When LG launched the G3 earlier this year, it was pretty clear that LG had another winner on their hands. Put together with a new, more premium look and feel and packed full of the best specs on the market, the G3 quickly became one of the must-have devices of 2014. As is so often the case with an open platform like Android, some users want to take their shiny new device and have their way with it. To be able to do this fully, developers really need to be able to unlock the device's bootloader, which makes things much easier from a development perspective and unlocks the true potential of the device. Unlocking the bootloader on devices can bring massive changes to devices, like the ability to edit the partition layout on older devices to squeeze in much newer versions of Android and just run custom ROMs from the community.


LG said that back in August, they would happily give their users an unlock solution for the locked bootloader that ships with the G3. However, it's now coming to the end of September, and there's no still official unlock method in sight. Somewhat unsurprisingly, some users are getting a little antsy, and have had enough of LG's idle promises. There's now a petition over at Change.org for LG to allow users to unlock not just the G3 but all other LG devices. It seems that LG is open to the idea, but in a world where HTC and Sony allow bootloader unlocks without question, it sure looks like LG is dragging their feet.

As for unofficial workarounds, the T-Mobile G3 ships with an unlocked bootloader, so it seems pretty obvious that LG are open to development on the device, but that the US carriers like AT&T and Verizon are getting in the way. Progress is being made on an unofficial bootloader unlock by a number of different teams and there's been more than a couple of different bounties posted for such an unlock. While it's obvious why the carriers and manufacturers still ship devices with locked bootloaders, it seems time that said manufacturers and carriers put a little more effort into allowing users to get access to everything that their phone has to offer. So, if you want to try and persuade LG, go ahead and sign the petition below and let us know what you think in the comments below.





















