Motorola was not the first and it probably won’t be the last company that struggles with their customers over the issue. What seems to making users particularly angry with Motorola is that in early 2011 Motorola had promised to unlock the bootloaders of its smartphones and while it did unlock a few, a majority of Motorola phones remain locked.

The usual reasoning behind decisions for locking bootloaders from many manufacturers and carriers don’t really hold water in the eyes of customers. They want more freedom in trying alternative firmware for their phones; the respect and protection of DRM for the content saved on these phones has generally nothing to do with the decision to lock a bootloader on a given device, or just leaving it unlocked all together from the beginning. Many exploits on devices aimed at gaining root access to them are successful for both locked and unlocked bootloaders. Then, root access to the file system of a given device makes any protection scheme very questionable.

The Android community has a history of fighting against locked bootloaders in many phones from different manufacturers and carriers. The latest outcry originates in XDA-Developers community for the Motorola Droid RAZR. It was named ‘Movement of #OPMOSH (Operation: Make Ourselves Heard)’, and it has turned in to a rather heated discussion here.

We informed you already that ASUS will be unlocking the bootloader on its Transformer Prime with a special, proprietary unlocking tool of their own. This approach looks like an attempt of good compromise. While this step from ASUS is squarely directed at pleasing their customers, it might be not considered as a good precedent to influence Motorola decisions about their bootloader. Or HTC decisions. Or Acer’s decisions.

The post Motorola RAZR Owners Upset, Wanting Unlock appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

While dependence on WiFi when improving speed and accuracy of a GPS lock might be questionable, and we at MobileMag will be glad to have reports from our commenters on how this new firmware update worked for them, the ASUS responsiveness to customer complaints is very laudable. BGR adds to this that ASUS Eee Pad Transformer Prime gets Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich on  January 12th.

There is also good news for the community of developers of alternative, custom, modded ROMs for Transformer Prime. An official ASUS statement announced that their bootloader is locked “due to content providers” requirement for DRM client devices, which is understandable.  Asus went on to further announce that they plan to release an unlock too for the development community.  The only drawback to this, is according to Asus you may not be able to rent videos via Google, and the warranty would become void from Asus;

Regarding the bootloader, the reason we chose to lock it is due to content providers’ requirement for DRM client devices to be as secure as possible. ASUS supports Google DRM in order to provide users with a high quality video rental experience. Also, based on our experience, users who choose to root their devices risk breaking the system completely. However, we know there is demand in the modding community to have an unlocked bootloader. Therefore, ASUS is developing an unlock tool for that community. Please do note that if you choose to unlock your device, the ASUS warranty will be void, and Google video rental will also be unavailable because the device will be no longer protected by security mechanism.

If only someone could talk Barnes & Noble into a similar respect for their modders’ community, unlockable Nook Tablets might be selling so much better.

The post ASUS Transformer Prime To Get Android 4.0 ICS, Unlocked Bootloader And GPS Fix appeared first on Mobile Magazine.