Asus has been fairly late to the smartphone party, but that doesn’t mean the company is taking it slow when it comes to product launches. Its ZenFone range of smartphones have gotten plenty of attention ever since the first batch of devices were rolled out last year, with its ZenFone 4, 5 and 6 powered by Intel’s Clover Trail+ dual-core processors. While the devices were praised almost universally for what they represented, they were basically mid-rangers without any pretensions of competing with the big boys of the smartphone biz. This year however has seen the Taiwan-based company up the ante and launch the ZenFone 2 smartphone, which comes with a more powerful and more energy efficient quad-core processor from Intel. The ZenFone 2 range of devices also come with sharper 1080p displays and larger batteries, meaning, the few niggling issues from last year’s models were ironed out with the company’s 2015 flagship. No wonder the phone received mostly positive reviews from the tech media for providing a great package at a compelling price-point.
The one thing however that rankled DIY Android aficionados, would have been Asus’s choice to go with Intel instead of Qualcomm, as the chip supplier of its choice. While the decision from Asus was understandable – and even expected – seeing as the two companies have been doing business for the better part of two decades (Asus makes notebooks and desktops with Intel chips), many were skeptical about developer involvement with the devices, what with Intel’s proprietary code not often lending itself to custom ROMs that everybody seems to be clamoring for. Of course, the absence of an official bootloader unlock tool from Asus wasn’t helping either, although, tutorials on how to unofficially hack one’s way into the ZenFone 2 bootloader have been doing the rounds of XDA for months now.
As for today’s big ZenFone 2 news, Asus has finally released its bootloader unlock tool officially, through a posting on its website. The tool is available as a free download from the company’s support forums, meaning, power users and DIY enthusiasts will be able to just download and install the file, without having to rely on unofficial hacks to unlock the bootloader. The installation of the utility however, will void the warranty, and comes with the standard disclaimer that the company cannot be held responsible for any problems arising out of using the software. The company also provides a fairly detailed set of instructions on how to proceed with the installation, which starts with updating the device at least to software version V2.20.40.59, before downloading and installing the application. Interested ZenFone 2 users can head over to the source link below to check out more details.