This is a story we know all to well with Verizon by now. There are a few manufacturers that provide ways for you to unlock the bootloader and flash just about anything. But Verizon doesn’t want manufacturers to do that. Which is why it’s such a task to get bootloaders unlocked on their devices. While the DROID DNA was only in reviewers hands, it was known that you could unlock the bootloader from HTCDev’s website, similar to most other HTC devices. But that quickly changed once the device became available on Wednesday.
Thanks to the usual hard work from the developer community, the bootloader of the DROID DNA has successfully been unlocked. The guys from @TeamAndIRC were able to get the bootloader unlocked while the rest of us were enjoying time with our family and Turkey yesterday.
This is unlocking the bootloader, not unlocking the device. Those are two totally different things. Unlocking the bootloader allows you to root, flash custom ROMs, kernels, radios, and so much more. Most HTC devices can be unlocked by using HTCDev, but we all know Verizon does things the wrong way for customers. They encrypt the stuff out of the bootloader on every device then have a developer edition of the phone which is only available at full price and with no warranty. Still can’t see why Verizon has to encrypt these bootloaders making it nearly impossible to be unlocked.
Reports are saying that this is a full unlock and that it gives users complete access through recovery. Which means we should be seeing some CyanogenMod 10, or 10.1 soon and possibly some AOKP love for those that picked up the HTC DROID DNA with it’s 1080p display. We should also be seeing some custom kernels soon, providing HTC releases kernel source for the DROID DNA, which if Verizon has their way it won’t happen.
Who picked up the HTC DROID DNA over the past few days? And who’s waiting to unlock the bootloader and start flashing some goodies on that beautiful device? Let us know in the comments.