NVIDIA SHIELD users have a wide variety of things they can do with their systems. There is the obvious such as gaming, however the SHIELD is also a regular Android device which means you can watch video, listen to music, surf the web and plenty of other things. Then there are the more interesting aspects such as PC Game Streaming and flying an AR.Parrot drone.
But it looks like NVIDIA is not content to let things stop with that. Earlier in the week they launched the “Develop for SHIELD” page which offered downloads of a recovery image and some open source materials. As was mentioned, they were providing “open source developers and Android hackers with everything they need to create custom OS images for SHIELD.”
While we have yet to see any custom firmware come available for the system, we are seeing the folks at NVIDIA begin reaching out to the xda-developers community. In an effort that seems to involve a bit of sweet talking, NVIDIA has said that “if you’re not a coder or already set up with an Android development environment you should skip downloading these tools and perhaps just check out what the amazing XDA community can do instead.”
Bottom line here, it looks like we may begin seeing some ROMs come available for the SHIELD in the not to distant future. But as always, there is the other side which in this case involves a warning. Sending a somewhat mixed message, NVIDIA has reminded users about how their “warranty policy does allow us to reject returns if a device has been rooted or a boot loader has been unlocked.”
They do go on to say they aren’t trying to “discourage people from rooting their devices” and are instead looking to maintain a “course of action if folks start to abuse the hardware through software modifications.” That said, those still on the fence about a SHIELD purchase may benefit from our earlier coverage which included a full review.
SOURCE: NVIDIA
