Motorola has a long history of famously locking down the boot loaders on its Android smartphones – preventing users from restoring and installing their own custom ROMs.
Although Motorola hasn’t (yet) made any moves to begin the widespread unlocking of bootloaders across its devices, the corporation has begun offering up a number of developer smartphones with unlocked boot loaders.
The latest developer-oriented smartphone? The new Atrix HD Developer Edition, which offers up the same hardware under the hood as the standard Atrix HD smart phone. Meaning, the Developer Edition features a 4.5-inch HD resolution display, measures 69.9 x 133.5 x 8.4 mm and weighs 140 g.
The smartphone is also equipped with an eight-megapixel rear camera, a 1.3 megapixel front camera, along with integrated Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and support for 4G hotspot connectivity.
The device currently ships with Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich), although it is probably fairly safe to assume that a Jelly Bean upgrade will roll out at some point in the near future.
Right now, Motorola is keeping mum on a few key details of the device, such as when the phone will be available and how much it costs.
Considering that the standard Atrix HD with the Drive Smart package is priced at $449 off contract at AT&T, odds are the Developer Edition will weigh in at around the same price. Yes, it looks like developer editions of existing smartphones may be the only way Motorola allows users to access devices with an unlocked bootloader.
