Motorola offers a few of its latest smartphones in ‘Developer Edition” configurations, allowing customers to pay full price for the phone and request codes that let them unlock the bootloader. Up until now, if you actually did unlock the bootloader you took matters into your own hands and voided your warranty.

Now Motorola is reversing that policy. You can unlock any of the company’s Developer Edition phones and keep your warranty intact, and if you’ve already unlocked a phone from 2012 or 2013 and voided your warranty, Motorola will reinstate it automatically (effective from the date of purchase).

Moto X

Motorola is also taking a page out of the Google Nexus playbook and promising to offer factory images which you can download to restore a phone to its factory condition.

In other words, you can now buy a Motorola phone, install any software you’d like on it, and there’s a clear path for returning the phone to the state it was in when you bought it. If you run into trouble before your warranty period is over, you can try to contact Motorola for help.

The move makes Motorola’s latest phones a lot more like Google Nexus devices… which isn’t surprising, since Google bought Motorola last year. The phones do tend to cost a bit more than Nexus handsets, which currently top out at $399 for a Nexus 5 with 32GB of storage.

Motorola currently offers a Droid Maxx DE for $650 and Verizon and GSM Moto X DE phones for $550.

via /r/Android

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4 replies on “Unlocking a Motorola Developer Edition phone no longer voids the warranty”

  1. I find it annoying that the subscription price has plummeted on this phone, but the full purchase price hasn’t really budged. The Nexus 5 is out and the price for the X is pretty ridiculous at this point.

    1. I agree. I would greatly enjoy a Maxx DE, but cannot justify the cost. My hope is a sale during the holidays in which the phone is sold for $450, preferably with a free Qi charging pad and a $50 Play store credit.

  2. Well isn’t that big of them :p

    Its like *not voiding the warranty* on your computer for installing Linux or whatever other OS you’d like. Ohhhh big thanks, Slavemaster!

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