo US based build then you will for all intents and purposes have a G1, along with all the benefits that entails (copy protected and paid apps from US Android Market). If you flash most any "modified" build like JF1.51 (US, UK, ADP1; doesn't matter) you will also have access to protected and paid apps.
Note that if you are not in the same region as the Android Market you want to access (e.g. you are in UK but you want to access the US store) then you need to use Market Enabler every time after you cold boot the phone, as Market detects what region you are in by reading the GSM properties that are initialized when your phone first boots up.

Courtesy of the two of you I now have a solid answer to my question and can trip and fall over an ADP1 without worrying about copy protection.
Thanks so much!

Any reasons not to "root" my Hero?

Any reasons not to "root" my Hero or dows it only has upsides?
If I set the cpe speed to max, would that make my Hero more "fragile", i.e. have a shorter life, etc?
Regards,
BTJ

Here I don't know if it's the superuser apk or just the rooting, but when I launch contacts once fully rooted, com.android.acore crashes when I launch contacts. Logs don't say anything useful to me

As far as I'm aware, you will not be able to download copy protected apps from the market (paid or not) if you have a rooted device - at least that was true of the ADP phone (Developers G1).
Regards,
Dave

I've been able to download protected apps once rooted.

You lose your guarentee

foxmeister said:
As far as I'm aware, you will not be able to download copy protected apps from the market (paid or not) if you have a rooted device - at least that was true of the ADP phone (Developers G1).
Regards,
Dave
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
hi foxmeister,
could you be more explicit please cause i was able to download app from the market even after rooting my phone. thx

I have no issues buying paid apps on my rooted phone. Because I am on a carrier or in a country that shouldn't have access to paid apps yet, I just have to insert the SIM card from a carrier where paid apps is supported and connect to Market over WiFi. Alternatively, being rooted means that you can also install Market Enabler, which is a 3rd party app that allows paid apps to show up regardless

Sawkes said:
You lose your guarentee
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No. You dont. You can always un-root the phone so its all good.

deeren said:
hi foxmeister,
could you be more explicit please cause i was able to download app from the market even after rooting my phone. thx
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As I understand it, the issue relates to those paid apps which are "copy protected" and not all paid apps (all copy protected apps are paid apps, but not all paid apps are copy protected!).
Googles DRM scheme is to essentially to just install apps marked as copy protected to an area of the phone a regular user can't see. If you have root, you could then copy off the app and redistribute it, so they put a block on phones with root access being able to access copy protected apps.
Certainly there were lots of complaints that developers with ADP phones (essentially pre-rooted Developers G1) could not download their own copy protected apps from the market.
It may well be that the market app can't detect certain methods of rooting the phone, so perhaps this is not an issue any more.
Regards,
Dave

minogue said:
No. You dont. You can always un-root the phone so its all good.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can only un-root your phone if it is actually working. If you want to return your phone because it doesn't power on any more (for example) you wouldn't be able to un-root it prior to return.
However, I doubt that HTC would spend too much time looking at whether or not a dead phone was rooted, and would probably just replace the unit and refurbish the old one.
Regards,
Dave

How homebrew can be achieved in WP8

Windows Phone 8 technically only allows apps to be installed from the marketplace.
However, Microsoft pretty much has left us with an avenue that would allow us to easily create our own custom 3rd party marketplaces.
With Windows Phone 8, Microsoft has introduced the "company app store" concept. This is originally intended to allow companies to easily distribute LOB applications to its employees.
http://www.windowsphone.com/en-US/business/custom-hub?wa=wsignin1.0
Note how the whole system pretty much relies on a certificate. Anyone with the certificate can sideload applications signed with said certificate.
Now this gives me the idea, why can't the homebrew community purchase their own certificate, and use it to create a 3rd party homebrew marketplace?

the_tyrant said:
Windows Phone 8 technically only allows apps to be installed from the marketplace.
However, Microsoft pretty much has left us with an avenue that would allow us to easily create our own custom 3rd party marketplaces.
With Windows Phone 8, Microsoft has introduced the "company app store" concept. This is originally intended to allow companies to easily distribute LOB applications to its employees.
http://www.windowsphone.com/en-US/business/custom-hub?wa=wsignin1.0
Note how the whole system pretty much relies on a certificate. Anyone with the certificate can sideload applications signed with said certificate.
Now this gives me the idea, why can't the homebrew community purchase their own certificate, and use it to create a 3rd party homebrew marketplace?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Let's bump this up, shall we? (Since I'm not going to bother making my own thread, if nobody is going to reply to it)
Here's what I've learned through my evaluation of the company app system. The requirements are simple:
-Company Dev Center account
--Requires that you have a legally registered company (e.g. an LLC), which is verified by Symantec
--$99 plus whatever fees are associated with the LLC
-Symantec Signing certificate
--Requires the company dev center account
--$299
This is actually much less than I thought, as I was expecting this to be limited to the enterprise. Rather, anyone with chump change and some legal papers can get a certificate that allows anyone to sideload apps.
The legal papers is where it gets complicated, unfortunately. If it were just the money, I'd honestly consider a fundraiser to start a homebrew store. The certificate simply needs to be used to sign the enrollment tokens (which are just provxml documents with the cert in them), the enrollment token needs to be distributed to the masses, and then the cert is used to sign all the 'brew. It could be setup pretty easily with an online system for registering devs, uploading xaps, and having them signed, for example.
But the requirement that I have an actual company makes things really complicated; I'm not sure how much verification Symantec does, but I'm under the impression a security firm like expects legal registration, which is not something I personally have, nor something I particularly want (LLC taxes are pretty steep these days)
So, here's the question. Does anyone out there have a "company" dev center account, or has played with "company apps", and is willing to experiment to see if this system would be at all useful for homebrew?
Curious to see if there's any interest. In theory, a WP8 Cydia-like app could be developed very easily

this sounds very interesting, though I do not have a company...yet. Does it have to be an LLC? I am thinking of starting an IT/computer repair company here in my town as a side business, not 100% sure yet, but considering it.

Jaxbot, you sly fox .
That's a great idea.

A couple issues to consider...
Might want to read through the WP Store T&C carefully. While those may very well be the only requirements to get a company account, I wouldn't be surprised if there are much more in the terms to keep one. In other words, distributing your app to non-employees could get your company account banned/disabled/revoked. I haven't done the leg work on this so not sure.
The VeriSign cert you get will likely have requirements to be maintained by a single person or group. Publishing the private key would almost certainly (and quickly) get this revoked. So you would either need to someone to manually sign/publish all the apps or figure out an automated process. That should be possible but would likely take a good bit of work to get going.
My $.02.

Jaxbot, did you get a WP8 device and if so, what model did you get ? I know you were trying to get one.
What would be interesting is to see what type of apps you can deploy with this. Could something like this open a full unlock or Interop unlock becase the corporate account could get those type of pemissions to their devices ?
Is this tyed to the Active Directory in anyway, knowing Microsoft each user might need an account in the Active Directory to be able to use the "Company Dev center"? There could be a lot of limits depending how you can connect to the server that runs it.
Do they have a test version ? Maybe that can be used in this case, just to see if it works and could use a deeper investment to get this working. If you could get me a full unlock from this, I surely would pay up a little for it.

DavidinCT said:
What would be interesting is to see what type of apps you can deploy with this. Could something like this open a full unlock or Interop unlock becase the corporate account could get those type of pemissions to their devices ?
Is this tyed to the Active Directory in anyway, knowing Microsoft each user might need an account in the Active Directory to be able to use the "Company Dev center"? There could be a lot of limits depending how you can connect to the server that runs it.
Do they have a test version ? Maybe that can be used in this case, just to see if it works and could use a deeper investment to get this working. If you could get me a full unlock from this, I surely would pay up a little for it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I believe there are a few things you can do with corp apps that can't be done with regular ones but there's not much. Definitely not full interop unlock (at least not directly).
No. It's not tied to AD at all.
I don't think there's a "test" version. The $400 it would cost is chump change for any legit company. Microsoft could waive the $99 fee for someone they're working with but you'll still need the $299 cert and Symantec/VeriSign isn't gonna give that to you for free.

I'm just an end-user, but YEAH! Dev-unlock: $99. Full unlock: priceless. Definitely would pay a bit.

piaqt said:
I'm just an end-user, but YEAH! Dev-unlock: $99. Full unlock: priceless. Definitely would pay a bit.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This wouldn't be a full unlock. It would just allow devs to publish apps to an alternate marketplace and users that are not dev unlocked could easily download them.

RustyGrom said:
A couple issues to consider...
Might want to read through the WP Store T&C carefully. While those may very well be the only requirements to get a company account, I wouldn't be surprised if there are much more in the terms to keep one. In other words, distributing your app to non-employees could get your company account banned/disabled/revoked. I haven't done the leg work on this so not sure.
The VeriSign cert you get will likely have requirements to be maintained by a single person or group. Publishing the private key would almost certainly (and quickly) get this revoked. So you would either need to someone to manually sign/publish all the apps or figure out an automated process. That should be possible but would likely take a good bit of work to get going.
My $.02.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Correct. The ToS needs to be really well understood. Some people seem to imply that users outside the company are okay to enroll, but I'm not sure. However, I'm not really sure if the enrollment even touches MSFT's servers at all, and if T&C violations would cause a problem. Something that needs to be looked into. If it's a definite breach of T&C, I say it's not worth it. My $0.02
DavidinCT said:
Jaxbot, did you get a WP8 device and if so, what model did you get ? I know you were trying to get one.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Unfortunately no, all my research has been on the emulator. All my attempts to get my hands on a WP8 have proven fruitless so far.
What would be interesting is to see what type of apps you can deploy with this. Could something like this open a full unlock or Interop unlock becase the corporate account could get those type of pemissions to their devices ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, definitely not full unlock. Interop, I'm not sure. The apps are signed and installed, so I have no idea if ID_CAPs are limited. An app like Folders could definitely be deployed, though, with the new WP8 apis.
Is this tyed to the Active Directory in anyway, knowing Microsoft each user might need an account in the Active Directory to be able to use the "Company Dev center"? There could be a lot of limits depending how you can connect to the server that runs it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, you can enroll within active directory, it says that in the instructions.
Do they have a test version ? Maybe that can be used in this case, just to see if it works and could use a deeper investment to get this working. If you could get me a full unlock from this, I surely would pay up a little for it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
RustyGrom said:
This wouldn't be a full unlock. It would just allow devs to publish apps to an alternate marketplace and users that are not dev unlocked could easily download them.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What he said. Basically, it would give us homebrew apps that fit into the limitations of the SDK, but not necessarily the limitations of the certification requirements. Folders, Themes, etc. could likely be built. Apps such as CacheClearer and Tweaks, probably not, but again, I have no experimental research on this yet.

This presentation from BUILD (http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2012/2-014) should answer most of your questions. The phone does 'phone home' to Microsoft to check the publishers and apps installed. Also, capabilities are limited to "same as standard marketplace apps" however the 'company store' app can install apps and manage apps that have been published through it.

RustyGrom said:
This presentation from BUILD (http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2012/2-014) should answer most of your questions. The phone does 'phone home' to Microsoft to check the publishers and apps installed. Also, capabilities are limited to "same as standard marketplace apps" however the 'company store' app can install apps and manage apps that have been published through it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
55 minutes, exciting Thanks for that, though, clarifies a lot. In that case, then, it sounds like the company store app won't really have much useful information for us, as it sounds almost more restricted than I had originally hoped. In that case, then, "company apps" is probably not a worthwhile route to peruse. My 2 cents.

Terms and conditions for a company account
a. Internal Distribution. Subject to the terms of this Addendum and the Application Provider Agreement,
you may make Enterprise Applications internally available to your Employees. Enterprise Applications
may not be made available to consumers, other companies or the general public, except for vendors or
companies that are under contract with you to develop or test any Enterprise Applications. You are
responsible for any unauthorized distribution of the Certificate Software and Enterprise Applications
outside of the terms and conditions of this Addendum.
b. No Alternative Marketplace. You will not use the Certificate Software to: (i) make paid Applications that
are offered in the general Windows Phone Store available to your Employees; and (ii) make available
Enterprise Applications in a manner that harms the Windows Phone Store as determined by Microsoft
Yeah, MSFT thought about that idea WAY ahead already.
Termination. If you breach the terms of this Addendum and/or the Application Provider Agreement, Microsoft
may (a) revoke the certificates provided by Certificate Software; and/or (b) terminate your Enterprise Account immediately.
If that happens, every app installed will fail to work a day later.

Well it was a good thought guys. A damn good thought..

Since WP8 supports MMC, can we side load any temporary OS to read or execute from anything from it!?

nitin88g said:
Since WP8 supports MMC, can we side load any temporary OS to read or execute from anything from it!?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
MMC? And seriously, go start another thread! Do NOT thread hijack! I can't stand it, seriously

MMC - Multimedia Card.

I am a MCSE, I wounder if there is a verson to learn how use it. Maybe they have a traning version so I could learn how to get it working on domain. This would be nice if I can try this and get a interop unlock by setting it up on my own domain..

DavidinCT said:
I am a MCSE, I wounder if there is a verson to learn how use it. Maybe they have a traning version so I could learn how to get it working on domain. This would be nice if I can try this and get a interop unlock by setting it up on my own domain..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not possible. The apps you deploy will not get interop privileges.

New to Rooting/Droid?

hello, i am new to the rooting scene and droid. i have the AT&T S4 and i would like to remove all this crap that AT&T loads on the phone. i would also like to know that if i root my S4 can i use my sdcard to install apps to since the default "8gb" might not be enough so i bought a 32gb sdcard. please advise, i don't even know if this is the purpose of rooting a phone or not, sorry it its a dumb question.
Thanks

Well you're not new to xda. This belongs in Q&A, not development.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using Tapatalk 2

how do i move this to the correct area. i am not new to the forum new to droid. i many years ago i had a htc 6800 for verizon i used to "cook" roms for.
plwalsh88 said:
Well you're not new to xda. This belongs in Q&A, not development.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using Tapatalk 2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

LilSnoop40 said:
how do i move this to the correct area. i am not new to the forum new to droid. i many years ago i had a htc 6800 for verizon i used to "cook" roms for.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can click on the triangle in the upper right corner of the post, and report to a moderator for moving/maintenance. I already reported it for you.

Please read forum rules before posting
Questions and help issues go in Q&A
Thread moved
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Development is only for developers to post work

LilSnoop40 said:
hello, i am new to the rooting scene and droid. i have the AT&T S4 and i would like to remove all this crap that AT&T loads on the phone. i would also like to know that if i root my S4 can i use my sdcard to install apps to since the default "8gb" might not be enough so i bought a 32gb sdcard. please advise, i don't even know if this is the purpose of rooting a phone or not, sorry it its a dumb question.
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It seems nobody has answered this, only moved your thread around. ^_^
In short, rooting just allows you to do things to your phone that normally would be against the manufacturer's/carrier's intent. One such example would be to remove carrier-added bloatware that is otherwise not removable. I personally use root for the following:
Titanium Backup Pro: This would let me backup my apps AND data for each app. Google does a decent job at backing up most my apps, but if I "sideload" an app (install from a different source other than the Play Store), I can back it up also. Plus Google doesn't always backup the DATA part of an app, which can be important for me (e.g. an authenticator, or RSA token for work). In addition, TiBu also allows you to easily "freeze" the bloatware, which prohibits it from running or showing up anywhere. This is usually a better option than completely uninstalling it, because it's usually much easier to recover from de-bloating the wrong bloat.
AdFree: An advertisement blocker. Typically Root is required to do this properly, as it modifies the "hosts" file on your android. In the end, it overrides your phone's DNS such that when an app or webpage requests data from a known advertising website, the phone will redirect the request to "nothing", and the ad will not show. Use with discretion - some people frown upon this because they "lose" revenue from the ads that are not shown. I won't comment further, fearing I'll start a verbal war here.
Greenify: Allows you to put certain apps to sleep while they are not being actively used. I use it for Facebook Messenger, because I've found that if this app is allowed to run in the background, it kills my battery. I leave Facebook running in the background, so that I'll still get notifications of new FB messages. Seems to work out for me well.
"Some Tethering Applications or Methods": Some of the better ways to tether/hotspot from your phone will require root. Again, I'll leave this one lie. Personally, I rarely use it, but I've been in a bind before without internet access, and I've needed to use it. I don't want to lose my unlimited data with AT&T, so I really have no choice to add a tethering plan anymore. Regardless, it's nice to know I have it available as an emergency option.
While I could recommend the root, I also have to warn you that this will effectively void your Warranty. There's ways (read through the forums here) to "hide" the root, by using SuperSU instead. But just be forewarned.
EDIT: Here's the link to the thread with the video - How to Root & Remove Unlock Icon & Unroot

First thing's first; learn correct terminology. The Galaxy S4 is certainly not a Droid phone. "Droid" is a term used by Verizon to attempt to label and unify their line of Android phones. "Android" is the name of Google's open-source mobile OS.

LilSnoop40, I got your private message, but I'm going to post some stuff here on this thread for everyone to see, just in case there are others that need some help with the rooting as well. Here goes:
The actual part of rooting your device is not too difficult using "Motochopper". The hardest part is just getting ADB setup and your phone recognized in ADB. For the Motochopper root and a basic outline of how to do the root, see this thread:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2252248
Some recommendations:
- Be sure the phone is in USB Debugging mode. You'll have to enable the Developer options first. Let me know if you need help with this part. IT involves repeatedly clicking something in Settings to enable Dev options, and then there's just a checkbox to check after that to enable the debugging mode. This is "Step 3" in that thread I linked.
- Be sure you have the latest samsung drivers for your phone. There's a few threads around here that have JUST the drivers, and not the whole Samsung Kies software package (completely unnecessary!). If you can't find them, I'll see if I can search around and provide a link. This is "Step 2" of the thread.
- If you're in Debugging Mode, the drivers should also being installed for the "ADB device" - I forget the actual name of it, but it's a device on your computer that says something about ADB. This will only appear when you have the phone in debugging mode of course.
- super-important: When you run the root/hack/motochopper thing, you'll be prompted on your device to allow the ADB connection. It will say something about accepting a certificate or something like that. If you don't respond in 10 seconds, it will deny it, and the root will fail. This is "step 6" on the thread I linked.
Also, if you manage to do all this successfully, you'll see that the root was successful, and you'll have a new app on your phone: Superuser. This new app is what allows you to approve root access by other applications (more-or-less). A side-effect of having this app installed will be that the system will detect the presence of root, and when you boot your phone, it will show an open padlock and "custom". If you follow my basic instructions in this post, you can get rid of that.
Feel free to ask for any clarifications, etc. I'll try to be as helpful as possible.

First android phone I've owned since coming from years of iPhones, does the recent update that I downloaded affect the ability to root the device? I keep seeing people talking about versions but I don't see the numbers that they are saying so not sure what to look at, or if it matters at all? Will this work on any quadcore S4?

Skattered said:
First android phone I've owned since coming from years of iPhones, does the recent update that I downloaded affect the ability to root the device? I keep seeing people talking about versions but I don't see the numbers that they are saying so not sure what to look at, or if it matters at all? Will this work on any quadcore S4?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Short answer: No, the update won't affect your ability to root.
What carrier do you have? For the basic model number, you can read the label that's under your battery. The AT&T version, for example, will read: "SGH-I337". You can also get very specific information about your phone, the model number, build number, etc. bu doing the following: Go to Settings -> More... (The "Build number" is probably the numbers your looking for.)
If I'm not mistaken, the Motochopper root works on all I337 models?

Okay sweet, it is a 1337 (guess the signature tells me that too) and its on at&t
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using Tapatalk 2

Removing/disabling features of GS4 without rooting/flashing ROM

Hi all,
I am part of an IT Client team and we are trying to prep for the deployment of the GS4. The S3 is our current standard and was received pretty well, but some of the features are overwhelming to our sales force. Is there any way that we can disable some of these features perhaps even automatically via ADB and a USB cable?
Also, we are wanting to have our company app preinstalled. Currently it resides in the marketplace but apparently some of our sales force don't understand the Play Store and that they actually have to go find the app and install it. Is there a way to automatically sideload our app? We were also discussing a launcher like launcherpro with an xml file included that contains default locations for icons, data, etc.
Has anyone tried this before? Please advise with ideas/suggestions. We don't want to flash a ROM generated by our company because that would require too much overhead on our part to manage because thousands of phones need to me maintained. We also don't want to root the NatureUI/Touchwiz stock rom that comes with the S4.

metroidnemesis13 said:
Hi all,
I am part of an IT Client team and we are trying to prep for the deployment of the GS4. The S3 is our current standard and was received pretty well, but some of the features are overwhelming to our sales force. Is there any way that we can disable some of these features perhaps even automatically via ADB and a USB cable?
Also, we are wanting to have our company app preinstalled. Currently it resides in the marketplace but apparently some of our sales force don't understand the Play Store and that they actually have to go find the app and install it. Is there a way to automatically sideload our app? We were also discussing a launcher like launcherpro with an xml file included that contains default locations for icons, data, etc.
Has anyone tried this before? Please advise with ideas/suggestions. We don't want to flash a ROM generated by our company because that would require too much overhead on our part to manage because thousands of phones need to me maintained. We also don't want to root the NatureUI/Touchwiz stock rom that comes with the S4.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm not quite sure about disabling features on the stock ROM. I know there's an Easy mode that can be used for first time smartphone owners. As far as preloading your company app, you can write a script to do so. However, that requires you to manually enable developer mode and USB debugging on every single phone. I'm not sure how practical this is, considering you have so many phones. A better way might be to send a mass text message or email to each of the phones with the play store link to the app. Once again, considering the employees might be unfamiliar with the phone, a text would probably be the simple way to go. I would use side-loading as a way of installing your app in the event that someone had an issue with the text. I believe you'd run into the same issues with preinstalling LauncherPro and associated xml files. It doesn't seem there's a way you can properly deploy what you need to w/o going hands on on all units.

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Depending on what functionality you would like to disable, you can go to the App Manager heading in the Settings menu, and disable system apps you don't use. In terms of disabling parts of functionality in certain system apps, that probably wouldn't be possible on stock unrooted devices.

metroidnemesis13 said:
apparently some of our sales force don't understand the Play Store
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
...
I'm not sure how to solve your problem. I was going to say once you are willing to ADB and USB debug you might as well cook up the ROM the way you want it and blast it on with Odin.
However, one thing to be concerned about is the OTA software updates that you probably want your users to be able to receive. If you mod the stock software (either with ADB or a modded ROM) in such a way to make the phone status 'Custom' your users won't be able to get updates and bug fixes from Samsung.
I would just try to hold their hand through getting the app installed (ie. email them a link to it when they get a phone so all they have to do is tap the link and hit install) and leave the rest of the phone alone.