Asus customers grumble over Transformer Prime lock

Outraged owners of Asus's Transformer Prime tablet are petitioning the company to free up the Android device's bootloader so people can install custom versions of the operating system.

On Monday a member of the XDA-developers forum, 'Wordlywisewiz', wrote that the just-launched Transformer Prime had a bootloader that was locked down with 128-bit encryption, making it impossible to flash customised ROMs or tweak the device in a variety of other ways.

The forum member called for a concerted online campaign that — judging by the 40 pages of support that swiftly followed the post — has already crystallised.

"[The encrypted bootloader] makes it impossible to flash ROMs and kernels which can really unlock the device's full potential, i.e. overclocking, flashing Linux distros, customising, undervolting, potential of Windows 8 etc," Wordlywisewiz wrote.

Citing previous success in getting HTC to unlock the bootloaders on some of its 2011 devices, Wordlywisewiz urged other forum members to "do the same to Asus" by tweeting, commenting on Asus's Facebook and Google+ pages, signing a petition and directly emailing senior Asus executives, including chairman Jonney Shih.

Several forum members pointed out that there is little reason for Asus to lock down its tablet in this way, as it does not feature 3G and is therefore never locked to any particular carrier.

The Eee Pad Transformer Prime is a quad-core Tegra 3-based tablet that can be used with or without a detachable keyboard. Priced at £499, it comes with Android 'Honeycomb' 3.2 but will see an upgrade to 'Ice Cream Sandwich' 4.0.

ZDNet UK has asked Asus why the device is so heavily locked and whether it will bow to user pressure over the issue, but had received no response at the time of writing.