If one of the main reasons you love Android is the fact that it allows for much deeper customization compared to other platforms, you might want to stay away from Verizon’s version of the Pixel and Pixel XL smartphones. This is according to a tweet by Evan Blass who claims that Verizon’s version of the phones will have their bootloaders locked.
So some of you guys might be wondering, what is the big deal? For those who rely on heavy customizations and tweaks, unlocking the bootloader means that it gives the user access to root, which in turn means that you grant yourself super user/administrator access to your phone and can access pretty much all aspects of it.
From there, users will be able to do all sorts of things that an unrooted phone can’t, such as get rid of bloatware, install custom ROMs, overclock their phone’s CPU, install certain apps that require root access such as ad blockers, and so on. Now there are plenty of Android apps out there already that provide quite a fair amount of customization, so unless there are specific features or ROMs that you want access to, we guess you can live without this feature.
However for those who love tinkering on their phones, it sounds like Verizon’s version of the Pixel phones might not necessarily be the best choice.
Filed in . Read more about Android, Google Pixel, Pixel Xl, Rooting and Verizon.