Following up on a story we ran earlier this week about HTC "reviewing" their bootloader policy, the CEO of HTC, Peter Chou, has made an announcement on the company"s official Facebook page that should make a lot of people very happy.
"There has been overwhelmingly customer feedback that people want access to open bootloaders on HTC phones. I want you to know that we"ve listened. Today, I"m confirming we will no longer be locking the bootloaders on our devices. Thanks for your passion, support and patience," Peter Chou, CEO of HTC
You can read the post, as well as the thousands of many thankful comments here.
This is really big news as it means that every major Android handset manufacturer now either ships their devices with an unlocked bootloader, or provides some way of unlocking them.
Having an unlocked bootloader means that owners of their devices have complete control over them. This can be quite crucial for when the device reaches the end of its support lifecycle and is no longer receiving updates from the manufacturer, as hobbyists and enthusiasts can take the latest Android source code and port it over themselves, or create optimised "roms" that increase battery life among other things.
There"s still no word on how this move will affect existing devices that have already been locked down, or if HTC"s latest device, the HTC Sensation, will receive an update to unlock it in the future, but you can expect to hear more information from HTC shortly.