14 DAY TRIAL // Mobile phone maker Motorola Mobility seems determined to change its policy regarding the bootloaders of its devices, so as to offer more access to various device features and capabilities than before.
The latest move it made in this area was announced via twitter that it would plan on pushing the Motorola XOOM tablet PC to shelves with an unlockable bootloader.
“The XOOM will have an unlockable/relockable bootloader that will enable developers to access hardware for development,” a recent tweet from the company unveils.
This means that the new device arrives on shelves just the way the Nexus S and the Nexus One smartphones did: with an aim at enhancing the development of applications for Android.
However, end-users might not have too much to gain from this, though an unlocked bootloader would mean a lot for those who like to customize their devices more.
Undoubtedly, this feature would make the Motorola XOOM seem a little more appealing than it is at the moment, with a $799 price tag attached to it off contract.
For the time being, Motorola XOOM is the only device that the company released on shelves with this feature on board, clearly showing that it changed its heart when it comes to these things.
What remains to be seen is whether Motorola would adopt a similar policy for other handsets and tablet PCs it would bring to the market with Google's Android OS on board.
The latest such smartphone, Motorola ATRIX 4G, currently available for purchase at AT&T, was already rooted, but it comes with an encrypted bootloader, which would make it difficult to install custom ROMs on it.
Previously, Motorola said that it would be against having custom ROMs installed on its devices, though the company confirmed not too long ago that it no longer sees things that way.
This is the first Android 3.0 Honeycomb-based tablet PC to arrive on shelves, but more of them will start to land in the near future. We'll have to wait and see whether custom ROMs would also appear around the web.