14 DAY TRIAL // Taiwanese mobile phone maker HTC Corporation has made a rather interesting move with the latest handsets it delivered to the market, through locking them against the loading of custom cooked ROMs (their bootloaders are locked).
HTC ThunderBolt came to shelves this way, and the same applies to the HTC Incredible S, the latest reports around the Internet point out.
This shows a trend that might soon include the rest of the company's newly released Android-based mobile phones too, some suggest.
While the HTC ThunderBolt was easily rooted, with superuser access gained the very same day it became available for purchase, the loading of ROMs on it was discovered to have been locked.
Basically, as long as the ROM does not come from HTC, users would find it difficult to install it on their devices.
As far as the HTC Incredible S is concerned, things seem to be exactly the same, with the device allowing only for the flashing of software that comes from the handset vendor itself.
Up until now, HTC allowed users to root and load custom ROMs on their devices as they pleased, but it seems that the company changed its heart on the matter.
According to a recent article on Android Police, the company explained the move saying that it is tailoring its devices to fit the interests of wireless carriers.
The explanation comer rather as a surprise, since the Incredible S is being sold as an unlocked GSM device at the moment. The phone is reportedly headed for Verizon Wireless as the DROID Incredible 2.
There is a great chance that HTC is trying to avoid having a lot of devices being sent back bricked as the result of unsuccessful custom ROMs installation processes, though HTC wouldn't admit to that.
Of course, this is not the only company which adopts such a policy on their mobile phones, though it remains to be seen how would things turn out in the end for the modding community.