Motorola Confirms Locked Bootloader Not Going Anywhere, Hopefully Consumers Go Somewhere Else

You may have seen the video from CES 2011 showing off the impressive Motorola Atrix phone, complete with desktop and laptop docking accessories that essentially transformed the phone into a computer. Motorola has always locked down their bootloaders, meaning that the development community (Cyanogenmod, XDA developers, etc...) could not load their own custom ROMS, or at least would have a very hard time doing (i'm told that the droid X and droix 2 received custom ROMs after a lot of effort of cracking Motorola's bootloader). They have just confirmed that they won't be changing this policy any time soon, saying over youtube 


"@tdcrooks if you want to do custom roms, then buy elsewhere, we'll continue with our strategy that is working thanks." 


So i'm going to stick to my regular motto of never buying anything Motorola. I will gladly buy a phone from someone like LG, HTC, or Samsung. The Motorola XT720 was released with android 2.1 less then a year ago, and it will stay there forever (or until a developer cracks the bootloader, which they have not done yet). I don't know about you, but at the pace that Android is advancing (and how necessary the updates are to the speed and function of the phone) I refuse to do without updates like that. Installing custom ROMs is a great way to keep getting updates long after official support has been dropped. Now I know that not all ROMs constitute and actual Android update (many are just tweaked versions of the existing Android OS), but more often than not the new version of Android comes to a phone first through the developing community, and THEN officially (if ever). Check out the source below for more details. Keep in mind, this policy also applies to their upcoming Android 3.0 honeycomb tablet, the Motorola Xoom.

What do you all think? Will you buy a phone from Motorola knowing they lock the bootloader and you can never install custom ROMs?

http://www.phonedog.com/2011/01/19/motorola-confirms-that-locked-bootloaders-aren-t-going-anywhere