If you have ever owned an HTC device, you will have an idea about what S-ON is and its importance. S-ON is a protection mechanism from HTC that checks for certain partitions of the device before booting. On the One X and previous HTC devices, S-ON posed a major problem since it did not allow users to flash a custom kernel directly from recovery, or downgrade to an older firmware. While it is possible to flash a custom kernel from the recovery on the One, the device still comes with S-ON.

Today, the developers behind Revolutionary, a very popular team known for their exploits for the HTC devices in 2011, released a developer preview of RevOne that makes it possible to achieve S-OFF on the One, and the Droid DNA. While S-ON on the One has not really hampered the developer community in any way, it will still come in handy. With an S-OFF One, one gains access to some of the protected partitions of the device including the boot, and radio. Depending on your level of knowledge, this can be either good or bad.

With an S-OFF One, you can unlock the bootloader without using HTC’s website, thus preserving your warranty. If you have already unlocked your bootloader, you can unlock the tampered warning that comes up on HBOOT mode. You can also change the CID of your device to CID1111, which is the developer CID, allowing you to flash any RUU without worrying about any compatibility issues. On the Droid DNA, S-OFF will allow you all the above things, along with the ability to flash custom kernels right from the recovery.

Since RevOne is still in developer preview, it’s a bit rough around the edges and may require multiple tries to work. Only proceed to S-OFF your HTC One or Droid DNA if you are well versed with ADB and Fastboot. Head over to this XDA thread for all the necessary instructions.