Go go XDA powers, activate! If you’ll take a trip down memory lane, or if you just happen to have a Samsung Galaxy Tab of your own and love to hack and play with your devices, you’ll know that it would be a great mission for a developer to break the protected bootloaders in the Galaxy Tab’s stock ROMs. Well lucky you, and lucky us, a fellow by the name of Chainfire has done just that, releasing today a patch that’ll make sure you never get locked out of flashing your tablet again.

If you’re into this sort of thing, you’ll know that manufacturer updates of JM* or KA* to your device will put you with that particular bootloader, giving you something you probably didn’t want when you went for it – a locked out experience. What this patch by Chainfire does is to allow you to flash BACk to your original JJ4 bootloader version, a version that is indeed unlocked.

Chainfire writes:

After a great many hours of researching, testing and coding, myself (Chainfire) and Rotohammer have come up with a patch that works on most devices (currently all known GSM Tab variants except the P1000L and P1000N Latin models), and flashes back unprotected JJ4 (T-Mobile ?) bootloaders. The app only patches when it finds protected bootloaders, and you have to press a button for that, so the app can also be used to look at your current status.

Take a peek at this patch over in the XDA thread and try it out, if it works or if it doesn’t work feel free to either write about it there or here, where everyone can see and feed back to your feedback.

While we’re waiting for people to test it out, I’ve got a question for you – do you think it’s the right of the manufacturer to lock you out of the device, or do you think it should be illegal to do such a thing? Or do you think some third option such as “all devices should come unlocked because that’d be the kind thing to do?”

[Via XDA]