Unlock Motorola Photon 4G Bootloader [How To Guide]

Photon 4G owners! We have confirmation that the bootloader for your device has been unlocked thanks to XDA-Developers forum member Yay 4 Juggs. This is huge news considering the Droid 3 and Bionic are to be released soon and this gives the devices a very good chance at a possible unlocked bootloader in the future. Even though the devices are different to each other, this just goes of to show that if it can be done on the Photon 4G, there’s a good chance it may happen for those two devices as well. As for now, it is the owners of the Photon 4G that are uber excited.

The unlocked bootloader has been packed into an SBF by the developer that is to be flashed on the phone via RSDLite. Nothing complicated, in fact the developer has made it even more simple for us. So here’s how to go about unlocking your Photon 4G’s bootloader.

Disclaimer: Please follow this guide at your own risk. AddictiveTips will not be liable if your device gets damaged or bricked during the process.

Requirements:

• Unlocked SBF.
• RSDLite.
• Fastboot.
• System.img. (For rooting purpose only.)

Instructions:

The instruction set will be split into 2 parts, one for flashing the SBG via RSDLite and one for rooting the Photon 4G once unlocked.

SBF Flashing & Unlocking

1. To begin, download RSD Lite and the drivers from the link above and consequently install the drivers.
2. Download the SBF package and extract it.
3. Power off the phone and then hold the Volume Up key and Power button together till you see RSD at the top of the screen.
4. Now, launch RSD Lite on your PC and click the “…” button next to the box labeled Filename.
5. Choose the SBF file you extracted from the MR3 download.
6. Plug the device to the PC via USB and RSD Lite should recognize the device.
7. Hit the Start button and sit back and relax as the files are flashed to your phone.
8. Once the SBF is flashed, the phone will reboot.
9. Now download the Fastboot package from the link above and extract it.
10. Run Command Prompt and navigate to the Fastboot folder, entering the following command:

    moto-fastboot oem unlock

    You should see the following prompts:

    C:\Data\Sunfire\HW\Security_Tokens>fastboot oem unlock

    … INFOUnlocking your device can permanently VOID your warranty.

    INFOThis process cannot be reversed. If you wish to proceed,

    INFOreissue the unlock OEM command containing the unique ID

    INFOof your device: ########### (device generated ID will appear in this like not number signs.)

    OKAY [ 0.002s]

    finished. total time: 0.002s

11. Note your Unique ID and enter the following command (replace ### with the UID):

moto-fastboot oem unlock ###########

Now when you power cycle the phone, you will see unlock written on the screen every time.

Rooting

1. To begin, download the system.img file from the link above and extract it to the fastboot folder.
2. Also, install Superuser from the Market.
3. Make sure that your phone is fully charged before attempting this.
4. Boot your phone in fastboot mode and connect it to the PC.
5. Run Command Prompt, navigate to the location of the system.img file and enter the following command:

moto-fastboot flash system system.img

Done! You now have an unlocked boot loader, along with complete root access! For updates and queries, head over to the forum thread at XDA-Developers.

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Zayed Rehman

Studying Development Sciences in the humble pursuit of saving this world; making occasional contributions to the world of Android. | Find me on Google+

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