Christmas has come early for Motorola Atrix owners – not only are they due to receive an update to Android 2.3 some time in July, but in unexpected news this update will also allow the boot-loader to be unlocked!
Atrix Developer Kenneth Pennington confirmed on his website Briefmobile.com that the early leaked 2.3.3 builds he has his hands on will allow users to unlock the boot-loader via the adb command “fastboot oem unlock”. An unlocked boot-loader will allow custom kernels and full custom ROMs such as CyanogenMod, finally unleashing the full power of the Atrix.
Our own Irwin Proud has campaigned tirelessly for this news: “After my conversation with Christy from Motorola, I felt confident Motorola wanted to unlock their devices, I just wasn’t sure if the major carriers would let the update through”. Even though this is a leaked early build, Irwin says “I’ve spoken with the Dev team who have been working with the leaked build and their source says it will be in the final build for AT&T”.
At this stage, the unlocked boot-loader has been confirmed for the AT&T and Chinese Atrix models, however it is likely that our own Telstra model will see the same update in the future.
[Image via BriefMobile]
wow, didnt expect moto to actually do this especially with their history and even if they were saying they would do it.
totally tempted by this phone now ive always liked it more than the gs2.
My Atrix is unlocked!
Good news, but doesn’t really help any of us with older motorolas.
Thanks a lot to Irwin Proud (@ibproud). Though I really miss here some mentions to @kb7sqi , utmost respected dev from the Motorola Android community and @MarkatMotorola from Motorola for making this possible. They both fought the impossible from the outside and the inside of the corporation to get this result possible and brought to us as a reality!
I own the AT&T version of the Atrix, have done since they came out. Just the other day I was thinking of selling it and getting something like a DHD or even HD2 to play with.. but now its like a whole new phone! Im looking forward to see what the community can do with this
Now I’m waiting for my HTC incredible s to be unlocked officially 🙂
I’m feeling like such a little kid at the moment, after having one since launch in america I have started to get bored of it but now it should spike more interest from the Dev community, maybe samsung and their PR stunt with cyanogen had something to do with it..? Hopefully we can see a cyanogen team member help us out in porting CM7 in the near future!
This is a leaked build, so it will be interesting to see if “carriers” stop it. However, its good news though as people maybe able to play with it and work out how to do the unlock.
Does give me hope for the future though with the possibility of other moto phones (milestone 2) getting unlocks if they get a gingerbread update.
It doesn’t matter if the carriers here don’t pass it on to us, so long as we can get a signed boot file for a compatible Atrix from elsewhere. With RSDlite you could load that code, unlock, then load whatever unsigned ROM you like.
WOOHOO!!! 🙂
Making a great phone even better!
Now if only i could do something about the pentile LCD 🙁
Heh… finally. Of course, the damage done to their reputation isn’t going away any time soon.