LG to Shut Down Its Bootloader Unlocking Service

LG Plan’s to Shutting Down its Mobile Developer Service.

LG reveals its plan to terminate the LG Mobile Developer service, including the website, and bootloader unlocking service on 31 December, 2021. Here’s the statement issued by LG on its Mobile Developer website:

This means by 31 December, 2021 LG smartphones’ bootloader can’t be unlocked unofficially. Thus, making it difficult to tweak the LG smartphones, such as rooting the device, and installing custom ROM.

Earlier this year, LG had announced to depart from smartphone market and completely shut down its smartphone division, but LG promised to continue the support for the flagships through 2022, according to Liliputing.

Reportedly, the reasons of the departure are because LG unable to compete with the competitors, and had loss in a sum of around $4.4 billion. LG W41 Pro is the latest and might be the last LG smartphone ever released, the W41 Pro was released on 22 February, 2022.

This closure means, there will be no official method to unlock the bootloader. However, the bootloader is still unofficially unlockable with the tools provided by the developers on XDA forum. But despite that, it might be more difficult than the official method that provided by LG. 

If you have LG smartphone with bootloader locked, you must be faster to decide whether to unlock the bootloader or keep it locked. And of course, unlocking the bootloader might void the warranty.

Source: Liliputing, LG, XDA