Earlier this week a major milestone was reached in terms of unlocking and hacking Motorola smartphones. Motorola’s encrypted bootloaders finally were cracked and it represents a first for many of their latest devices. Nothing close to this has been achieved on a Motorola device yet. Sadly the process requires a rooted device, and for many that wasn’t available until now.

The method achieved and later released to unlock the bootloader on our precious RAZR HD, MAXX HD, RAZR M, Atrix HD and more all require a rooted device. Rooting Moto phones isn’t very easy either, and until yesterday the latest OTA update to Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean was still locked down, and only 4.1.1 was rooted. This means only those who passed on the latest OTA were able to unlock their bootloader, but not anymore.

So if you accepted the OTA to Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean in March for the RAZR and MAXX HD, the details released this week for rooting will have you covered. After you root your RAZR HD, then go back to this post to learn more about unlocking that bootloader.

Obviously rooting your device and unlocking the bootloader comes with a certain amount of risk. So proceed with caution. If you only want to root the latest OTA you’ll want to read up on all the details over at DroidRzr.com then enjoy that full root access. The developer responsible for all of this has recently stated he’s done with rooting and exploiting Motorola, so hopefully now that Google owns the company things ease up a bit.

[via Droid-Life]