Motorola Mobility (NYSE:MMI) is rolling out a special Developer Edition of its Android-based, 4G LTE-capable Droid Razr including an unlocked bootloader enabling devs to install unofficial firmware builds. Priced at €499 (about $655 U.S.) and currently marketed exclusively to the European market, the Razr Developer Edition is sold without a warranty; on its Inside Motorola blog, the manufacturer states it plans to introduce an unlockable device to the U.S. market via the Motodev mobile developer program. "This solution allows us to continue meeting our carrier and regulatory obligations, but also meets the needs being expressed by our developer community," Motorola Mobility adds.
Apart from support for unlocking, relocking and locating build files, the Razr Developer Edition is essentially the same smartphone available to consumers. The device is 7.1 mm thick at its thinnest point and touts a 4.3-inch Super AMOLED Advanced PenTile display, covered in a Gorilla glass screen and Kevlar back plate. The Droid Razr currently runs version 2.3.5 of Google's (NASDAQ:GOOG) Android mobile operating system, with Motorola Mobility pledging to upgrade the device to the latest Android 4.0 early this year.
Although Motorola Mobility states the Razr Developer Edition is a response to requests from the developer community, most developers responding to the announcement on Inside Motorola seem far from pleased by the move. "Basically you guys are reneging on your previous statement that we believed you would unlock your bootloaders for CURRENT phones by the end of 2011?" writes developer Dan Ehresman. "So my Razr is useless to me now and I have to pay full price for another one to get the promises you made? I smell a class action lawsuit here. Way to lose 10's of thousands of devs including this one. I will be buying a HTC phone from now on. Way to screw over your customers Moto."
For more:
- read this Inside Motorola blog entry
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