Samsung allows bootloader unlocking on Galaxy XR after killing it on phones

Samsung just launched the Project Moohan headset this week, rebranding it as the Samsung Galaxy XR. It’s the first Android XR headset that people can buy, so there’s a lot of excitement behind the product despite its $1,800 price tag. It seems Samsung has given users one more reason to be excited: bootloader unlocking.

As X user Brad Lynch found out, the Galaxy XR includes a toggle for OEM unlocking in Developer Options:

Surprise, surprise — not only does the toggle work, but you can also actually go ahead and unlock the bootloader.

Bootloader unlocking on the Galaxy XR is a breath of fresh air, especially when you consider how Samsung went out of its way to remove the bootloader unlock option from One UI 8 across its phones and tablets, even from devices that previously supported it.

It’s even more surprising, considering that most mainstream competitors in the AR/XR space, such as the Apple Vision Pro and the Meta Quest lineup, don’t officially allow bootloader unlocking. You can unlock the bootloader on some older and unpatched firmware versions of the Meta Quest 2 and 3 through exploits. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time an AR/VR/XR headset has had an unlocked bootloader/OS since the Oculus Go. This makes the Galaxy XR a truly unique device in recent times, one that surprisingly doesn’t supremely penalize enthusiasts and power users from tinkering with the software (yet).

It remains to be seen whether Samsung actually intended the Galaxy XR’s bootloader to be unlockable, or if this was merely an oversight that will be fixed with a future software update. Given that the Android XR platform could use all the push it could get right now from developers and enthusiasts, it does feel intentional and not accidental.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed that developers will find new and innovative uses for the hardware, thanks to the unlocked bootloader. Time for some Android XR custom ROMs? Heck yeah!