Buyers of the Droid 3 that came out yesterday are reporting that it has a locked bootloader. In April Motorola's CEO Sanjay Jha said that Motorola would unlock bootloaders "across our portfolio of devices starting in late 2011, where channel and operator partners will allow it."
When Motorola reps revealed the Motorola Photon 4G with an unlocked bootloader, it lead to new conjecture that the Droid Bionic, with many of the same specs as the Motorola Photon 4G, would also have an unlocked bootloader.
The Motorola Photon is a close clone or sibling to the Droid Bionic. The major difference between the two is different carriers. Verizon has yet to announce that they will support smartphones without locked bootloaders.
When a leaked update to Android 2.3 Gingerbread for the Motorola Atrix appeared with an unlocked bootloader, bloggers regaled that the Droid Bionic would have an unlocked bootloader.
Usually smartphones have locked bootloaders. The bootloader
initiates the operating system, such as Android 2.3. If the
bootloader is locked, the smartphone can only use the operating system
that
comes with the phone.
The fact that the Droid 3's bootloader is locked could suggest that the Droid Bionic's bootloader will be locked also. Until an official announcement, guessing and speculation will continue as usual.
The Droid Bionic is expected to have a dual-core processor, an enhanced, large 4.5" touchscreen,
Android 2.3.4 Gingerbread, MotoBlur-style 3D home screen
carousel, connections to a laptop dock, a 1750mAh battery, HDMI-mirroring,1080p connection, a front-facing VGA webcam
8MP camera, 4G LTE, Wi-Fi,
Bluetooth, wireless data transfer and GPS. The release date is on track.
Droid 3 features include a dual-core processor, 4" 960 x 540 qHD touchscreen, an 8MP
camera (1080p video capture), a 5-row QWERTY keyboard, HDMI-out port, a front-facing
camera, Android 2.3 Gingerbread, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, MotoBlur, GPS, 16GB of storage on board, mobile hotspots (up to 5), and a
microSD card slot.
You can buy a Motorola Droid 3 online today and in stores on July 14.
Read all Droid 3, Motorola Photon Motorola Atrix, or Droid Bionic articles.