A year ago the community grew tired of locked bootloaders and bloat and we made it known. Through petitions, twitter bombs, emails, calls, and facebook posts we let it be known that we the user want our bootloaders unlocked. But now that its here do we really realize what we asked for. The OG Droid was the first android device on the nation's largest carrier. Along with the major ad campaign the og droid propelled android into mainstream. Where iphone had jailbreak android had root and you had people who were far from being a techy now researching and learning about coding because of the droid. The flip side of that was fears and concerns about "bricked" phones. The community was still young and learning and early many felt their devices were bricked when in reality it wasnt. This resulted in devices being sent in for repairs that was unnecessary. As android continued to grow in popularity vzw and oems looked to ways to decrease the number of unnecessary repairs as a result of modding the device. Oems turned to locked bootloaders with motorola leading the pack with encryption that has resulted in the communities frustrations with locked devices. Htc started slowly easing toward the movement of motorola only to find that the heat motorola was getting could be bad for business. Motorola's decision to encrypt their device isnt all about raging war against the modding community. They saw a struggling rim market and wanted away to bring those business customers over to motorola. Business customers need a secured device and motorola hearing rumblings of potential malware on the android market this new could potentially scare away potential business customers. Being that business customers make up a larger and more financial than the modders it makes sense for motorola to choose business model over modders.
Many of us want the choice to remove those locks and we say "let's do like htc" may not truly understand what they are asking for. Htc allows for unlocking through their website but once you unlock it you own that device. Once you unlock your device you can never truly make it the way it was.
If motorola goes down this road people may not like how it will go. See once you unlock it its yours so if the power button stops working after having it 2 days and it says "relocked" then the oem can charge you for the repairs. In reality motorola will charge the carrier and how verizon chooses to handle that will based on how much money they lose. If verizon starts seeing a loss from the modding community then they will take action like they did against unauthorized tethering. I hope motorola takes the route of htc but I also realize that the community will have to better educate its members on modding, how to recover the device, and if modding is truly for them.
Many of us want the choice to remove those locks and we say "let's do like htc" may not truly understand what they are asking for. Htc allows for unlocking through their website but once you unlock it you own that device. Once you unlock your device you can never truly make it the way it was.
If motorola goes down this road people may not like how it will go. See once you unlock it its yours so if the power button stops working after having it 2 days and it says "relocked" then the oem can charge you for the repairs. In reality motorola will charge the carrier and how verizon chooses to handle that will based on how much money they lose. If verizon starts seeing a loss from the modding community then they will take action like they did against unauthorized tethering. I hope motorola takes the route of htc but I also realize that the community will have to better educate its members on modding, how to recover the device, and if modding is truly for them.