Motorola RAZR Developer Version Announced, Promptly Disappears

Looks like somebody pulled the trigger a little early on this one over at Motorola. Reports are coming in that the Motorola site briefly announced a new “Developer Version” of the incredibly thin RAZR that features, you guessed it, an unlockable bootloader. Before the site was changed, readers were able to glean that the device will be launching in the UK first, with a US release “in the coming months”.

At this point there is no telling if this is going to be a Verizon device, or if it will hit stateside in a GSM version.

While the page itself is now gone, the pre-order link still shows a telling “Product not found!” rather than giving a real 404 error:

http://www.visitm.de/en/razr-dev

Another RAZR?

With this announcement, Motorola has now managed to put out 4 separate versions of the same phone in just under 4 months:

• RAZR (GSM)
• DROID RAZR (CDMA)
• DROID RAZR MAXX
• RAZR Developer Version

That doesn’t even take into account the different colored versions of the DROID RAZR that have recently popped up on Verizon. Seems like one thing that hasn’t changed from the original RAZR is Motorola’s tendency to beat the consumer over the head with different versions of the same device until they are so confused they actually drop their cash.

But perhaps a better question is, why do we need another version of the phone just to get the unlocked bootloader that other manufacturers either include from the start or release an unlocking tool for after the fact? Why should early adopters have to suffer through being stuck with a locked bootloader?

By releasing a separate unlocked version of the phone rather than unlocking the existing units, Motorola has not only given themselves license to jack up the price on the “Developer Version” of an otherwise identical phone, but also saved themselves money by releasing a phone they know full well will have it’s warranty voided as soon as the purchaser gets it out of the box. Higher sticker price and guaranteed voided warranty? Sounds like a manufacturer’s dream come true.

Not Good Enough…

I think I speak for most people when I say that this isn’t what the community had in mind when Motorola announced last year they were eventually going to start unlocking the bootloaders on their phones. Companies like HTC and ASUS understand that consumers want to get full access to the devices they already own, not buy a new one to do something the original one could have done if it wasn’t for arbitrary limitations placed on it.

If we’re lucky, there is no physical difference between the stock RAZR and the Developer Version, and the only change is the bootloader itself. In that case, it may end up being possible to pull the Developer bootloader off and install it on a rooted RAZR. But at this point, any talk of that is complete conjecture. We’ll find out in a few months…