Android 7.0 Nougat will strictly enforce verified boot; phone won't start if software is corrupt

Android has introduced measures such as verifying your device’s boot process to ensure that rootkits or other forms of malware do not have a free run on your device. Android verified boot makes use of cryptographic integrity checking to detect changes to the OS. While users have been alerted about their system security since Marshmallow, with the Nougat OS, Android will strictly enforce verified boot. What this means is that if your device is found to have a corrupt boot image or partition, the device will not boot at all or will boot only with limited capacity, with user consent. This is a good move on Google’s part to ensure your device is free of any malware after you restart. But there is a catch here. According to the Android Developers blog, “Such strict checking, though, means that non-malicious data corruption, which previously would be less visible, could now start affecting process functionality more.” This means that devices with custom firmware may give some issues. According to Google devices with a locked bootloader will use this process to check for modifications. But this will not affect the Nexus line or phones that come with unlocked bootloaders.