Well here’s some relatively good news. Punit Soni, a VP at Motorola, announced on Google+ that the Moto X on Sprint, US Cellular, Rogers and T-Mobile will all have an unlockable bootloader. Verizon is getting a Developer Edition. There will also be a general North American Developer Edition. You probably noticed that AT&T was notably absent from the list. It looks like AT&T will have a locked booloader. But the “general North American Developer Edition” should work on AT&T and T-Mobile. Which is good news. We’ve also heard from AT&T that they don’t support unlocked bootloaders on their network. So similar to Verizon, you won’t see a device with an unlocked bootloader for sale in their stores.
Yesterday, during the launch of the Moto X we heard that the Moto X would have a locked bootloader. Or at least it sounded like it was locked for time being. Thankfully, Motorola isn’t making the same mistakes they’ve made in the past with their devices and launching the Moto X with an unlockable bootloader on many of the carriers. Which is great.
Even though, I still believe it’ll be mostly “average” consumers buying the Moto X. Meaning there won’t be a whole lot of need to unlock the bootloader for most Moto X owners. We’re not going to say this is a win for Motorola, but it’s definitely the right decision. I’m also assuming that AT&T and Verizon are the reason why the Moto X’s on those two carriers are locked and Developer Editions are incoming.
It kind of seems like Motorola is polluting the market with different Moto X’s. Especially with it being US only. They have the carrier version, two different Developer Editions, plus a Google Play Edition coming soon. Almost like what Samsung has done with their Galaxy S4, right?
Hopefully we’ll get our hands on the Moto X soon and can do a full review and talk about it’s qualities and short comings of Motorola’s new flagship. But until then, how many of you are tempted to purchase the Moto X? Let us know in the comments down below.