Unfulfilled promises are Motorola’s specialty. From never mentioning the name MotoBlur again to shipping handsets with unlocked bootloaders, Motorola’s wrap isn’t the shiniest of Android’s manufacturers. Case in point, the Motorola Droid 3 that launched yesterday does indeed ship with a locked bootloader, making custom ROMs a no go for the time being.
Although Motorola promised that it will begin to ship newer Android phones with unlocked bootloaders, we’ve yet to see it from the flagship Droid phone maker. That said, Moto stated that phones with unlocked bootloaders won’t begin to ship until late 2011, and given that we’re only in the middle of the year, we can give them some slack. Maybe.
The Droid 3 is a solid upgrade if you’re coming from even the Droid 2, as it features a snappy dual-core processor, larger, qHD display, and a front-facing camera for video-chat. The keyboard of the handset has also been tweaked and now features a dedicated number row, which is a very welcomed addition. Some may be a little turned off since the Droid 3 does not support Verizon’s blazing fast LTE network. Still, the handset is solid enough without it and we can imagine it doesn’t suffer from the battery problems seen in the Thunderbolt and Revolution.
If you’re interested in the Droid 3 but are holding back your purchase because of the locked bootloader, don’t. We have little doubt that the phone will receive an update that will give the user the option to unlock the bootloader if he or she chooses. Waiting sucks, yes, but you can at least be pretty confident that you’ll be able to hack the D3 sometime in the near future. Hopefully.
We wish Motorola would hurry it up with the bootloader situation, as there are plenty of people who have jumped to another manufacturer’s handset for its hackabilities.
Is anyone looking to pick the Droid 3 up?
[Via: ZDNet]