Since last year, HTC itself has been happy to let you unlock the bootloaders on its Android devices, but that doesn't mean you'll always be able to. If you'll recall, the international version of the One X was rooted just a few weeks ago, but such access apparently isn't in the cards for the AT&T-branded variant. The inconsistency was discovered by the likes of the XDA-Developers forums and MoDaCo, and after we pinged HTC for comment it responded with the following:

HTC is committed to listening to users and delivering customer satisfaction. Since announcing our commitment to unlockable bootloaders, HTC has worked to enable our customers to unlock the bootloader on more than 45 devices over the past six months. In some cases, however, restrictions prevent certain devices from participating in our bootloader unlocking program. Rest assured, HTC is committed to assisting developers in unlocking bootloaders for HTC devices and we'll continue to unlock additional devices in the future."

While HTC clearly isn't spilling the beans on what "restrictions" are blocking this variant of the Android superphone from entering the land of custom ROMs , it's become a general suspicion that AT&T might be the source. Naturally, we can't know for sure at this point, but we've reached out to the carrier in hopes of potentially getting more details on the situation. We'll be sure to keep you posted if we hear anything, but in the meantime, hit up the more coverage links below for further info.[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]