Goodbye, bootloader unlocking!
LG’s smartphone dream is dead — the company officially left the Android market earlier this year, after years of steep financial losses. While we were sad to bid adieu to one of the biggest Android OEMs, the company sadly failed to make its phones appeal to buyers, even after multiple strategy changes. If you still have an LG phone now, you’re counting on it to continue providing software updates, but there’s also the dirty route — installing a custom ROM. But you’ll have to unlock the bootloader first, and you’ll need to act fast as LG is shutting down its unlock tool on December 31.
LG announced its decision to terminate its developer website, as noted by Mishaal Rahman on his Twitter account. This move will also gut LG’s bootloader unlock tool, meaning that, from January 1st onwards, there will be no way (or at least, no official way) to unlock the bootloader on an LG phone, even if it was previously eligible. Basically, no root or custom ROMs for you if you haven’t already unlocked your device.
Since the company isn’t making phones anymore, it makes sense that it would shutter services such as these, but it’s still bad news for owners of newer LG devices like the LG Velvet. If you don’t unlock your bootloader now, you’ll have to depend on LG to roll out software updates and security patches to your phone, but software support on LG devices wasn’t good when it was still in the game. While LG pledged to keep updates coming for its phones despite the demise of its smartphone business, we don’t trust them to be very timely, especially now.
What should you do then? LG’s developer page is currently still alive and will remain online until December 31st, at which point it will be discontinued. Even if you don’t see yourself installing a custom ROM or rooting your phone in the near future, it might be a good idea to unlock it now if you plan on keeping it for the long term. Support is eventually going to be discontinued, and you’ll have no way of keeping your phone updated at that point.
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