The outcry over the Transformer Prime and its locked bootloader was clearly heard by Asus this weekend. On their U.S. Facebook page they have released a brief statement, which basically just tells you all to “relax” while they prepare an official statement with details or reasons as to why they have made this unfortunate move. Yeah, that’s comforting…or not so much. And we say that it’s not so comforting because Asus’ Italian page has gone ahead and dropped a statement of their own that actually does go into a bit of detail on their reasoning behind locking up their new quad-core tablet.
Here it is (translated by Google):
We see that there was a bit ‘choppy sea of questions about some “hot”. We talk about issues with Prime. It is called the root block. About First it should be noted that the product is not yet available on our territory. So the problems that some (we want to emphasize) users have complained will not affect the units deployed overseas on our territory. Battery life is line with what was promised. Obviously, this parameter depends strongly on the conditions of use and maximum range is always referred to use “light” with all the energy saving features active. On the GPS is wrong to compare a product like Prime to a smartphone. First, because smartphones using 3G connectivity to download the table with the position of the satellites and then more quickly identify the satellites. What you can do even Prime WiFi, but only when it is connected. Secondly, because Prime does not come as Car Navigator, nor do we imagine that users will use it while walking the streets of the city, looking for a street or a shop. For those things are just smartphones. Finally speech root: our position in this regard is simple. The product is guaranteed as it is. Different firmware altering the basic functionality of the product or push the hardware beyond the standard frequencies will void your warranty and may threaten the reliability and proper functioning of the product itself. Basically to respond to some posts on the bulletin board: we do not delete the “post uncomfortable” because we do not have anything to hide. Delete spam, misinformation and the news is not official. Keep them on the bulletin board would be to confirm their content. But it is not. It is incorrect that a user who attends board ASUS Italy will find us to be informed instead of misinformation. We hope with this post that I made clear the misunderstanding.
The staff ASUS Italy
So that’s pretty much what every company that locks bootloaders has to say. They want their product to be used as they designed and do not want you putting custom software on it. Not only does an unlockable bootloader allow you to put on custom software, but it also kills the warranty of your device. Mmmhmmm.
Hopefully the U.S. Asus team has something more appealing for us to read later today.
Via: Facebook, Facebook Italia
Cheers Heath and Matt!
This post was last modified on January 3, 2012 8:06 am