I am getting reports by multiple people who say their 1.6 firmware Vectors were updated to 1.8.x, even robots that are not on any subscription, and even robots that were on the downgrade offered by DDL in the past.
Needless to say that was done without said user’s consent.
I guess they are doing this to prepare for the update to firmware version 2.0 and it does not come completely unexpected, since they said in the past they would update all robots and remove the downgrade option.
See my article on this from april 2022: It is clearly illegal to update the robots firmware without owner’s consent.
DDL may try to claim it is for “security reasons” (which it obviously is not), but they would have to proof that by giving details on the security problems and how they were fixed.
The problem should be solvable quite easily if DDL would just want to help the users: Provide a 1.6 firmware with update routines removed that owners then can iinstall via Vector Web Setup. But from the experiences with DDL in the past, they will not do that.
One has to wonder why they do this. The reasons given – too much effort to maintain multiple firmware versions – is utter bullshit. For people that want to stay on 1.6 they would not have to “maintain” anything. I fear that they will try to implement something in 2.0 to lock the robots down even more, to bind the users and their robots even tighter to them, so they can do as they please with robots they did not sell and they have no ownership or rights over at all.
We need a jailbreak. Urgently.