No, the Motorola Defy bootloader hasn’t been unlocked (yet). Rumor has it that a few individuals do have Defy’s with unlocked bootloaders though. Why is having an unlocked bootloader important you ask? Have a look at this article from AddictiveTips for a good summary of what a bootloader is, and why they are often locked.
The OP in a thread on XDA that I came across earlier today claimed to have found a method to unlock the Motorola Defy bootloader. The OP said he would be posting a video with proof of the bootloader unlock, which I don’t think ever came. I checked the thread again later and was disappointed to see that it had been removed from XDA. So, it was likely someone taking Defy owners for a ride, getting our hopes up without actually having a method to unlock.
This doesn’t mean it won’t happen. Epsylon3 is believed to be working on this, and if anyone can do this, it’s him. He recently managed to brick his original Defy, but received enough donations so that he could buy a new one. So, it sounds like he will continue working on the bootloader unlock.
There’s two threads on XDA that you should follow if you’re interested in keeping up with the status of unlocking the Motorola Defy bootloader.
Well lookie here! Epsylon3 has released the first Cyanogenmod 9 nightly build for the Motorola Defy. There’s still a pretty hefty list of things that are broken, but it’s way smaller than it was last week.
Don’t think I’m quite ready to try this out yet. I’ll give it a shot on my Defy once the orientation sensor is working properly. Might wait for the camera to be 100% functional too, I use my phone camera often for taking pictures and video of my daughter.
Probably the most notable change in 2.2 is the addition of a “follow me” button to the Twitter widget, which you can see in the featured image attached to this post. It’s enabled by default, but can be turned off from the widget options.
I also fixed an issue where small fonts were being applied to any label element, even when label wasn’t being used in a form. This made the title for the new “subscribe widget” from JetPack 1.2 be really small. So those of you using that widget should see an improvement.
A thread at the XDA Developers forum has been discussing progress on Cyanogenmod 9 (CM9) for the Motorola Defy. The first post includes a video of a Motorola Bravo running Cyanogenmod 9 with Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0). The Motorola Bravo is running Cyanogenmod 9 for the Defy, but it seems to work. You can see the video here at the end of this post.
I’m not even going to install it, it probably has a lot of the issues the ROM from Epsylon3 has. It’s still encouraging to see nightly CM9 builds for the Defy popping up though.
I was a little worried about Cyanongemod 9 even being released for the Defy, but the Defy is one of the most popular devices for the Cyanogenmod team, according to the Cyanogenmod stats site anyway.
According to the Cyanogenmod stats site, there’s nearly 50,000 Defy’s running Cyanogenmod. The Motorola Defy is the umts_jordan device.
If you’ve got a Motorola Defy and are really, really anxious to run Ice Cream Sandwich, you now have two options. The AOSP ROM from Epsylon3, or a Cyanogenmod 9 nightly from http://defy-cm.net/ics-test0/.
I’ll be holding off on Ice Cream Sandwich for at least another month, probably more. I need to have a very stable phone, and can’t afford to run bleeding edge software on it.
If you’ve tried Ice Cream Sandwich in AOSP or Cyanongemod form, let me know, I’d love to hear what you think of it. You can see the video of Cyanogenmod 9 on the Defy after the break! Read more
Epsylon3 also released the first test ROM for Motorola Defy phones. The download link has been shutdown due to “copyright abuse”. The test ROM was made available at http://defy-cm7.tk//ics-test0/. I doubt it will come back online, so keep an eye on the original thread at XDA for a new download link.
Things that work in the test ROM:
Startup, bootmenu and recovery
Touchscreen and keypad (multitouch too)
Usb
New Network (netfilter) kernel modules (quota2, and fake qtaguid)
wifi
Things that need work:
Fix egl configuration : Cause the force close on many apps including default launcher, settings and gapps setup wizard
Fix colors (almost fixed)
Fix sound
Fix phone / 3G
Fix orientation sensor
Fix egl hw acceleration for omap3 (can be hard) : gralloc.omap3.so
Fix camera (will be hard)
UPDATE 11/29/2011: See this post for links to some Cyanogenmod 9 test builds for the Defy.
