HTC, the company behind some of the world’s most popular smartphones, just announced on their Facebook page that they are changing their bootloader policy, and effectively embracing the homebrew and custom hack/mod community.
Many of HTC’s early smartphones were known as heavily customizable devices, with sites such as XDA-Developers.com dedicated to researching aftermarket firmware, tweaks, and other modification. By default, most devices on the market have a security feature to only allow their own signed code to run- this is the function of the bootloader.
Traditionally, (read: until now) everytime a new device would be released, the brilliant minds at XDA and other similar forums spend a lot of time finding a way to get around HTC’s bootloader security, and over the last couple of years HTC has responded by making it exceedingly more difficult.
HTC appears to be changing their tune, however. Claiming that they received a lot of complaints from customers about locking them out, they announced that it was time to rethink their policy. Their announcement was to effectively STOP locking down the bootloader, and allow users to do what they want with their device. At their own risk, I’m sure.
So, what does this mean for the crop of phones about to be released such as the Evo 3D or HTC Sensation? Is this effective immediately, or for the next wave of devices in development? What about current phone models?
Whatever the case may be, this is a bold move on HTC’s part, and one I hope others in the industry take note of (I’m looking at YOU, Moto and Apple).
[…] week, we posted about HTC’s new bootloader policy, in which HTC took a surprisngly refreshing stance against locking users out of their software. […]
[…] HTC has been in the mood to listen to their customers lately, and the decision was reversed in less than 24 hours, potentially turning all that hostility into […]