The PPCGeeks’ Motorola Droid forum is always growing. Our members post threads comparing custom ROMs, discuss the risks benefits of over clocking, and assist others who chose to forgo their warranty and root their smart phones. Even though the Motorola Milestone has been described as the GSM version of the droid; Milestone owners do not get to partake in this same kind of discussion largely because Motorola has blocked the ability to run unsigned/custom ROMs on this device even if the owner has root access.
During the last few weeks, Motorola’s forums and facebook pages have been overloaded with Milestone owners trying to “encourage” Motorola to un-sign or unlock the boot section of the phone which would allow users to load custom ROMs, overclock the processor, and of course, void their warranty (like Droid does).
Motorola finally responded to their customers through their Motodev Blog in a rather surprising manner. You have to admire their candor as they have chosen to respond by encouraging their customers to buy a phone made by another manufacturer:
“We understand there is a community of developers interested in going beyond Android application development and experimenting with Android system development and re-flashing phones. For these developers, we highly recommend obtaining either a Google ADP1 developer phone or a Nexus One, both of which are intended for these purposes.” (source)
Motorola has made it abundantly clear to the entire Android OS consumer base that they have no intention of allowing users to ever modify the boot section of the phones they manufacture. The Motodev Blog post goes on to describe how Motorola is well within their prerogative and rights to lock their phone down in this way. If you want to install ROMs, overclock your phone or install custom kernels, you should look at something other than a Motorola. People and companies do change, but for now it looks as if the Milestone user base is going to have to stay on the side lines of the modding community indefinitely.