Samsung simply launched the Mission Moohan headset this week, rebranding it because the Samsung Galaxy XR. It’s the primary Android XR headset that individuals should buy, so there’s quite a lot of pleasure behind the product regardless of its $1,800 price ticket. It appears Samsung has given customers another reason to be excited: bootloader unlocking.

As X consumer Brad Lynch came upon, the Galaxy XR features a toggle for OEM unlocking in Developer Choices:

Shock, shock — not solely does the toggle work, however you can too really go forward and unlock the bootloader.

Bootloader unlocking on the Galaxy XR is a breath of contemporary air, particularly when you think about how Samsung went out of its method to take away the bootloader unlock possibility from One UI 8 throughout its telephones and tablets, even from units that beforehand supported it.

It’s much more stunning, contemplating that almost all mainstream rivals within the AR/XR area, such because the Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional and the Meta Quest lineup, don’t formally permit bootloader unlocking. You’ll be able to unlock the bootloader on some older and unpatched firmware variations of the Meta Quest 2 and three via exploits. To the most effective of my data, that is the primary time an AR/VR/XR headset has had an unlocked bootloader/OS because the Oculus Go. This makes the Galaxy XR a very distinctive gadget in latest instances, one which surprisingly doesn’t supremely penalize fans and energy customers from tinkering with the software program (but).

It stays to be seen whether or not Samsung really supposed the Galaxy XR’s bootloader to be unlockable, or if this was merely an oversight that shall be mounted with a future software program replace. Provided that the Android XR platform may use all of the push it may get proper now from builders and fans, it does really feel intentional and never unintended.

I’m conserving my fingers crossed that builders will discover new and modern makes use of for the {hardware}, because of the unlocked bootloader. Time for some Android XR customized ROMs? Heck yeah!