Motorola Xoom Unlock Already Available

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The Motorola Xoom has hit stores a few days ahead of the official announcement of the iPad 2 and while we have no idea how many Xoom units have been sold in the mean time we do know that the first Android 3.0 Honeycomb tablet in the world has been unlocked.

There’s even a guide for helping you with the whole process, which will then give you access to the Xoom’s memory. Following the unlock you’ll be able to install pretty much whatever you want on the tablet. Usually when talking about unlocking a mobile device we’re pretty much referring to its capability of connecting to various carrier networks but this time this unlocking has nothing to do with that.

Unlocking the Xoom by following the steps below doesn’t have anything to do with rooting either although a root method for the Xoom could be made public sooner or later.

In the mean time, without further ado, here’s what you need to do to unlock your Motorola Xoom tablet, at least according to the Android Central forums:

1) Get the Motorola USB drivers (you need to sign up on their but maybe you can google this and find it as well)

2) Get the Android SDK (you only really need the fastboot executable file for your host OS)

2.5) – I will soon put together a windows pack for usb drivers & fastboot so you don’t have to download all this stuff just to do one task.

3) Power off your Xoom

4) Press and hold the volume down button while pressing the power button

Even after the Xoom turns back on keep it pressed down and you’ll see some starting fastboot protocol text on the top left of the screen.

5) Open a command window in your sdk\tools folder (not platform tools and depending on when you get the SDK you may need to copy over some DLL files)

6) type: fastboot oem unlock
7) read the warning on your Xoom’s screen, hit volume up if you wish.

You’re now free to put whatever data you want on your tablet. Cheers.

Naturally the unlock process is going to void your warranty and we’re not going to advise you to go for it. But since it’s not us that paid for the device, you can do whatever you feel like doing to your new tablet. Just don’t expect either Motorola or Verizon to appreciate your actions if you get anything wrong.